eChaser: November 2005


	Welcome to our newsletter ... Society of Professional Journalists, Fort Worth Professional Chapter Public Relations Society of America, Greater Fort Worth Chapter International Association of Business Communicators, Fort Worth Chapter eChaser archive [graphics format] We appreciate our advertisers! Advanced Mobility Systems The Collegian, Tarrant County College District Barr Printing Bass Performance Hall Business Wire DFW Printing Co. Fort Worth Business Press Fort Worth Transportation Authority Fort Worth Zoo Helping Restore Ability InterStar Marketing and Public Relations Joe T. Garcia's Mexican Food Restaurant Jubilee Theatre North Texas Daily Optimist, Abilene Christian University Pancho's Mexican Buffet PR Newswire PRSA Creative Consultants SIG The Shorthorn, UTA Star-Telegram TCU Daily Skiff Tony Roma's The University of Texas at Arlington VMS Weber Shandwick Worldwide Wise County Messenger Witherspoon Advertising and Public Relations November 2005 MEETINGS Next at IABC/Fort Worth ... See You in the Papers Fort Worth Business Press news editor Krista Simmons will tell the November meeting how to get publicity for a company or event. Time & date: 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 22 Place: Petroleum Club, Carter-Burgess Plaza, 777 Main St., 39th floor Parking: $2.50 in parking garage at Seventh and Commerce streets Cost: $20 members, $25 nonmembers RSVP by noon Nov. 18: Julie Trowbridge at trowbridgeja@c-b.com ----- Next at Greater Fort Worth PRSA ... Metroplex Communicators Answer the Call: Helping the Red Cross Respond to Katrina and Rita As an encore to last November's meeting, Anita Foster and John Hoffmann will discuss how the Chisholm Trail chapter of the American Red Cross responded to two back-to-back national disasters -- hurricanes Katrina and Rita -- with the help of local volunteers. Foster, the Red Cross chapter's chief communication officer, will detail accounts of Metroplex communicators helping save the day -- every day for six weeks. Hoffmann, a volunteer and chapter board vice chairman, will explain why the response for Katrina and Rita was atypical and how the Red Cross organized an unprecedented communication response plan. Time & date: 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 9; lunch at noon Place: Petroleum Club, Carter-Burgess Plaza, 777 Main St., 39th floor Parking: free valet in parking garage at Seventh and Commerce streets Cost: $25 members, $30 nonmembers, $20 students RSVP by noon Nov. 4: rsvp@fortworthprsa.org ----- Next at Fort Worth SPJ ... Tales of Katrina (and the Shield Law, Too) What the world experienced via television of Hurricane Katrina -- the bungled evacuations, the heart-wrenching misery and loss -- Adam Pitluk and Olive Talley saw firsthand. The two veteran, award-winning journalists will relate their experiences in covering the Gulf Coast tragedy at the November SPJ meeting. They both reported from the scene on Katrina's devastation to lives and property. Also, attendees will have a chance to meet new SPJ president David Carlson and hear his update on progress toward a federal shield law. Carlson is the Cox/Palm Beach Post professor of new media journalism at the University of Florida. Pitluk, a contributor to Time magazine, has written for several publications, including the Dallas Observer, and is a Katie Award finalist. He has written for Time for five years. He also advises the oft-lauded Renegade student magazine at UTA. Talley, a producer for "Dateline NBC," has worked in both print and broadcast journalism and is a Katie Award winner. She is based in Dallas and has covered a range of stories for the NBC News magazine. Time & date: mingling 5:30 p.m., eats at 6, then the program, Tuesday, Nov. 15 Place: room across from the pool at Joe T. Garcia's Mexican restaurant, 2201 N. Commerce St., Fort Worth Cost: $15 members, $20 nonmembers, $5 students; cash bar; just to hear the program -- free Menu: Joe T.'s legendary family-style enchilada dinner RSVP: Kay Pirtle at mkpirtle@yahoo.com; specify whether RSVPing for the holiday party or the November meeting =================================================== STRAIGHT STUFF Strike up the band for brands. Author and international branding expert Tom Duncan will discuss "Branding and Interactivity" at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3, in Smith Entrepreneur Hall, room 104, in TCU's Schieffer School of Journalism. The public is invited. ... Journalists who want to pursue overlooked stories about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath can do so under a fellowship from the National Association of Black Journalists. The NABJ will provide $2,500 each to five journalists for a week of reporting. More at nabj.org. ... Texas Radio Hall of Fame 2005 inductees -- Ann Arnold, Vesta Brandt, Al Caldwell, George Carlin, Caroline Devine, Sam Donaldson, Milo Hamilton, Vann Kennedy (deceased), Ken Knox (deceased), Hugh Lampman (deceased), Steve Lundy (deceased) and Wes Wise -- will be honored Saturday, Nov. 5, at the Dallas/Addison Marriott Quorum by the Galleria. Also recognized will be 2005 Hall of Honor instatees Bill Bradford, Bob Bruton and Bill Enis (deceased). More at texasradiohalloffame.com. IABC local update: Springfield Lewis, director of EDS internal and executive communications, will discuss at the Tuesday, Nov. 8, IABC/Dallas luncheon the thinking, launch and ongoing teamwork behind a program designed to reach 118,000 employees around the world. Part of the project (and on display at the presentation) are "story walls," some of them 38 feet long, that are being built in EDS locations around the world. Register here. PRSA local update: For those who can't attend Anita Foster and John Hoffmann's presentation on the American Red Cross response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita at the Greater Fort Worth PRSA November meeting, here's another chance -- the Dallas PRSA meeting the next day. More at prsadallas.com/nov05_lunch.html. PRSA local update II: A cross-section of Star-Telegram journalists -- reporters Anna Tinsley (city hall beat), John Gutierrez-Mier (social services), Jan Jarvis (health care) and