Media People

Earlier this week, we reported that News Corporation chief marketer Gary Ginsberg, who also has a crisis communications background, will be leaving the company. In the last two weeks, News Corporation's CEO, Rupert Murdoch, has been involved in several "PR gaffes."

Last Monday, in an interview with Sky News Australia, Murdoch said Fox News anchor Glenn Beck, "was right" when he called Pres. Obama a racist.

Then, last Thursday News Corp. COO Chase Carey was asked what he thought about Murdoch's comments on pulling Wall Street Journal content from Google's index. Carey laughed and said, "I haven't spoken with him since then." Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the boss's plan.

Then earlier this week, Murdoch called New York Gov. David Patterson "...a very nice, honest man who's blind and can't read braille and doesn't really know what's going on. It's not a joke, it's a tragedy we're facing at the moment." He later issued an apology to the governor.

Just this morning, Murdoch was caught off guard by a reporter from Media Matters. All of this got us wondering: are Murdoch's PR gaffes tied to the departure of his top PR man, Ginsberg, or is it just coincidence?

A source close to the matter tells PRNewser they can't imagine them being related, since Ginsberg hasn't yet left and there has been no transition. However, the source did say, "It's a contrast to how the Fox News [PR] people are in terms of interviews because they monitor every interview and they are very cautious on every point. It seems on the News Corp. side they lost sight of that. I don't mean that in a negative way at all to the Fox News people. They are very on top of it and they are very careful."

We discussed the topic on today's mediabistro Morning Media Menu podcast, among other media news. You can listen to all the past podcasts archived at mediabistro.com or download episodes for free on iTunes.

PR News named Scott Van Camp editor of the publication today. Van Camp has spent time on both the editorial and marketing side of the media business. His journalism career includes stints at IQ News, Technology Marketing and Brandweek, while his time in PR and marketing includes corporate communications manager at MarketBridge and his own communications and media consulting firm, SVC Communications.

Van Camp replaced Courtney Barnes, who - as PRNewser exclusively reported - left the publication last month to join former Manning Selvage and Lee CEO Mark Hass at his recently launched agency, MH Group Communications.

New Yorker columnist and author Ken Auletta released his latest book, "Googled: The End of the World As We Know It" earlier this month. The book, as the title implies, is a deep dive into the rocket ship paced rise of Google.

Auletta had access to Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and quickly found out they're not fans of PR. Engineers by background, the founders want to make every decision based on data, something not always possible in the "right brain" world of marketing.

In particular, Page told Google's PR department in 2008 - which then consisted of 130 people - that he would only give them "a total of eight hours of his time that year for press conferences, speeches, or interviews," wrote Auletta.

News Corporation Executive Vice President of Global Marketing and Corporate Affairs, Gary Ginsberg, will leave the company at the end of the year. Ginsberg has experience in crisis PR and joined News Corp. in 1999 as Executive Vice President for Corporate Communication.

"Gary has been one of my most trusted and effective executives over the past decade," said News Corporation Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch.

Ginsberg's position will be filled internally. Teri Everett, currently News Corporation's Senior Vice President for Corporate Communications, will lead corporate communications and corporate social responsibility and Reed Nolte, Senior Vice President for Investor Relations, will head up investor relations.

The above video of dna13 vice chairman Dave Armon interviewing Jack O'Dwyer, founder of the O'Dwyer PR newsletter has been making the rounds. In the interview, shot at this week's PRSA International Conference, O'Dwyer argues that PR professionals should only deal with press and not the "public."

O'Dwyer cites a speech from John Iwata, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications, IBM, and stated that the web will eventually "filter down to experts, people who know what they're talking about. And all these people on Twitter, who are saying they just brushed their teeth, they're not the experts."

It seems, ironically, that some of the communications were mixed up in this reporting. Iwata didn't advise PR professionals to only deal with the press. He did say, "If you show up on the web...You need to be recognized as an expert...both knowledgeable and persuasive," according to O'Dwyer's reporting.

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.