Free White Paper: Advance your traditional media outreach...
…and boost your media relations results! The BurrellesLuce whitepaper, The "New" Face of Traditional Media - Four Tactics to Enhance Outreach contains compelling best practices and case studies to help you take your strategy to the next level. Download the FREE whitepaper.

Learn Best Practices in M&A Communications: Free 30-Minute Webcast

M&A activity can put your relationships with customers, employees and investors at risk if you're not successful in communicating the benefits. Learn how to effectively communicate with internal and external constituents before, during and after a merger at a free, 30-minute webcast presented by Thomson Reuters?Thurs., June 19, Noon EDT (9AM PDT, 10AM MDT, 11AM CDT). In addition, you'll receive our free tip sheet, "Top 10 Ways to Communicate Effectively During a Merger". These outline strategies Thomson Reuters has discovered helping 90% of the Fortune 500 increase the effectiveness of their corporate communications. Register now for this free 30-minute webcast: Best Practices in M&A Communications.

IN a perfect world, donating blood would be purely an altruistic pursuit. In the real world, however, the American Red Cross is finding.

Yahoo became Microsoft's takeover prey largely because Google established such a commanding lead in the Internet's lucrative search advertising market.

Non?journalists entering the world of blogs, online feedback forums, online videos and news Web sites provide information that newspapers and other media can't or don't.

What Never to Do When Targeting the Media

Find out how to increase your story placement rate and improve the effectiveness of your campaigns. The number one reason journalists don't cover stories that are pitched to them is poor targeting. Download Cision's free White Paper, "What NEVER to Do When Targeting the Media," to learn how to increase your media coverage and establish strong, productive relationships with the right journalists.

Angered by what they consider sexist news coverage of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, many women and erstwhile Clinton supporters are proposing boycotts of the cable networks.

Tim Russert, NBC News' Washington bureau chief and the moderator of "Meet the Press," died Friday after being stricken at the bureau, NBC News reports.

The publisher of the Chicago Tribune said last week that he's resigning, a sign that deep job cuts will start at the newspaper this summer.

Top Ten Trends for Consumer Marketers: Exclusive White Paper (Free Invitation)

Fasten your seatbelts: Marketers at consumer and packaged goods companies face unprecedented?and exhilarating?challenges in the marketplace over the coming months and years. We'll have to respond to the lending crisis, the "millenials" generation, the assent of Chindian (Chinese and Indian) economic influence, brand promiscuity, digital ubiquity and the chaos of our new era of complexity, to name a few. If you're a corporate communications professional at a consumer goods or services company and would like a concise summary of these momentous changes, you are invited to receive an advance copy of the exclusive white paper, "Ten Trends for the Near Future" by renowned futurist and global trendspotter Marian Salzman, just published by Porter Novelli. Register to receive free advance copy.

By Mark X. Addison, CEO, Rocket Science PR.

Please pardon my rant, but are you as weary as I am watching the proliferation of 2.0 designations? I've seen Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Publishing 2.0 and plenty more. And, not to be left out, PR 2.0 as well. It's as if every industry has suddenly been transformed into a mashed–up, crowd–sourced, RSS–fed business over night. Either that or the marketing guys have been hard at work.

Catch up on the latest PR buzz in the blogosphere

Hot New Automation Tools Help Corporate Communicators Manage Brand Awareness and Monitor Corporate Reputation: FREE dna13 Webinar

Discover exciting new ways PR pros and corporate communicators are managing brand and monitoring reputation. This free, 45-minute webinar will bring you up to date on how to save time, reduce costs and increase your efficiency when building media lists, distributing press releases, monitoring media, and measuring your campaign's ROI. If you want to automate your media relations with the hottest technology on the market, this FREE, 45-minute webinar from dna13 will put you and your team ahead of the curve: Discover new, best-practices techniques employed at Starbucks, Royal Bank of Canada and Fidelity Investments. Thursday, June 26, 2pm EDT, 1PM CDT, Noon MDT, 11AM PDT. Register now.