Heather Landy (retailing beat); editors Kristin Sullivan (AME/Arlington), Steve Kaskovich (AME/business) and Lee Williams (Fort Worth metro editor); and columnists J.R. Labbe, Bud Kennedy and Mitch Schnurman -- will expound on many things journalistic at PRSA's first Members Only Editorial Forum, 8:30-11:30 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 9, at the Petroleum Club. The reporters panel will be at 8:30, editors at 9:30 and columnists at 10:30. Registration is at 8; Bill Lawrence will moderate. The forum is open only to chapter members and is free, although a donation to the Goodfellow Fund would be appreciated. The regular monthly luncheon follows. RSVP by noon Nov. 4: rsvp@fortworthprsa.org. PRSA local update III: Watch your mailbox and inbox for details on "Life in the Fast Lane: Navigating Your Way to PR Success," the 2006 PRSA Southwest District Conference, sponsored by the Greater Fort Worth and Dallas chapters, March 2-3 at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in downtown Fort Worth. Anyone interested in being a presenter, contact Tracy Sturrock at tsturrock@fortworthzoo.org or Ashley Wesson Antle at ashley.antle@cox.net. ... The year's last PRSA Education SIG social will be 11:15 a.m.-1 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 16, at Central Market, I-30 and Hulen Street. Buy lunch downstairs, then head upstairs to the community room. SPJ national update: Don't like the reporting? Make the writers stay home; teleconference with soldiers staged; and on the dangerous frontiers of real journalism. White House reporters object to new restrictions on the number of journalists allowed to go on advance trips to foreign countries to be visited by the president. The new limits halve the number of media people permitted to go, and the writers say this curtails their ability to prepare for the overseas excursions. More here. ... It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Oct. 13 were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and the vote on an Iraqi constitution. The White House defended the video conference, saying that the military personnel were expressing their own thoughts, but one senior military commander told Fox News that he's outraged by the way the young were coached, and others pointed out that despite Pentagon spin attempts, the soldiers clearly were given answers that had been "drilled through" -- in the words used by Allison Barber, deputy secretary of defense for internal communications, on a tape that captured her 45-minute practice run of the event. More here and here. ... "I recently traveled to Iraq and China, where many journalists are paying a very high price for trying to inform their audiences. These are societies with no experience of a free press. Yet I met many Iraqi and Chinese reporters who intuitively grasp the Jeffersonian notion that freedom requires an informed public and a press that serves as a check on official power. How ironic that, in the United States, the very idea of the Fourth Estate as a guard against abuse of power is under attack. This irony becomes even more pronounced when one observes the risks many journalists from Iraq, China and other developing countries take to uncover their stories. ... " More here. SPJ national update II: Show them the money; and blogs, local TV muddy bombing story. More than 120 people e-mailed Connie Schultz by mid-afternoon Oct. 13 after she published a column headlined "For Future Journalists, It's Cash Not Causes." The Plain Dealer of Cleveland writer quoted numerous j-profs, one of whom told her: "We're losing so many hard-news students to public relations, advertising and marketing. They just want to make money." More here and here. ... The college town of Norman, Okla., has struggled to separate fact from fiction in the apparent suicide of Joel Henry Hinrichs III, who blew himself up 100 yards away from a packed football stadium Oct. 1. Several bloggers tried to connect the dots in the case and speculate that the 21-year-old OU junior was a suicide bomber under the influence of Islam. The blog reports affected local news coverage but also presented inaccuracies. More here. SPJ national update III: Feeling safe?; U.S. generals see need for reduced presence in Iraq; good intentions gone bad; and papers ignore Pentagon, mark 2,000th U.S. death in Iraq. A four-month ABC News investigation found gaping security holes at many of the little-known nuclear research reactors on 25 college campuses across the country. Among the findings: unmanned guard booths, a guard who appeared to be asleep, unlocked building doors and, in a number of cases, guided tours that provided access to control rooms and reactor pools that hold radioactive fuel. More here. ... The American generals running the Iraq war said in congressional testimony last month that the presence of U.S. forces is fueling the insurgency, fostering an undesirable dependency on American troops among the nascent Iraqi armed forces and energizing terrorists across the Middle East. For all these reasons, they said, a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops is imperative. More here. ... Newsweek's Baghdad bureau chief, departing after two years, had a few final thoughts. They aren't that pleasant. More here. ... Several top U.S. newspapers treated the 2,000th American military death in Iraq as a major milestone Oct. 26. The New York Times even used that officially disapproved phrase in a headline at the top of a page. USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post all carried special features. More here. SPJ national update IV: Truth in advertising; makes you cry; and how the Pentagon supports the troops. A U.S. Senate panel Oct. 20 approved legislation by Democrats requiring government agencies to disclose their role in prepackaged news stories they issue. The move follows sharp criticism by, among others, the Government Accountability Office about prepackaged news segments, such as one by the Department of Health and Human Services that touted a Medicare prescription drug law. A paid actor narrated the piece similar to a television reporter. Some stations aired such segments without a disclaimer that they were produced by the government. