Cowtown Communications
of the TCU Schieffer School of Journalism finished third in the 2008 Bateman Competition, the most prestigious national case study challenge for PR students. Seventy-six universities entered; Loyola won in judging May 2 at GM headquarters in Detroit. The TCU team organized a car safety fair Feb. 21 at Stripling Middle School in Fort Worth that drew more than 230 participants. The students presented an analysis of their campaign to promote Chevrolet’s Safe Kids Buckle Up program at the GFW PRSA meeting in April. The nine-member team includes, from left, Ryan Wilcox, Meghan Orga, Doug Redgrave, Taylor Pashley and Taylor Faria.
of the TCU Schieffer School of Journalism finished third in the 2008 Bateman Competition, the most prestigious national case study challenge for PR students. Seventy-six universities entered; Loyola won in judging May 2 at GM headquarters in Detroit. The TCU team organized a car safety fair Feb. 21 at Stripling Middle School in Fort Worth that drew more than 230 participants. The students presented an analysis of their campaign to promote Chevrolet’s Safe Kids Buckle Up program at the GFW PRSA meeting in April. The nine-member team includes, from left, Ryan Wilcox, Meghan Orga, Doug Redgrave, Taylor Pashley and Taylor Faria.
TCU senior ad majors Nick Timmins, Natalie Clarke and Lindsay Moore (from left
with Don Blaustein, president and CEO of Heineken USA, and Dan Tearno, Heineken
senior VP of corporate affairs) presented their first-place "Who will you be
tonight?" Heineken USA/AAF 2008 public service ad campaign at the Heineken USA
headquarters in White Plains, N.Y., on April 24. Each student was presented
with a $1,000 award, and their adviser, Mike Wood, received a $600 award for
coaching the team.
GFW PRSAers Tom Burke, left, and Richie Escovedo are still on the road. If you
know this May location, tell them at tcburke@us.ibm.com or rescovedo@mansfieldisd.org. In April they were clowning around at the Chapel Hill Center on Hulen at
I-30, across from Arlington Heights High School and where the Lena Pope Home was situated for many years. In the late 1990s the home’s directors decided they could help more children by leasing the open portions of the site for development. The bulk of Chapel Hill opened in late 2000, constructed around the home’s administration buildings and the Marty Leonard Chapel.
I-30, across from Arlington Heights High School and where the Lena Pope Home was situated for many years. In the late 1990s the home’s directors decided they could help more children by leasing the open portions of the site for development. The bulk of Chapel Hill opened in late 2000, constructed around the home’s administration buildings and the Marty Leonard Chapel.
PRSA local update IV: Women’s Basketball Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman; Dallas Mavericks corporate sponsorships VP George Killebrew; Dave Stephenson, founder of Titus Sports Marketing; and Billy Sanez, American Airlines director of advertising, promotions and corporate
communications, will discuss “Sports Marketing — What’s in It for Me?” at Dallas PRSA’s Pro Am Day on Thursday, June 19. Details here.
PRSA local update V: Did you think PRSA would passively accept CBS legal analyst Andrew Cohen’s comments — among them, “Show me a PR person who is ‘accurate’ and ‘truthful,’ and I’ll show you a PR person who is unemployed” — during an opinion piece on Scott McClellan’s new book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception”? Did you really? “The PRSA Code of Ethics, to which all members pledge, embodies a strict set of
guidelines defining ethical and professional practice in public relations,” PRSA CEO and chairman Jeff Julin replied to Cohen. “Professionals who meet the code’s standards stand in stark contrast to the simplistic, erroneous
characterization of the profession you presented. Curiously, you also assert
that lying is no big deal. To the public relations professional, that is far
from the truth.”
