Claudia Patton

Edelman has appointed Claudia Patton chief talent officer, a position that also comes with a seat on the firm’s 14-person executive committee. Patton has 30 years of PR experience and was previously the president of Edelman’s Southeast region. She joined the firm in 2002 when her business, The Headline Group, was acquired. According to the press release announcing Patton’s new role, Edelman has added 500 new positions in the past year and, for the fiscal year ending June 30, experienced an 18 percent increase in global revenues.

Burson-Marsteller has added Matt Miller as a senior advisor to the firm’s global strategy group, which brings together pros with different areas of expertise to helps clients across the spectrum of B-M practices. Miller served as a senior advisor during the Clinton administration in the White House Office of Management and Budget. Now, he is a contributor on MSNBC and CNBC, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, host of a public radio program “Left, Right & Center,” and a weekly columnist for The Washington Post.

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The freelance reporter whose bombshell Rolling Stone profile of General Stanley McChrystal is being denied access needed to complete a Men’s Health story about helicopters, and has had his invitation to “embed” with the 101st Airborne Division retracted, reports the Stars & Strips.

While units on the ground in Afghanistan have no problem with Hastings, public affairs officials both there and inside the Pentagon are punishing him for his portrait of McChrystal and his inner circle.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul pulled the embed with the support of the Pentagon.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell‘s sharp quotes in article don’t match up to the media relations guidelines for warzones, “You’re only as good as your word, and clearly they don’t believe his word is worth much,” said the ABC TV journalist-turned spokesman. An anonymous source supports Hastings’ side of the story.

Stars & Stripes itself tangled with the Pentagon’s embed profiling last summer when one of its reporters was denied access. The Rendon Group lost their contract with the military over the controversial approach.

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