VOX Global announced its recent hire of John Dunagan, who will join the VOX leadership team as a senior vice president. Most recently, Dunagan served as senior vice president at DDC Advocacy. Prior to DDC, Dunagan co-founded CrossLink Strategy Group (later Mercury) where he pioneered unique issue advocacy techniques including Media Where it Matters and RootsTube. Dunagan will work out of the firm’s Washington, DC office location. (Release)

Jonathan Cohen has been named chief operating officer at Behan Communications. Cohen joined Behan Communications in 2012 to help lead the firm’s expansion. He has an extensive background in journalism, government and public affairs and has led a number of strategic communications firms to success and played a leading role in the turnaround of two technology companies. Formerly a publisher of Commentary Magazine and an advisor to New York City Mayor Ed Koch, Jon also has served as president of The Weiser Group, a global public relations firm, and of Cohen Strategic LLC, an international consulting group. (Website)

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“America’s Mayor” himself Rudy Giuliani took the opportunity to express his frustration, and after reading the article quite a few of us felt like the museum might continue to embarrass the states of New York and New Jersey for many years to come.

Well, today brings news that Michael Bloomberg, Chris Christie, Andrew Cuomo and their respective organizations have reached an agreement after more than a year of total inactivity. How convenient that they happened to strike a deal on the anniversary of the event itself! You might call it a PR coup—or an example of the timeless power of peer pressure.

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MWW Group (which has been doing a lot of hiring lately) has brought on Traci Carpenter as its director of speechwriting and content, a new position. Carpenter has previously served as senior speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, the William J. Clinton Foundation, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Kathryn Kranhold has joined the Walt Disney Co. as SVP of corp comms. She was previously at Brunswick Group working with clients on crisis, litigation, and financial issues and was once a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. She’s reporting to Zenia Mucha, Disney’s EVP of corporate communications. [via Variety]

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Celebration last night in NYC's West Village. Photo: AP

Now that same-sex marriage has (finally) been legalized here in New York, supporters are confident that other states will follow suit.

New York is the fifth state, behind Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Iowa, and New Hampshire to permit same-sex marriage (D.C. also allows it). But it’s the largest state, and doubles the number of people living in states where gay marriage is legal . Moreover, New York is home to the gay rights movement, and the gay community in the state is an influential one.

Advocates have been promoting marriage equality in states (New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo was a powerful supporter), at the federal level, and in the courts.

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Weiner announced his resignation in Brooklyn. Photo: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

“Today I announce my resignation, so my colleagues can get back to work and my neighbors choose a new representative,” said the now-former Rep. Anthony Weiner.

With a four-minute speech, which came complete with a heckler, we hope, Weinergate comes to a close.

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Sen. Charles Schumer delivering his keynote this morning at Internet Week NY

As mentioned in a previous post, Katherine Oliver, a commissioner from NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg‘s office, mentioned the importance of the city’s tech industry during her opening remarks at Internet Week NY. That message was reiterated by Sen. Charles Schumer, who delivered the first keynote speech, which outlined why he believes New York is best suited to be the nation’s tech hub and how the city will overtake Silicon Valley.

Going way back to the origins of New York City as a manufacturing leader, Sen. Schumer brought his keynote to the present, where the city’s “existing diversification” and the ability to adapt will help it to climb to the top of heap of cities that are leaders in the innovation economy.

He’s proposing the creation of a working group, with help from Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, that will realize his 25-year goal to lead in the high-tech area through public-private partnership. A strong and vibrant enhanced high-tech industry here in NYC could open doors for lots of other industries, including PR.

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Gawker is hosting

A marriage equality measure is back on the agenda for the state, and has the support of Gov. Andrew Cuomo as well as many New Yorkers.

Five tickets to the event will cost $3,000 and they have a site for individual donations through July 14.

June is also Pride Month and the city has lots of events on tap.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Edith Wharton's estate, "The Mount"

The Huggies brand has chosen Ogilvy & Mather as its digital AOR after a competitive review. Ogilvy has previously handled shopper marketing, direct marketing, and advertising for the brand.

BBDO New York, Edelman, and FoodMinds have been hired by the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) to work on a 12-month, $50-million campaign to educate consumers about Nutrition Keys labeling system. According to PRWeek, Edelman’s D.C. office will work on awareness and audience engagement, BBDO specializes in paid media, and FoodMinds has expertise in reaching the “nutrition influencer community.”

The town of Lenox, MA has chosen Bodden Partners, an integrated marketing agency, and its PR division, Hamilton PR for a marketing (social media, website creation) and events campaign to drive tourism. The Berkshires town is home to Tanglewood and Edith Wharton’s home The Mount (lovely!) among other sites and attractions.