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, called this a misuse of funds and a form of covert propaganda. More here. ... Thought the White House had enough on its plate, with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the CIA. leak investigation? Nah, here's what's really important -- stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal. More here. ... Eight hundred twenty-four new, top-of-the-line armored Humvees are parked in Texas and Kuwait and won't be shipped to troops in Iraq even though those soldiers face daily roadside bombs, the Army acknowledged Oct. 20. The Army said it's keeping the vehicles out of Iraq until the 3rd Infantry Division's replacements, the 4th Infantry Division, arrive at the end of the year. More here. Meanwhile, Todd Bowers says his vision and possibly his life were saved from a sniper's shot by a $600 rifle scope and $100 goggles sent to him by his father. His dad had to provide the items because the Pentagon wouldn't. On Oct. 5, the Senate approved ordering the secretary of defense to follow the law and reimburse troops who buy their own protective equipment. More here. SPJ national update V: Making the world safe to blog; trimming court secrecy; happy news!; and ad buyer to publishers: Keep product strong; Bloggers who gather news would be protected under the proposed federal shield law, according to the legislation's first author, U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind. Pence's view of who would qualify as a journalist under the Free Flow of Information Act differs from the assessment of the bill's co-sponsor in the Senate, Indiana Republican Richard Lugar. More here and here and here and here. ... Secret docketing procedures used by a federal court in Miami are unconstitutional, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta (11th Circuit) has ruled, meaning that federal trial courts in three states must provide written explanations when they decide that sealing documents is warranted. More here. ... The Newark City Council has awarded the Newark Weekly News a $100,000 no-bid contract to publish positive news about the city. Howard Scott, who owns the paper, told The Star-Ledger in Newark that he's merely providing a service. "Do we have critical reporters on staff? No. Do we have investigative reporters? No," Scott told the newspaper. "Our niche is the good stuff. People have come to know it, and they love it." Under the contract, the paper can only generate stories based on leads from the council and the mayor's office. More here. ... Bottom-line publishers who cut their paper's news content are undermining their business, an executive with the big media planning firm Newspaper Services of America told the Inland Press Association at its annual meeting Oct. 24. "Don't let your CFOs run your companies," Dave Gusse said. "Don't cheap out on editorial." More here. =================================================== PEOPLE & PLACES Editor Reneé Gatons won four first-place awards for design and headline writing, and the UTA Shorthorn took sweepstakes at the latest Southwestern Journalism Congress competition. The SWJC includes major college media in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. Other winners: Kevin Bueker, Josh Bohling, Mark Roberts and Whitney Shropshire, first place; Roberts, Bohling, Amber Chisholm, Amanda Kowalski, Melissa Winn, Hayley Harris and Mary Richert, second place; Bohling, Erika Nuñez, Jessica Ramirez, Jean Weaver and Shannon Duffy, third place; and Roberts, Bueker, Shropshire, Bohling and Drew Campbell, honorable mention. ... Still at UTA, The Shorthorn's Mark Roberts won first place in feature photo, and Renegade, current editor Clay Swartz, was named one of the top three college magazines in the nation in SPJ Mark of Excellence judging announced at the convention last month in Las Vegas. This is the second time in its three-year history that Renegade has been an MOE finalist. Also, Brandon Wade was a finalist in news photo. ... Former SPJ chapter president Roy Eaton, one of the nation's best-known community newspaper publishers, has received the TCU Schieffer School of Journalism Ethics Award. Eaton, who graduated from TCU in 1959, is president and publisher of the Wise County Messenger, a twice-weekly newspaper in Decatur. The Messenger has won more than 150 awards since Eaton became publisher. ... TCU's Doug Newsom, the first woman to receive the PRSA Educator of the Year Award and an advertising/PR prof in the Schieffer School of Journalism, has receiveed the Institute of Public Relations Pathfinder Award for her contributions to scholarly research and PR knowledge. She will receive the award Nov. 10 at the Yale Club in New York City. She is the co-author of three textbooks, co-editor of a woman's studies book and the author of 12 book chapters. Twice a Fulbright lecturer in India and Singapore, she has conducted workshops in South Africa, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Vanuatu and India. Baby daze! Former Arlington Star-Telegram reporter Mary McKee is expecting a boy, Keston, around Dec. 6, and she and husband Ralph are adopting a 10-month-old girl from China, Leonise, who is due to come to the United States by the end of the year. =================================================== GET A JOB Crescent Real Estate Equities seeks a part-time communications specialist for its downtown Fort Worth office, 20 hours a week (half day on Wednesdays and full days Thursdays and Fridays). A bachelor's degree in English/communications is required, along with at least three years experience in corporate work environment and understanding of the internet and web-based research. Helpful to have desktop publishing experience, including graphic layout and design. Knowledge of some HTML code preferred. E-mail résumé to employment@crescent.com and reference PT Communications Specialist in the subject line. =================================================== NEW MEMBERS IABC ... Kathleen Pai, Lockheed Martin ... Victoria Capik, City of Fort Worth ... Lindsey Kubes, Carter & Burgess ... Jeff Posey, Carter & Burgess PRSA ... Sheri Pape, Weatherford