Four New Clients Select Chen PR

Farrell and Van Dina Join Abelson Group

Tourism NT Taps Robertson Solutions

Mastering Press-Friendly Websites: Easy Ways PR Can Boost Web Traffic, Supercharge Online Newsrooms and Maximize Media Pickup

If you?re in PR, your value when it comes to generating successful Internet strategies extends far beyond just posting online press releases in a website newsroom. That?s because communications professionals are uniquely positioned to create a compelling PR-driven online presence that will increase web traffic, attract investors, journalists and even customers, and keep them engaged. Whitney E. Drake, Global Digital Communications Manager, Ford Motor Company, Gloria Barone Rosanio, Corporate Communications Director, CIGNA Corporation, John Bell, Managing Director, 360? Digital Influence Team, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide and Ibrey Woodall, Director of Marketing, TEKgroup International, will give you the tools and techniques you need to increase your search ranking, boost media coverage, increase brand loyalty and even help drive sales. You?ll learn how features like RSS, SEO, multimedia (online video, podcasts, etc.) and even innovative ideas like online contests can increase Internet traffic, press coverage and even drive tangible sales and lead-generation results for your client or company: Wednesday, June 18th, 2008. For more information or to register, go to conference details or call 1-800-959-1059.

Arieff Enlists Mitchell as VP of Consumer and Design Programs

Chen PR Names Kosh and Wambold as New Partners

Smith Named Partner at Widmeyer Communications

The current U.S. economic slump is hitting small and medium?sized businesses especially hard. Often, the first budget items to get kicked to the curb are marketing and PR, making it difficult for those businesses to get attention. But, according to a new book, any organization or individual can boost their visibility with inexpensive PR tactics. The new book is called "How Come No One Knows About Us?" by Robert Deigh, and is published by WBusiness Books.

Announcing the Social Media Bootcamp for PR Professionals: Chicago, Washington, DC, NYC & LA, in August

Learn how your organization can take advantage of powerful new social media tools?like YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn, SEO, Technorati and more?to dramatically increase your visibility among today's new influencers. Above all, this hands-on workshop will help you create, implement and measure a cost-effective social media plan, step by step. This Bulldog Reporter bootcamp is taught by Sally Falkow and Doug Hay, two of the PR industry's top-rated trainers and tech consultants. Four one-day workshops: Chicago, August 4; Washington, DC, August 6; New York, August 8 and Los Angeles, August 11. $100 "Early-Bird" discount. Go to online details or print our 4-page brochure or phone 1-800-959-1059.

By Brian Pittman

"Working with online journalists and bloggers can be different than working with traditional, print–oriented reporters," says Dean Takahashi, a lead digital media writer at VentureBeat. "For example, as a blogger, I have to pay attention now to who is breaking embargoes. There really are new rules and practices involving exclusivity online. Once an embargo is broken anywhere—it doesn't matter where it happens geographically—online media isn't obligated to stick by it."

Pitching Gift Guides: National Outlets Share Best Practices for Reaching Millions of Shoppers during the Holidays

The early bird gets media hit when it comes to gift guides. That?s why media savvy PR pros start working now?this summer?to finagle their products into the best holiday shopping guides and product reviews pages. It?s the same for summer wedding gift guides, Valentine?s Day gift guides, graduation gift guides, Mother?s and Father?s Day gift guides and so on. To get a jump on the competition and win a spot for your ultimate gift where it counts most, join Bulldog Reporter?s PR University and Mark McClusky, Senior Products Editor, Wired, David LaGesse, Senior Writer, U.S. News & World Report, Elizabeth Woodson, Associate Editor, Travel + Leisure and Justin Nyberg, Research Editor, Outside magazine, for an inside look at the secrets of scoring valuable coverage in the nation?s top holiday gift guides. They?ll outline what they?re looking for and when, this year?s hottest items and how best public relations can position items for optimal product placement in front of millions of seasonal shoppers, online and off: Thursday, June 19, 2008. For more information or to register, go to conference details or call 1-800-959-1059.

Brian Pittman's spotlight this week: James E. Murphy, CEO, Murphy and Co.; 2008 John Hill Award Recipient

"The PR industry has a rich history of practitioners I've looked up to over the years," says James E. Murphy, recently bestowed with the John W. Hill award at the 21st Annual Big Apple Awards presented by the New York Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA–NY), which marked its 60th birthday at the event.

"That's what I find most rewarding about being honored with this award—being in the company of previous winners, from Burson on. Also, Hill was an early leader. He built Hill and Knowlton into the number one agency at the time. If the company you're able to keep is a measure of a career—and if people feel I'm in that class—then I'm truly blessed," says Murphy, who served as the senior communications officer for four major global corporations prior to founding the agency (Accenture, Merrill Lynch, Beatrice and Owens–Coming) and who also served as chairman and CEO of Burson Marsteller.

If you work for a small company that prints everything in black and white because color is too expensive, you're in luck. Xerox now offers the Phaser 8860, which prints color for the price of black and white. It's also more environmentally friendly than other color printers on the market, so you can feel secure in that.