This week we posted on Weber Shandwick‘s decision to publicize its new content-creation wing, Mediaco, and what that means for the future of PR. This morning we had the opportunity to speak with Steve Rubel, chief content strategist at Edelman PR, to go over how his firm is addressing this newest chapter in the ongoing “PR vs. marketing vs. advertising” debate.

How does the Weber Shandwick announcement relate to recent “creative” moves by Edelman?

There’s a lot of hype in the never-ending hunt for shiny objects in marketing, but the bigger picture here is that the economics of the industry have changed – demand side platforms (ad exchanges) have made advertising more efficient, which caused the price of CPM (cost per impression) and ads themselves to plummet. This is good for the industry but bad for publishers, because media outlets squeezed by tech developments can’t make the leap to other revenue streams like subscription, video, etc.

This has led to a greater willingness to open their platforms to branded/sponsored content, thereby empowering marketers to make good on their longtime desire tell their stories their own way on some of world’s largest websites (Ed. note: see The Washington Post). That is the big change here.

Some people say this is all old news. How do you respond to that point?

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Things just keep getting worse for Carnival Cruise Lines today, don’t they? Here are a couple of wow-level updates from the Associated Press:

BREAKING: Coast Guard official: Disabled cruise ship stopped off coast of Ala. because of broken towline

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 14, 2013

BREAKING: Carnival official says snapped tow line delayed cruise ship’s arrival into Mobile; it will take 7-10 hours to reach port -MM

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 14, 2013

BREAKING: Carnival official says cruise ship has only one working elevator, complicating getting people to shore -MM

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 14, 2013

Now we hear that passengers probably won’t be able to leave the ship until the “wee hours Friday morning.”

And we know Carnival‘s PR team is going to love these images. They’re wishing the smartphone had never been invented:

Courtesy of the Associated Press and passenger Kalin Hill

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Ken Detlet has been named the Associated Press’ first vice president for digital advertising strategy and sales. Detlet comes to the AP from Mashable, where he served as senior vice president of sales and marketing since 2011. Prior to that he worked as VP of sales for Ziff Davis. He also worked for Dow Jones for over a decade. (FishbowlNY)

Angel Tarazzas has been named fashion PR director at Vink Media. He previously served as a consultant for the “PR, marketing and style agency.” (RevolvingDoor)

Penguin revealed a series of marketing and advertising-related promotions. Book Country’s Colleen Lindsay was promoted to associate director of marketing, social media and reader experience for the team. She will still be a strategic advisor and continue to interact with the writing community, but the Chicago Tribune‘s Brandi Larsen has been hired as the new director of Book Country. In addition, Ashley Fisher-Tranese was promoted to associate director of advertising and promotion. Craig Burke was promoted to director of marketing for Riverhead Trade Paperbacks and Perigee Books. Erica Martirano has been elevated to associate director of marketing and promotion, and Jodi Rosoff has been promoted to associate director of marketing and publicity. (GalleyCat)

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Indisputable fact: Americans love football. Pretty much every member of every key demographic watches the Super Bowl, even if we’re more concerned with the commercials. But anyone who’s even vaguely familiar with the sport also knows that American football has a big PR problem best summed up in three words: traumatic brain injury.

Is this an old story? Yes–but it’s not going away anytime soon, and eventually the NFL will have to address it to the satisfaction of the public.

The family of former star Junior Seau, who committed suicide in May 2012, filed a wrongful death suit against the league last week. The suit cites Seau’s post-mortem TBI diagnosis and blames the NFL for a perceived lack of oversight in warning players about the negative long-term effects of all those concussions (they’re also suing the company that makes players’ helmets). This is not an isolated case: over the past few years more than 3,800 former players have sued the league in more than 175 independent cases. Is the NFL really to blame for their injuries? We can’t say–but it’s a classic PR conundrum.

Perhaps most importantly, President Obama brought the story back to the nation’s attention right before the Big Game in a recent interview with the rebranded New Republic magazine, saying:

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Today in Awkward (sort of) Press Releases News, the communications team at Buckingham Palace confirmed that we will, indeed, meet little Prince William Junior (or Juniorette) in approximately nine months: Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton is pregnant.

We’re not going to conduct any in-depth analysis of this crucial world-shattering event, but we do wonder: When she agreed to marry the Prince, did Lady Catherine’s thoughts turn to the day when the Associated Press would announce her pregnancy via Twitter? Did she debate whether such a thing is classier than having one’s pregnancy announced on the cover of Life & Style magazine alongside one or more Kardashians?