ISD ... Laura Hanna, Texas Wesleyan University ... Roxanne Martinez-Rosas, Allied Electronics =================================================== COMINGS & GOINGS Additions ... at the S-T: Erik Rodriguez, assistant metro editor; he was formerly a city hall reporter and then bureau chief at the Austin American-Statesman ... Knight Ridder intern Clanci Cochran, a May graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta with a degree in English Exits ... at the S-T: underrated tech wizard Sherry Fisher, to an IT position with a paper in Medford, Ore. ==================================================== PRESIDENT'S COLUMN Richard Maxwell, IABC/Fort Worth IABC/Fort Worth past-president Robin McCasland was among several past-presidents on hand when she spoke Oct. 25 on "Strategic Planning for Dummies." Robin is a communication consultant for PartnerComm, an Arlington-based human resources communications firm, and her presentation was as informative as it was humorous. Check out despair.com for amusing "demotivators" she shared with us. On Nov. 22 be sure to join us when Krista Simmons, news editor for the Fort Worth Business Press, tells us how to get publicity for our company or event. Please join us at the Petroleum Club at 11:30 a.m. for networking and an informative professional development program. Ken Roberts, Pam Fry and I attended the IABC (new) Southern Regional Conference in College Station last month. The Southern Region combines the old District 5 and District 2 and reaches from Arizona to the East Coast. The theme was "005: Communications Shaken, Not Stirred," and we learned that, like James Bond, communicators must be globally minded citizens who use technology and innovative strategies to shake things up and not simply stir things around. We also visited the George Bush Presidential Library and met Rudy Ruettiger from the movie "Rudy" who gave a motivational speech on never giving up on your dreams. Next year's conference will be in Kansas City. To help IABC members affected by Hurricane Katrina, IABC international set up a relief fund. If you donate, the Fort Worth chapter will match your contribution dollar for dollar. Send checks to IABC/Fort Worth, P.O. Box 17033, Fort Worth 76102. Welcome, new members Victoria Capik, Lindsey Kubes, Jeff Posey and Kathleen Pai. Hope to see them -- and all of you -- Nov. 22. ----- OVER & OUT John Dycus, Fort Worth SPJ Patrick Fitzgerald for Supreme Court justice. Did you see the special prosecutor's post-indictments press conference? The last honest man in D.C. Like there's a large pool to choose from. ... Bad enough that SPJ national gives its Sunshine Award to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, considering her efforts to limit student press freedom in the Hosty v. Carter case, but there was a beaming Judith Miller, New York Times administration spin scribe, receiving the First Amendment Award at the SPJ National Convention last month and getting a standing ovation from more than half the crowd of about 350. Maybe the other half were journalists. The preponderance of evidence depicts Miller as one of the numerous high-profile journalists-in-name-only who, during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, looked the other way, hyperventilated at the thought of asking a follow-up question or promoted the war with inaccurate reporting, incomplete reporting or cheerleading disguised as reporting. Last year the Times issued a public apology for its Iraq coverage; three of the five articles it highlighted, Miller wrote. "The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them -- we were all wrong," she says. But Joe Lauria, who has covered the United Nations since 1990 for a variety of papers, including the London Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and The Boston Globe, got it right. So did Joby Warrick and Colum Lynch and Bob Simon and Ian Williams and Walter Pincus and John MacArthur. Angry Times colleagues mistrust Miller, her editor says she misled him about her involvement in the CIA leak story, the Times wants her gone and reportedly is negotiating a buyout -- and SPJ national trumpets her principles and professionalism. How embarrassing. Give me Frank Rich or Seymour Hersh or Helen Thomas, instead. This award to this recipient mocks the bedrock tenet of a watchdog press. No wonder the public doesn't trust us. If Miller is our hero, I don't trust us, either. ... Thanks, Mike Cochran, for promoting the Dallas Sixth Floor Museum bus trip in your powerhouse fashion; Gary Mack for coming downtown to greet us on your day off; Tom Thompson and Wade Sessions for the p. 2 pictures; and Jim Wright for the prayer. The boyish Weatherford congressman was outside Parkland Hospital on that horrific day in November 1963, awaiting word of his president's condition, when a broadcast newsman sought his reaction. Wright leaned into the microphone and without hesitation began to pray, asking God to "rebuild in faith, not in fear; in love, not in hate." Such poise and grace, preserved on grainy black-and-white film. I cannot watch the JFK archive footage without thinking that this time the outcome will be different. But it never changes. A real leader, full of flaws; a real president, full of hope. Gone. Still. And nothing like him in sight. Closing words: "You can't say, 'Please don't be mean to me. Please let me win sometimes.' Give me a break here. If you don't want to fight for the future and you can't figure out how to beat these people, then find something else to do." -- Bill Clinton, drawing roaring applause from the several hundred people gathered in the Texas House chamber to kick off the 10th annual Texas Book Festival Closing words II, overarching hypocrisy bracket: "I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars." Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, on "Meet the Press," Oct. 23 ... "The reason that I voted to remove him [Bill Clinton] from office is because I think the overridding issue here is that truth will remain the standard for perjury and obstruction of justice in our criminal justice system and it must not be gray. It must not be muddy." -- Sen. Hutchison, Feb. 12, 1999

