(Tibet supporters, one step ahead of The Torch)

This is the Spring of big PR agency work getting exposed by the mainstream media, not ideal for those handling entire countries.

Mark Penn's very public departure from Clinton campaign was over conflicts of interest involving Burson-Marsteller's work with Columbia. The article put the contract at about $300,000 for the year.

Though Hill & Knowlton's contract, along with whichever agency China hires per their RFP to do damage control will be far greater than Burson's Columbia take, the Army of Davids rule applies to the number of pro-Tibet groups banding together draw publicity to the conflict over the region, according to The New York Times this morning.

According to the article, China hired Weber Shandwick after losing the Olympic bid back in 1993. Since then, the Army of Davids has just as many channels of communication as Goliath. It's an oversimplification of a complicated news cycle.

Look at the tactics in the article:

"To get that word out, the International Tibet Support Network, a London-based group that coordinates pro-Tibet organizations, has been sending press-focused bulletins to its 153 member organizations."

"Every other month, Students for a Free Tibet holds conferences for members of pro-Tibet groups, where media training is a focus. The sessions cover everything from giving a good sound bite to answering reporters’ questions artfully."

Combined with more guerrilla methods:

"With an eye toward demonstrations that will get coverage, S.F.T. also holds weeklong “action camps” four times a year. Attendees learn to organize protests and deal with the police, and receive training in attention-getting activities like rappelling and guerrilla street theater."

For the millions of people who log-in to NYTimes.com every day, yesterday brought one of the biggest exclusives the paper has secured in a long time: an interview with alleged call girl Ashley Alexandra Dupre, aka "Kristen," who brought down NY governor Eliot Spitzer.

PRNewser will admit that it threw us for a bit of a loop to see the Times linking directly to her Myspace page. If anything, Ashley doesn't seem to mind the attention. She hasn't taken down the page, which as of the time of this post, has received over 4 million views.

Peter Himler at the Flack is already plotting Ms. Dupre's PR strategy:

You can milk this one, baby. Just play it coy with ET, Extra, Access, GMA, Today and all the others when they come calling this week. Don't overextend yourself. Don't take the first offer from People or US Weekly for the real inside scoop, or Playboy for the outside scoop. Be choosy. Think in the long-term. You don't want to flame out too soon. A measured media strategy is the ticket.

Ms. Dupre certainly has the country's attention. What she does with it is anyone's guess.

FishbowlDC reports that the Facebook page "Support David Shuster: Tell MSNBC He's the Best" was not "encouraged or sanctioned" by the recently suspended MSNBC anchor.

Whether it can be linked to him or not, a former Fox News Channel PR staffer has emailed PRNewser to say this would never fly over at Mr. Murdoch's media empire. According to the former staffer:

At Fox, no one could do anything publicly without Fox's PR department's consent. This mostly applied to interviews-- if an on-air talent got a call for an interview, they'd have to OK with the PR department first. A Facebook page is a pretty blatant way to promote yourself-- catch the title?

Here at PRNewser, we think Shuster would have a few more tactful ways of saving his job, which insiders tell us isn't in jeopardy, than creating a Facebook page.

Meanwhile, TVNewser is covering the story non-stop.

If anyone beats us to a PR Week scoop, I guess we can accept that it be Hamilton Nolan. I mean, he did used to work there. Does he take glee in reporting this item for Gawker.com?

PRWeek spends a lot of time telling publicists how to do their jobs. Embarrassing, then, that last week the magazine bombarded subscribers with unwanted emails. Bonus feature: the message included the names and passwords of other subscribers! All that time the staff spends writing features about crisis communications is coming in handy now.

For the official response from PR Week Editor-in-Chief Julia Hood, click here.

(image cred)

Mark Hopkins at Mashable compares some recent new media PR crisis' and how different brands (Myspace, Digg and Target) responded. We're guessing you can figure out who fared better:

What is really going to separate the men from the boys, so to speak, is how companies react, and how engaged the brains company of spokespersons are when it comes to filtering what is a potential incident, and what is simply link-bait.

I think we can all agree that Target has an intensely stupid position. While the issue may be minor, it still warrants comment, or at least a "we'll get back to you," not a "you're a second class journalist, and we don't take kindly to your type around here" response.

The potential incident vs. link-bait point is key in this discussion. As PR pros, it is our job to be able to think on the fly and match a proper response to the particular issue at hand.

(grab of Roger Clemens on 60 Minutes, this Sunday)

Back from the Holidays, post-Iowa, the Mitchell Report's wallop will be felt again this Sunday when Roger Clemens appears on 60 Minutes with Mike Wallace.

The exclusive, taped, one-on-one will be followed by a press conference the following day in Houston. From a PR perspective, it will serve to fill in any gaps left by the Wallace spot. Expect it to be carried live on cable news, and attended by reporters who have followed his career for decades. Then expect a period of quiet from Mr. Rocket.

Clemens and his lawyer are being handled by seasoned PR pro Joe Householder of Public Strategies Inc. Householder is a the former director of communications for Hillary Clinton and a quick web search shows his involvement in some big crisis work since joining the firm (see Whole Foods vs. Wild Oats bungle).

The PR aspects have become more interesting in the last 24 hours, with the New York Times digging deeper in to Wallace's recollection of the taping, and the issue over injections vs illegal injections.

Jon Friedman from Marketwatch.com among others expect a game of softball with the Clemens's "friend" Wallace as interviewer, and the Houston Chronicle was obliged to ask Householder if Clemens was paid by CBS for the exclusive.

Point taken about Wallace, though Guilty or not, Clemens is not a pregnant member of the Spears family. Householder et al would risk the ability to get the interview they want if money changed hands. There's far more at stake than a quick payday.

We checked with CBS's PR department on these concerns and were referred to 60 Minutes Executive Producer Jeff Fager who told us "Wallace is probably the is probably the best interviewer there ever was, and you'll see another example of why that's true this Sunday."

In cases like these, every news outlet on the planet extends an exclusive offer.

The crisis expert has a visualized outcome in mind and works to achieve it by putting out feelers, sifting through offers and getting as close to the target as possible. The client is carefully prepped and every possible curveball anticipated.

My opinion is colored by my masochistic love of the Mets, so going with Wallace over Larry "damage control" King appears to me as one of personality.

The Rocket is a cantankerous bat-throwing fellow who might slip, or God forbid, come off as boring and cold on the longer format King interview. We'll keep an eye out for Householder's touch. It'll be tough to spot with such a tricky game of pickle.

It was a well documented, if unprecedented story: NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak and Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman were competing for the same man, astronaut William Oefelein. Everything went public when Nowak was arrested and charged with attempted assault and kidnapping of Shipman.

Now, almost one year later, NASA is releasing e-mail correspondence from the trio, including juicy tidbits such as, "They want your size for the arctic gear...I think I can figure that out - sized sexy and athletic."

While almost all of America is surely more interested in the just released emails, PRNewser wants to examine this from a communications standpoint. (We're nerds, we know.) Well, it just so happens that Newsweek did that work for us! Check out their interview with Gene Grabowski, vice president of Washington, D.C.-based Levick Strategic Communications.

Gene smoldered the flames related to the national pet-food recalls and the toxic Chinese toy imports, two of the biggest consumer issues of 2007. Read the full interview here.