Media People

The final keynote at mediabistro's UGCX conference was delivered by NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller. Schiller started off with some depressing stats and said, "We've never seen a time that is more chaotic" in the news business. Specifically, 11% of full-time newsroom jobs were cut in 2008, local TV news audience has fallen 12% in the last five years, and the public's assessment of accuracy in news is at its lowest level in two decades.

"Wherever we end up, we will look back at this year, and say this is the year when everything changed," she said, but quickly added, "there are incredible reasons to be cheerful. Out of the ashes is rising a new era of information where citizens will receive the information they need to be self governing and we will do it ways we can't imagine."

Schiller then laid out five "myths" in the media industry.

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• News Corp. COO and deputy chairman Chase Carey, on the Fox News/White House fight, speaking at Broadcasting & Cable's OnScreen Media Summit in Manhattan this morning. [Via TVNewser]

Publicist turned author Robert Rave appeared on mediabistro's Morning Media Menu podcast this morning. Rave briefly worked for NY publicist Lizzie Grubman and spent nine years in PR, before turning to writing. His book, Spin: A Novel, was released this past August. Grubman told US magazine that the book isn't about her, but is a "fun fictional story."

"As much as I would like to say that those experiences are my own - just for the war wounds, it is a novel," said Rave. "It's basically how this young guy...learns the ropes of the NY boutique PR industry. It's not the happy go-lucky type of story that a lot of these books are. It's an amalgamation of a lot of different experiences of a lot of different people I met while working in PR and living in New York. Everyone seemed to have a crazy publicist story or a crazy boss story."

So how about some examples? Rave was happy to oblige. "I had a friend tell me a story of a publicist who he worked for and this particular publicist would make sure that they invited the world to whatever event they were having that night, you know, just to be sure that people showed up," he said. "By the time the night of the event would roll around, it would be packed and people would be waiting and then all of a sudden they check in and [the person at the door would say], 'No, I'm sorry, you're name is not on the list.' People would say, 'Wait I got a call from your office earlier today, making sure I was coming.'" People would then often ask to speak with the head of the agency, not knowing he or she was already standing right there. "No, I'm sorry, they're not here right now," they would say. Listen to the full interview, posted below.

Via TVNewser: CBS' Dave Price, "Early Show" weather anchor, called in this morning to the Morning Media Menu from Omaha, Nebraska where he is halfway across the country in his journey back to NYC.

Last Thursday, Dave was shipped off to Santa Monica, CA and given $50 and instructions to find his way back to the CBS studio on his own by this Friday morning. We spoke with Dave ahead of his trip and today, he was able to give an update on his progress.

Today's podcast was hosted by TVNewser with GalleyCat editor Jason Boog. You can listen to all the past podcasts archived at mediabistro.com or download episodes for free on iTunes.

Is Nikke Finke Hollywood's most powerful scribe? Certainly many in the industry seem to think so, and she has been the center of feature stories in both The New York Times, and now The New Yorker, whose sub-head today reads: "Why Hollywood fears Nikki Finke."

Her Deadline Hollywood Daily blog has become Hollywood's "most dreaded news source," as executives fear being labeled "one of the most kiss-ass incompetents to run an entertainment company," as Finke once described NBC Universal C.E.O. and president Jeff Zucker.

It's not surprising that there was a lot of PR influence in her New Yorker feature. Says Finke:

...I wasn't the only one able to knock out a lot of negative stuff in the article without even one lawyer letter, email, or phone call. I witnessed how The New Yorker really bent over for Hollywood. NYC power publicist Steven Rubenstein succeeded in deleting every reference to Paramount's Brad Grey. Warner Bros and Universal and DreamWorks and William Morris/Endeavor and Summit Entertainment execs and flacks and consultants also had their way with the mag. (They were even laughing about it. When I asked one PR person what it took to convince Tad to take out whole portions of the article, the response was, "I swallowed.")

While Finke's response may be entertaining, our question is: What story, especially a feature story of this caliber isn't manipulated in some way? Read the full New Yorker profile here, and Finke's response here.

The PR man-turned media mogul Brian Tierney is hoping to save his Philadelphia Daily News from extinction, and keep ownership of it, and the Philadelphia Inquirer and combined site Philly.com local, through a restructuring and PR push, according to an interview with PoynterOnline.

Tierney, with homebuilder Bruce Toll and a group of his former clients bought the papers from McClatchy in 2006 for $562 million. We all know what happened to the newspaper industry since then. The new group hoping to save the papers includes Toll as well as an unnamed "rich guy" referred to as ""Penn Matrix".

The former head of Philly's biggest agency Tierney Communications (now part of Interpublic [NYSE: IPG]) filed a plan that promises to generate $92 million in revenues, while also running full page adds and launching a Twitter feed and Facebook Page to "Keep it Local!".

As Poynter's Rick Edmonds points out, the audience for this PR campaign comes down to one: the bankruptcy court judge.

Related reading on FishbowlNY: Local Newspapers Fight To Survive, But Are They Going About It The Right Way?