What the world experienced via television of Hurricane Katrina -- the bungled evacuations, the heart-wrenching misery and loss -- Adam Pitluk and Olive Talley saw firsthand. The two veteran, award-winning journalists will relate their experiences in covering the Gulf Coast tragedy at the November SPJ meeting. They both reported from the scene on Katrina's devastation to lives and property.

Time & date: mingling 5:30 p.m., eats at 6, then the program, Tuesday, Nov. 15

Place: room across from the pool at Joe T. Garcia's Mexican restaurant, 2201 N. Commerce St., Fort Worth

Cost: $15 members, $20 nonmembers, $5 students; cash bar; just to hear the program -- free

Menu: Joe T.'s legendary family-style enchilada dinner

RSVP: Kay Pirtle at mkpirtle@yahoo.com; specify whether RSVPing for the holiday party or the November meeting

===================================================

Strike up the band for brands. Author and international branding expert Tom Duncan will discuss "Branding and Interactivity" at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3, in Smith Entrepreneur Hall, room 104, in TCU's Schieffer School of Journalism. The public is invited. ...

Journalists who want to pursue overlooked stories about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath can do so under a fellowship from the National Association of Black Journalists. The NABJ will provide $2,500 each to five journalists for a week of reporting. More at nabj.org. ...

Texas Radio Hall of Fame 2005 inductees -- Ann Arnold, Vesta Brandt, Al Caldwell, George Carlin, Caroline Devine, Sam Donaldson, Milo Hamilton, Vann Kennedy (deceased), Ken Knox (deceased), Hugh Lampman (deceased), Steve Lundy (deceased) and Wes Wise -- will be honored Saturday, Nov. 5, at the Dallas/Addison Marriott Quorum by the Galleria. Also recognized will be 2005 Hall of Honor instatees Bill Bradford, Bob Bruton and Bill Enis (deceased). More at texasradiohalloffame.com.

IABC local update: Springfield Lewis, director of EDS internal and executive communications, will discuss at the Tuesday, Nov. 8, IABC/Dallas luncheon the thinking, launch and ongoing teamwork behind a program designed to reach 118,000 employees around the world. Part of the project (and on display at the presentation) are "story walls," some of them 38 feet long, that are being built in EDS locations around the world. Register here.

PRSA local update: For those who can't attend Anita Foster and John Hoffmann's presentation on the American Red Cross response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita at the Greater Fort Worth PRSA November meeting, here's another chance -- the Dallas PRSA meeting the next day. More at prsadallas.com/nov05_lunch.html.

