Anyone with more than a passing interest in public relations and pop culture at large should take a look at The New Yorker‘s fascinating profile of Scooter Braun, a master media manipulator who may be the world’s most successful manager but describes himself as “a camp counselor for pop stars.”

His current claim to fame? An extremely profitable partnership with the world’s favorite pre-pubescent crooner, Justin Bieber.

In case you haven’t heard, Braun is a former Atlanta-based party promoter who worked with various area hip-hop stars and discovered Bieber while browsing YouTube for clips to help promote his biggest client at the time, singer Ne-Yo. After a bit of pleading with Bieber’s mother, he managed to persuade the two to relocate to the ATL and join forces with R&B veteran Usher. This move gave Bieber the credibility he needed to pass muster as a lily-white soul singer capable of reducing tween girls across the globe to incoherent screeches while simultaneously looking innocent enough to win parents’ approval.

Despite appearances, Bieber was not quite an overnight sensation, and the route he took to superstardom was anything but traditional.

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PETA, the often-controversial organization dedicated to the ethical treatment of animals (and to attending fashion shows armed with buckets of red paint) has its share of celebrity supporters. Everyone from Justin Bieber to Sir Paul McCartney has gotten in on the animal rights action.

The latest big-name animal fan to grab headlines is Tommy Lee, the Mötley Crüe drummer and tabloid fixture who recently sent a letter (PDF) on behalf of PETA to John T. Reilly, president of SeaWorld San Diego, requesting that the park stop using the band’s music in their “Shamu Rocks” show. Why? To spare the whales the extreme stress of listening to the blaring 80′s metal, of course (80′s parents: “We told you so!”).

It’s not that Shamu has anything against “Kickstart My Heart” — he’s more concerned with volume than the music itself. Read more

If Justin Bieber should ever decide that being an international pop superstar with millions of fans isn’t really his thing, he can definitely become a crisis PR specialist.

Bieber was involved in a weekend kerfuffle with a paparazzo while he was leaving a California mall with Selena Gomez and the pap caught a bad one from the Biebs. That’ll learn ya.

So while the investigation into the incident continues, Bieber is taking the attention and using it to release a new song, “Die in Your Arms.”

You’ll remember that when Bieber was embroiled in a paternity scandal that he quickly put to rest with an appearance on the Today show and a paternity test. Now he’s using a paparazzi beat down as the launching pad for a new single. And as a reason for both he and Gomez to tell their fans how much they appreciate their support, which is drawing even more support. The song is already making top ten iTunes lists around the world.

Many year-end listicles have focused on the top PR gaffes of the past year. However, the year has also shown the power to turn around a bad situation into good or, as the title of this top five list states, to turn PR lemons into sweet, refreshing public relations lemonade. Here are our choices for those instances where a fail was transformed into, as our contributor Nancy Lazarus calls it, a “tactful turnaround.”

5. Aflac Finds a New Spokesduck. After the voice of Aflac’s duck mascot, Gilbert Gottfried, was dismissed for making insensitive “jokes” about the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March, the insurance company launched a nationwide search for a new mascot. Rather than settling for a public apology on behalf of its former spokesperson, the company turned the search into a PR campaign, with the New York Times covering the New York audition. We said then it would be a PR moment to remember, and we stand by that.

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Mariah Yeater, the woman who accused Justin Bieber — of all people — of fathering her three-month-old son, has dropped her lawsuit. TMZ has already published damaging text messages that indicate Yeater may have been trying to delete correspondence that points the paternity finger at another guy. But the Biebs hasn’t dropped his intentions of taking a DNA test.

From the beginning, Bieber and his people (which includes publicist Matthew Hiltzik) denied that there was any truth to Yeater’s allegations and they planned to back it up with a paternity test. Now with the case terminated, it would seem Bieber has been vindicated. Even still, E! is reporting that Bieber plans on going ahead with the test.

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In this week’s episode of “5 Things You Need to Know This Week,” Herman Cain sings about sexual harassment, Justin Bieber has a baby with Kate Middleton (I think I have that right), and nobody seems to know the whereabouts of Matt Lauer. Plus, we debut the 1st annual “Where in the World is ‘Five Things You Need to Know This Week?’”

For more videos, check out Mediabistro.tv, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

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Justin Bieber has announced that he’s going to take a paternity test to prove that allegations that he’s the father of Mariah Yeater’s three-month-old baby aren’t true.

From the beginning, Bieber and his team were confident that Bieber was not the baby’s father, but now he’s bringing science to his defense, a bold move that show’s he’s confident he’s no baby daddy.

Moreover, Bieber has been unafraid of making public appearances and addressing the issue head-on.

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Epic, epic scandal today involving Justin Bieber and, of all things, sex.

A 20-year-old woman (really?), Mariah Yeater, claims that her son is Bieber’s following a post-show encounter in Los Angeles last year. Bieber’s publicist Matthew Hiltzik has responded with a strongly-worded denial on behalf of his client: “While we haven’t yet seen the lawsuit, it’s sad that someone would fabricate malicious, defamatory, and demonstrably false claims.”

Much less strongly worded is the tweet above from the Bieb, who up to this point, managed to scandalize us only with the occasional shot of him and Selena Gomez sharing a smooch or something equally innocent.

Immediately, one thinks of his clean-cut reputation, which has made him the monster favorite to tweens around the world. The Washington Post doesn’t think this will tarnish his reputation, but that may all depend on what comes out as this situation wears on. Your thoughts? The comments section is open. “Mariah Yeater” is currently trending on Twitter and it looks like a lot of people don’t believe her story.

For Twitter, this definitely isn’t a slow news week.

Just a week after announcing that it had purchased TweetDeck, the social site has announced that it has acquired AdGrok, a startup that helps with Google AdWords campaigns and has only been out of beta for two months. Mashable says the AdGrok team started working with the Twitter staff today and will shut down on June 30.

And Techcrunch shared news that Twitter is launching its own photo-sharing service, which would be a Twitpic competitor.

AND, the Twitter blog has details of the new Follow button that the service has launched. (H/t to Mashable.) You can add a Follow button by going here. Among the partners for the new button are Justin Bieber, BNet.com, MTV, The Wall Street Journal, and Lady Gaga.

What a week for Gaga, eh? She’s seemingly been everywhere, even on the farm. And now she sits atop the Forbes Celebrity 100  list, pushing Queen Oprah to number two.

“Gaga is there not just because of the $90 million she earned with a monster tour, but also because of her 32 million Facebook fans and 10 million Twitter followers–aka Little Monsters–who helped move 1 million digital downloads of her recent single ‘Born This Way’ in only five days,” the magazine writes.

The magazine goes on to say that Oprah can take a social media lesson from Justin Bieber in the number three spot.

The rest of the list seems to go this way; a hodgepodge of people who are given credit or penalized for whatever level of social media notoriety they’ve been able to attain.

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