Silicon Alley Insider's Nicholas Carlson browsed through AOL's SEC filing and found the following: "In 2008, AOL EVP and communications boss Tricia Primrose earned a $428,333 salary to go with stock awards totaling $182,466."

In related news today, AOL parent company Time Warner (TWX), which is currently going through the process of spinning off AOL a stand alone company, bought back a 5% stake that Google owned in AOL for $283 million. The buyback values AOL at about $5.7 billion.

Howard Kurtz published the first MSM look at Mediaite last night in his Media Notes column. Mediaite, the editorial venture that's part of business image consultancy Abrams Research has drawn fire for lack of church-and-state separation, most recently by Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine blogger.

Though the Manhattan media scene knew the launch was impending (by way of Abrams's Twitter feed and other sources), questions remain unanswered by both Dan Abrams, and his Editor at Large Rachel Sklar. Both have been responding to criticism with somewhat conflicting information, begging the question: is the controversy cultivated to bring in business? Sklar, the former HuffPo blogger, with her considerable connections has been acting as both publicist and editor thus far.

Abrams Research's proposition is to use working journalists--clarified as freelancers and former journalists in Kurtz's column--to focus-group and hone clients' messages. Abrams and Sklar maintain that the Research division and Mediaite venture are completely separate. I spoke to Skar shortly after her scathing "dick move" rebuttal to Jarvis's slam came out, and didn't learn anything new about the consultancy, other than she denied the fuss was generated as linkbait, and that presumably the editorial staffers will be paid with ad dollars from Mediaite. Dan Abrams says virtually the opposite in a mediabistro Media Menu podcast interview with Steve Krakauer. If you haven't followed this particular swim in the fishbowl, Krakauer recently jumped ship from mediabistro's TVNewser over to Mediaite along with former Fishbowl NY blogger Glynnis MacNicol.

I explained to Sklar during our discussion that these issues don't matter much in terms of Abrams as a public relations venture. Their clients will be satisfied if they get what they pay for, and their coverage is devoid of mentions of Mediaite, Abrams Research, and the names of people who work at either. However, if Sklar and Abrams bristle at being categorized as a PR firm, then are they offering enough services to attract enough business to pay for both ventures--assuming it takes time for the ad dollars to roll from red to black? Getting at solid messaging through the perspectives through real journalists is a new thing but may be a service fishing for only a fraction of what corporations are paying in monthly retainers. If Abrams continues to keep costs down and continues to generate sizzle with Mediaite, he could do just fine.

PS: Mediaite has been periodically down today, currently serving the message "Error establishing a database connection".

The P.R. world - at least the tech P.R. world - is abuzz this morning about a cover story in the Sunday business section of The New York Times by Claire Cain Miller, titled, "Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley." While the story looked at a number of agencies, including OutCast Communications and Spark PR, the feature focuses mainly on 35-year-old Brooke Hammerling, founder of Brew Media Relations. We learned a few things about Hammerling in the story:

She once dated a member of R.E.M.

She left Zeno Group to start Brew after her boss told her, "There are no stars in P.R." when she requested to spend more time on media relations.

Brew is her childhood nickname.

She can get Oracle CEO Larry Ellison on the phone when even some business reporters can't.

When asked about her take on the story Hammerling told PRNewser, "I think Claire did an excellent job. My one thing is that this was a case study. Roger's suggestion was indeed the correct one so I recognized that rather than be stubborn. He was totally right about how to handle the launch of Wordnik. Now that's not the case for all businesses." Here Hammerling is referring to a change in media strategy for one of her latest launches, Wordnik, after investor Roger McNamee suggested not pitching "cynical" blogs such as TechCrunch and AllThingsD.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington posted his own response in which he said, "I know Brooke well. I guess you could say I'm one of her many thousands of "very close friends." And I don't dispute that she is well connected, or that those connections help her get clients. I believe Brooke's client have been better served if she stood up to McNamee and told him that Wordnik would have had a better launch if they hadn't ignored the blogs that are interested in covering new startups. Instead she became a 'yes woman' and told McNamee exactly what he wanted to hear."

We'll say this: changing one's mind on one piece of strategy at the suggestion of an investor may or may not make someone a "yes woman" or "yes man." However, we are interested in the premise of the Times story as it seems to also imply that going around traditional media "gatekeepers" and reaching new influencers via "whisper campaigns" and on Twitter is a new phenomenon. Sure, while the medium - Twitter, Facebook - may be new, there is nothing very new about reaching the people that matter for your client, whether they be media, analysts, partners, investors, or remember: the public. Isn't that what P.R. is supposed to do, after all?

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Longtime CBS News exec Kevin Tedesco has been promoted to Executive Director, Communications. Tedesco, who has been with CBS News for 14 years, has worked mainly on 60 Minutes.

In an internal memo CBS News Senior Vice President of Communications Jeff Ballabon said, "Kevin has had plenty to brag about recently as America's number-one news program had its best season in many years and was duly recognized by the press, thanks in no small part to Kevin's efforts."

Click continued to read the full memo.

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