PRSA local update II: A cross-section of Star-Telegram journalists -- reporters Anna Tinsley (city hall beat), John Gutierrez-Mier (social services), Jan Jarvis (health care) and Heather Landy (retailing beat); editors Kristin Sullivan (AME/Arlington), Steve Kaskovich (AME/business) and Lee Williams (Fort Worth metro editor); and columnists J.R. Labbe, Bud Kennedy and Mitch Schnurman -- will expound on many things journalistic at PRSA's first Members Only Editorial Forum, 8:30-11:30 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 9, at the Petroleum Club. The reporters panel will be at 8:30, editors at 9:30 and columnists at 10:30. Registration is at 8; Bill Lawrence will moderate. The forum is open only to chapter members and is free, although a donation to the Goodfellow Fund would be appreciated. The regular monthly luncheon follows. RSVP by noon Nov. 4: rsvp@fortworthprsa.org.

PRSA local update III: Watch your mailbox and inbox for details on "Life in the Fast Lane: Navigating Your Way to PR Success," the 2006 PRSA Southwest District Conference, sponsored by the Greater Fort Worth and Dallas chapters, March 2-3 at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in downtown Fort Worth. Anyone interested in being a presenter, contact Tracy Sturrock at tsturrock@fortworthzoo.org or Ashley Wesson Antle at ashley.antle@cox.net. ... The year's last PRSA Education SIG social will be 11:15 a.m.-1 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 16, at Central Market, I-30 and Hulen Street. Buy lunch downstairs, then head upstairs to the community room.

SPJ national update: Don't like the reporting? Make the writers stay home; teleconference with soldiers staged; and on the dangerous frontiers of real journalism. White House reporters object to new restrictions on the number of journalists allowed to go on advance trips to foreign countries to be visited by the president. The new limits halve the number of media people permitted to go, and the writers say this curtails their ability to prepare for the overseas excursions. More here. ... It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Oct. 13 were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and the vote on an Iraqi constitution. The White House defended the video conference, saying that the military personnel were expressing their own thoughts, but one senior military commander told Fox News that he's outraged by the way the young were coached, and others pointed out that despite Pentagon spin attempts, the soldiers clearly were given answers that had been "drilled through" -- in the words used by Allison Barber, deputy secretary of defense for internal communications, on a tape that captured her 45-minute practice run of the event. More here and here. ... "I recently traveled to Iraq and China, where many journalists are paying a very high price for trying to inform their audiences. These are societies with no experience of a free press. Yet I met many Iraqi and Chinese reporters who intuitively grasp the Jeffersonian notion that freedom requires an informed public and a press that serves as a check on official power. How ironic that, in the United States, the very idea of the Fourth Estate as a guard against abuse of power is under attack. This irony becomes even more pronounced when one observes the risks many journalists from Iraq, China and other developing countries take to uncover their stories. ... " More here.

SPJ national update II: Show them the money; and blogs, local TV muddy bombing story. More than 120 people e-mailed Connie Schultz by mid-afternoon Oct. 13 after she published a column headlined "For Future Journalists, It's Cash Not Causes." The Plain Dealer of Cleveland writer quoted numerous j-profs, one of whom told her: "We're losing so many hard-news students to public relations, advertising and marketing. They just want to make money." More here and here. ... The college town of Norman, Okla., has struggled to separate fact from fiction in the apparent suicide of Joel Henry Hinrichs III, who blew himself up 100 yards away from a packed football stadium Oct. 1. Several bloggers tried to connect the dots in the case and speculate that the 21-year-old OU junior was a suicide bomber under the influence of Islam. The blog reports affected local news coverage but also presented inaccuracies. More here.

SPJ national update III: Feeling safe?; U.S. generals see need for reduced presence in Iraq; good intentions gone bad; and papers ignore Pentagon, mark 2,000th U.S. death in Iraq. A four-month ABC News investigation found gaping security holes at many of the little-known nuclear research reactors on 25 college campuses across the country. Among the findings: unmanned guard booths, a guard who appeared to be asleep, unlocked building doors and, in a number of cases, guided tours that provided access to control rooms and reactor pools that hold radioactive fuel. More here. ... The American generals running the Iraq war said in congressional testimony last month that the presence of U.S. forces is fueling the insurgency, fostering an undesirable dependency on American troops among the nascent Iraqi armed forces and energizing terrorists across the Middle East. For all these reasons, they said, a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops is imperative. More here. ... Newsweek's Baghdad bureau chief, departing after two years, had a few final thoughts. They aren't that pleasant. More here. ... Several top U.S. newspapers treated the 2,000th American military death in Iraq as a major milestone Oct. 26. The New York Times even used that officially disapproved phrase in a headline at the top of a page. USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post all carried special features. More here.