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Lazaridis holding a Blackberry Playbook tablet. Photo: REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

Faced with a question from BBC reporter Rory Cellan-Jones about Blackberry security issues in India, Research in Motion president and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis made like a dropped call and shut down the conversation, pointing to the camera and telling the person behind it to turn it off. You can watch the exec get rankled here.

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Miss New York Claire Buffie is just the latest NY celeb to join the Human Rights Campaign’s effort “New Yorkers for Marriage Equality.” Notable names including Sen. Chuck Schumer, former Mayor Ed Koch, Russell Simmons, and Joan Rivers have  all appeared in videos for the campaign in support of same-sex marriage. Republicans in New York’s State Senate voted unanimously against legalizing same-sex marriage in 2009. Recently, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he would try to make marriage equality the law before the state legislature breaks in June.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo being sworn in with Sandra Lee by his side. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

New York’s new Gov. Andrew Cuomo has a very blonde girlfriend named Sandra Lee who is also the host of two Food Network programs, Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee and Sandra’s Money Saving Meals. Just one more reason We Heart New York.

Today, she was also the host of a press conference that was quickly brought to an end when one of the reporters did his job and asked about Lee’s relationship with the Governor. Video after the jump.

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Not even a weekend in office and New York’s new Governor Andrew Cuomo had a social media snafu.

Gov. Cuomo’s website went live over the weekend with links to a variety of social media sites where one presumably can reach out to the Governor and his office. However, the link to his Twitter feed, @NYGovernor, didn’t exist. So Nicholas Fahrenkopf, a PhD student in nanobioscience (who probably should’ve been studying since that sounds like a really hard subject), took that name and started tweeting as the Governor.

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Food Network personality Sandra Lee is trying to balance out public appearances for her various endorsement deals, while avoiding — or downplaying — talk about her boyfriend, New York Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo.

The New York Times attended one of Lee’s events for her gig as a Starkist Tuna spokesperson, and not surprisingly, the PR team did their best to deny interviews from the media altogether, and when they did allow them, reporters were instructed to ask about tuna, not politics.

A food blog was given the “exclusive” on the tuna news. It represents a longtime, but evolving strategy in PR: give the exclusives to those who will treat you best.

In this case, the Foodinasta NYC blog wrote in their post, “To say that my day was exciting would be an understatement, as I can’t express in words how incredible it was.”

Who wouldn’t take that over some probing questions from a Times reporter? Of course, trying to tell reporters what they can and can’t ask is a fruitless effort. The Times story that was published focuses mostly on how they were denied an interview, and mentions all of the PR handling around Ms. Lee.

As one agency CEO quipped to PRNewser, the move by Starkist PR “defies logic.”

“Why hire a PR firm for a media personality to have a media event but then shut out the media?” the CEO asked.

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The third New York Times bombshell on Governor David Paterson dropped today, confirming what we learned from sources two weeks ago. Paterson’s relationship with close adviser David Johnson has destroyed his image and his future in politics. The piece confirmed with Johnson’s ex-girlfriend that a beating occurred and that the Governor’s office hoped to cover it up.

Unlike the first story about Johnson which was actually well handled by the Paterson camp, or what’s left of it, this one left the embattled Governor with no damage control cards to play except to say that it was Johnson’s girlfriend who initiated the phone call to him, not the other way around. According to the story, she got the call just before she was scheduled for a court appearance that would’ve filed a protective order against Johnson. She failed to appear and the case was dismissed.

The story also shows that Paterson knew the exact nature of the bombshell when he met with the paper’s editorial board on February 8th, all while crying foul on accusations in the tabloids of marital affairs and influence peddling.

The other move left was for his office to issue a statement late last night, asking the Attorney General to open an investigation, and to suspend David Johnson without pay. The AG is of course, ironically, his challenger for re-election Andrew Cuomo.

One of our sources close to the “horrible” situation tells us Paterson won’t resign until he has another job lined up.

RELATED: Sources Conflict on Gov. Paterson Crisis Strategy

Times Scoop on David Paterson Reveals PR Struggle

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After weeks of speculation, the “bombshell” profile about New York Governor David Paterson dropped today in The New York Times, on page A1, above the fold, no less.

Except, the profile is about David Johnson one the two close advisers that are giving the Governor bad advice, sources close to the administration say.

It was revealed that Johnson, at one time Paterson’s driver who worked his way up to a six-figure salaried director of executive services, is in fact a convicted felon, and may have problems with violence against women. The revelations were not enough to force Paterson’s resignation today as predicted in the meta-story that has been unfolding over the past week about what exactly the smoking gun was.

The meta-story of Times + tabloids vs. Paterson aside (you can review the chain of events on FishbowlNY), there are two PR-related elements that emerge: Johnson is definitely acting in a communications capacity, and the story itself was handled well by whomever is in control of Paterson’s image. The former, critics argue, has divided the staff and contributed to a deep hole Paterson has to dig himself out of if he has any hope for re-election against the well financed Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

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