…and now we return to your regularly scheduled programming. Please feel free to freak out as you see fit–we will take this Very British moment to hope that the third season of Downton Abbey is better than the second.

Yesterday we ran a cautionary tale about how some shady stock trader fooled almost everyone on the Internet (and made a bunch of easy money) by penning a PRWeb release about a non-existent Google acquisition and manipulating stock prices for a couple of hours. In asking the Big Questions, we wondered whether readers place too much faith in digital press releases and how much we should blame PRWeb itself for the mixup.

Last night, the SearchEngineLand blog followed up, exploring the issue with relish in a post titled “How PRWeb Helps Distribute Crap Into Google & News Sites”. Fun!

We’re not out to besmirch the Vocus/PRWeb brand: We’ve used it, and we’re fairly sure the vast majority of our readers have too. But blogger Danny Sullivan wonders whether PRWeb truly has the power to review all press releases and ensure their “integrity”, and we share his skeptical curiosity.

Of course, distribution is the service’s key selling point—for a one-time fee, reps can ensure that their releases will appear on a wide range of sites both mainstream and obscure/legally dubious. We’ll say this, though: The fact that official “press releases” hyping “Lowest Price Viagra” from “LICENSED and LEGAL European online pharmacy” moved through PRWeb’s filter intact and ended up on the websites of otherwise respectable “distributor” publications like The Houston Chronicle may tell you something about the intensity of the organization’s fact-checking process.

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Did CNN commit a serious ethical lapse by keeping deceased Libya ambassador Christopher Stevens’s personal journal and reporting on its contents against the wishes of his surviving family members? The considerable list of people who say “yes” now includes the entire US State Department.

The facts: CNN acknowledges that its crew removed the personal diary of Mr. Stevens from the “largely unsecured” scene where he and three other US citizens died in a coordinated attack on the US embassy in Libya. The network’s reps also acknowledge that they asked members of the Stevens family several times whether they could report on the diary’s content and received word that the family members would have to review the material first. This is fairly standard procedure, no?

According to the Associated Press, CNN initially assured the Stevens family that it wouldn’t use the diary at all but reneged on that promise, citing national security concerns and a need to inform the public. The network’s reps later defended their behavior by accusing the State Department of “attacking the messenger” and insisting that the public “had a right to know” about the information contained within the Stevens diary.

So what was this huge scoop that CNN took from the document? And was it worth the risk they assumed by reporting without permission?

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In yet another reminder of the generational shift within the PR industry, old-school Hollywood rep Irving Fein has passed at 101. Never heard of him? Your age is showing: As reported in the Los Angeles Times, Fein did quite a bit of work in the century-plus he spent on this planet, most prominently representing blast-from-the-past personalities like George Burns and Jack Benny, who was a “radio comedian” when Fein first began doing PR work for him in 1947.

Feel young yet? The Brooklyn-born Fein worked as an aspiring novelist in the early part of the 20th century before shifting gears to do publicity work for nearly all of the major studios back in the pre-”Mad Men” days when Lana Turner was big business and people still took the phrase “pinup girl” literally. Later roles included vice president of advertising and promotion at CBS.

In a 1988 Associated Press interview, Fein said “I’ve been lucky. I’ve been able to work with the best of them.” In a sense, we all aspire to accomplish as much as Mr. Fein did during his career–though, to be fair, he had more than 100 years to do it.

The Associated Press will roll out a new visual identity system, including an updated logo, this year. The identity system is the first significant change in AP’s look in 30 years and follows the development and implementation of a master-brand strategy in 2010.

“Visual identity system”? “Master-brand strategy”? Why are they talking like that?

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The lead story this afternoon on HuffPo Science.

AOL is partnering with Bonnier’s Parenting Group to bring Parenting.com content to AOL Family, HuffPo Parents, and AOL.com. [via Fishbowl NY]

Speaking of Huffington Post, they’ve launched a new channel, HuffPost Science.

Colin Mylar, former editor of News of the World has been chosen as the new editor of the New York Daily News. Mylar has been unemployed since NOTW shut down amid the phone hacking scandal that erupted this summer. Capital New York has the internal memo.

There are reports that the Kardashian family has spoken with American Media about the possibility of launching a new magazine. However, Kim’s publicist at PMK-BNC has no comment.

Eric Carven has been named the AP’s social media editor. He was previously a news producer at the AP Nerve Center.

Keith Olbermann has already stirred up the pot at Current TV. Where it will lead seems up in the air. But people do agree on one thing: production value needs to improve a bit.

Click through for more changes in the media world.

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