SPJ national update IV: Truth in advertising; makes you cry; and how the Pentagon supports the troops. A U.S. Senate panel Oct. 20 approved legislation by Democrats requiring government agencies to disclose their role in prepackaged news stories they issue. The move follows sharp criticism by, among others, the Government Accountability Office about prepackaged news segments, such as one by the Department of Health and Human Services that touted a Medicare prescription drug law. A paid actor narrated the piece similar to a television reporter. Some stations aired such segments without a disclaimer that they were produced by the government. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, called this a misuse of funds and a form of covert propaganda. More here. ... Thought the White House had enough on its plate, with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the CIA. leak investigation? Nah, here's what's really important -- stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal. More here. ... Eight hundred twenty-four new, top-of-the-line armored Humvees are parked in Texas and Kuwait and won't be shipped to troops in Iraq even though those soldiers face daily roadside bombs, the Army acknowledged Oct. 20. The Army said it's keeping the vehicles out of Iraq until the 3rd Infantry Division's replacements, the 4th Infantry Division, arrive at the end of the year. More here. Meanwhile, Todd Bowers says his vision and possibly his life were saved from a sniper's shot by a $600 rifle scope and $100 goggles sent to him by his father. His dad had to provide the items because the Pentagon wouldn't. On Oct. 5, the Senate approved ordering the secretary of defense to follow the law and reimburse troops who buy their own protective equipment. More here.

SPJ national update V: Making the world safe to blog; trimming court secrecy; happy news!; and ad buyer to publishers: Keep product strong; Bloggers who gather news would be protected under the proposed federal shield law, according to the legislation's first author, U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind. Pence's view of who would qualify as a journalist under the Free Flow of Information Act differs from the assessment of the bill's co-sponsor in the Senate, Indiana Republican Richard Lugar. More here and here and here and here. ... Secret docketing procedures used by a federal court in Miami are unconstitutional, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta (11th Circuit) has ruled, meaning that federal trial courts in three states must provide written explanations when they decide that sealing documents is warranted. More here. ... The Newark City Council has awarded the Newark Weekly News a $100,000 no-bid contract to publish positive news about the city. Howard Scott, who owns the paper, told The Star-Ledger in Newark that he's merely providing a service. "Do we have critical reporters on staff? No. Do we have investigative reporters? No," Scott told the newspaper. "Our niche is the good stuff. People have come to know it, and they love it." Under the contract, the paper can only generate stories based on leads from the council and the mayor's office. More here. ... Bottom-line publishers who cut their paper's news content are undermining their business, an executive with the big media planning firm Newspaper Services of America told the Inland Press Association at its annual meeting Oct. 24. "Don't let your CFOs run your companies," Dave Gusse said. "Don't cheap out on editorial." More here.

===================================================

Editor Reneé Gatons won four first-place awards for design and headline writing, and the UTA Shorthorn took sweepstakes at the latest Southwestern Journalism Congress competition. The SWJC includes major college media in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. Other winners: Kevin Bueker, Josh Bohling, Mark Roberts and Whitney Shropshire, first place; Roberts, Bohling, Amber Chisholm, Amanda Kowalski, Melissa Winn, Hayley Harris and Mary Richert, second place; Bohling, Erika Nuñez, Jessica Ramirez, Jean Weaver and Shannon Duffy, third place; and Roberts, Bueker, Shropshire, Bohling and Drew Campbell, honorable mention. ...

Still at UTA, The Shorthorn's Mark Roberts won first place in feature photo, and Renegade, current editor Clay Swartz, was named one of the top three college magazines in the nation in SPJ Mark of Excellence judging announced at the convention last month in Las Vegas. This is the second time in its three-year history that Renegade has been an MOE finalist. Also, Brandon Wade was a finalist in news photo. ...

Former SPJ chapter president Roy Eaton, one of the nation's best-known community newspaper publishers, has received the TCU Schieffer School of Journalism Ethics Award. Eaton, who graduated from TCU in 1959, is president and publisher of the Wise County Messenger, a twice-weekly newspaper in Decatur. The Messenger has won more than 150 awards since Eaton became publisher. ...

TCU's Doug Newsom, the first woman to receive the PRSA Educator of the Year Award and an advertising/PR prof in the Schieffer School of Journalism, has receiveed the Institute of Public Relations Pathfinder Award for her contributions to scholarly research and PR knowledge. She will receive the award Nov. 10 at the Yale Club in New York City. She is the co-author of three textbooks, co-editor of a woman's studies book and the author of 12 book chapters. Twice a Fulbright lecturer in India and Singapore, she has conducted workshops in South Africa, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Vanuatu and India.

Baby daze! Former Arlington Star-Telegram reporter Mary McKee is expecting a boy, Keston, around Dec. 6, and she and husband Ralph are adopting a 10-month-old girl from China, Leonise, who is due to come to the United States by the end of the year.

===================================================

Crescent Real Estate Equities seeks a part-time communications specialist for its downtown Fort Worth office, 20 hours a week (half day on Wednesdays and full days Thursdays and Fridays). A bachelor's degree in English/communications is required, along with at least three years experience in corporate work environment and understanding of the internet and web-based research. Helpful to have desktop publishing experience, including graphic layout and design. Knowledge of some HTML code preferred. E-mail résumé to employment@crescent.com and reference PT Communications Specialist in the subject line.

===================================================

IABC ... Kathleen Pai, Lockheed Martin ... Victoria Capik, City of Fort Worth ... Lindsey Kubes, Carter & Burgess ... Jeff Posey, Carter & Burgess

PRSA ... Sheri Pape, Weatherford ISD ... Laura Hanna, Texas Wesleyan University ... Roxanne Martinez-Rosas, Allied Electronics

===================================================

Additions ... at the S-T: Erik Rodriguez, assistant metro editor; he was formerly a city hall reporter and then bureau chief at the Austin American-Statesman ... Knight Ridder intern Clanci Cochran, a May graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta with a degree in English

Exits ... at the S-T: underrated tech wizard Sherry Fisher, to an IT position with a paper in Medford, Ore.

====================================================

Richard Maxwell, IABC/Fort Worth

IABC/Fort Worth past-president Robin McCasland was among several past-presidents on hand when she spoke Oct. 25 on "Strategic Planning for Dummies." Robin is a communication consultant for PartnerComm, an Arlington-based human resources communications firm, and her presentation was as informative as it was humorous. Check out despair.com for amusing "demotivators" she shared with us.

Ken Roberts, Pam Fry and I attended the IABC (new) Southern Regional Conference in College Station last month. The Southern Region combines the old District 5 and District 2 and reaches from Arizona to the East Coast. The theme was "005: Communications Shaken, Not Stirred," and we learned that, like James Bond, communicators must be globally minded citizens who use technology and innovative strategies to shake things up and not simply stir things around. We also visited the George Bush Presidential Library and met Rudy Ruettiger from the movie "Rudy" who gave a motivational speech on never giving up on your dreams. Next year's conference will be in Kansas City.

John Dycus, Fort Worth SPJ

Bad enough that SPJ national gives its Sunshine Award to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, considering her efforts to limit student press freedom in the Hosty v. Carter case, but there was a beaming Judith Miller, New York Times administration spin scribe, receiving the First Amendment Award at the SPJ National Convention last month and getting a standing ovation from more than half the crowd of about 350. Maybe the other half were journalists. The preponderance of evidence depicts Miller as one of the numerous high-profile journalists-in-name-only who, during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, looked the other way, hyperventilated at the thought of asking a follow-up question or promoted the war with inaccurate reporting, incomplete reporting or cheerleading disguised as reporting. Last year the Times issued a public apology for its Iraq coverage; three of the five articles it highlighted, Miller wrote. "The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them -- we were all wrong," she says. But Joe Lauria, who has covered the United Nations since 1990 for a variety of papers, including the London Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and The Boston Globe, got it right. So did Joby Warrick and Colum Lynch and Bob Simon and Ian Williams and Walter Pincus and John MacArthur. Angry Times colleagues mistrust Miller, her editor says she misled him about her involvement in the CIA leak story, the Times wants her gone and reportedly is negotiating a buyout -- and SPJ national trumpets her principles and professionalism. How embarrassing. Give me Frank Rich or Seymour Hersh or Helen Thomas, instead. This award to this recipient mocks the bedrock tenet of a watchdog press. No wonder the public doesn't trust us. If Miller is our hero, I don't trust us, either. ...

Thanks, Mike Cochran, for promoting the Dallas Sixth Floor Museum bus trip in your powerhouse fashion; Gary Mack for coming downtown to greet us on your day off; Tom Thompson and Wade Sessions for the p. 2 pictures; and Jim Wright for the prayer. The boyish Weatherford congressman was outside Parkland Hospital on that horrific day in November 1963, awaiting word of his president's condition, when a broadcast newsman sought his reaction. Wright leaned into the microphone and without hesitation began to pray, asking God to "rebuild in faith, not in fear; in love, not in hate." Such poise and grace, preserved on grainy black-and-white film. I cannot watch the JFK archive footage without thinking that this time the outcome will be different. But it never changes. A real leader, full of flaws; a real president, full of hope. Gone. Still. And nothing like him in sight.

Closing words: "You can't say, 'Please don't be mean to me. Please let me win sometimes.' Give me a break here. If you don't want to fight for the future and you can't figure out how to beat these people, then find something else to do." -- Bill Clinton, drawing roaring applause from the several hundred people gathered in the Texas House chamber to kick off the 10th annual Texas Book Festival

Closing words II, overarching hypocrisy bracket: "I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars." Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, on "Meet the Press," Oct. 23 ... "The reason that I voted to remove him [Bill Clinton] from office is because I think the overridding issue here is that truth will remain the standard for perjury and obstruction of justice in our criminal justice system and it must not be gray. It must not be muddy." -- Sen. Hutchison, Feb. 12, 1999