SPJ national update: First NBC News, then The New York Times. The White House
called out both last month for, first, “deceitful” editing of an NBC interview in which the president is asked whether comments
about the president of Iran were directed at Barack Obama, and then for the Times “irresponsibly distort[ing] President Bush’s strong commitment to strengthening and expanding support for America’s service members and their families.” More here and here. ... Hillary Clinton did not get tougher press coverage than Barack Obama when it came to the main themes about their character, history, leadership
qualities and overall appeal. Actually, according to a new study, the opposite
was true, starting after Clinton criticized the media for being too soft on
Obama. More here.
SPJ national update II: The web site DeSmogBlog e-mailed 122 of the scientists
listed in a widely distributed Heartland Institute article entitled “500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares” and says that within 24 hours “three dozen of those scientists had responded in outrage, ... demanding that
their names be removed.” Exhibits A and B: “I am horrified to find my name on such a list. I have spent the last 20 years
arguing the opposite,” Dr.
David Sugden, University of Edinburgh; “I have NO doubts ... the recent changes in global climate ARE man-induced. I
insist that you immediately remove my name from this list since I did not give
you permission to put it there,” Dr. Gregory Cutter, Old Dominion University. More here.
SPJ national update III: House Commerce Committee chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., asked FCC chairman Kevin Martin to investigate whether the Department of Defense using ex-military officers to talk up Iraq and other policies violated requirements of TV sponsor identification. The former officers have ties to lobbying groups that were not disclosed to viewers, a recent New York Times story said. More here. ... Gov. David Paterson signed the Libel Terrorism Protection Act on May 1, helping New York set the pace in protecting American journalists from foreign libel verdicts. The bill came in response to a ruling from New York’s highest court that the state could not exercise jurisdiction over Khalid Salim a Bin Mahfouz, a Saudi Arabian businessman and banker who obtained a default judgment in a defamation suit against American author Rachel Ehrenfeld in a British court. Bin Mahfouz is a notorious libel tourist, having used or threatened to use British courts to sue for libel at least 36 times since 2002. More here.
SPJ national update IV: The Senate on May 15 voted, without debate, to invalidate the FCC’s Dec. 18 decision to loosen the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., has been pushing for the resolution of disapproval, which passed the Senate Commerce Committee in April. He argued that media consolidation has already led to a lack of localism and diveristy, so any more loosening of rules is uncalled for. More here. ... Newspaper web sites attracted more than 66.4 million unique visitors on average (40.7 percent of all internet users) in the first quarter of 2008, a record number that represents a 12.3 percent increase over the same period a year ago, according to a custom analysis provided by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America. More here.
SPJ national update V: The police chief’s rosy crime statistics were a lie. The councilman who urged water conservation was using 80,000 gallons a month at his home, more than five of his colleagues put together. And the school board president spent a full third of his time out of town and out of touch. The Voice of San Diego, a nonprofit online media outlet, relies on donors and doesn’t have enough journalists to field a softball team, yet it takes on the powerful with the panache of a scrappy big-city paper. “The best coverage of city politics that we’ve had in years,” raves Dean Nelson, a journalism professor at San Diego’s Point Loma Nazarene University. Could be a trend, observers say. More here.
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PEOPLE & PLACES
Shana Barkley and Patricia Lawson have joined the Hondo Group, with Barkley in Fort Worth focusing on professional
services clients and emerging media, and Lawson assisting agribusiness clients
out of Hondo’s new Darlington, Wis., office. Barkley, a psychology graduate from Eastern
Illinois University, brings 20 years experience, having developed advertising
and online campaigns for Fortune 500 brands in the financial, pharmaceutical,
medical, technology, retail and hospitality industries. Lawson, a University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign grad, previously was the marketing director for
Upland Hills Health and the internet creative manager for Swiss Colony. She
managed national clients such as Motorola and Keebler as senior vice president
of client services for Cummings Advertising. ...
Native Texan and Academy Award-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones is featured in a new Barnett Shale television piece by Chesapeake Energy Corp.
The rancher and San Saba native filmed the spots in and around Fort Worth,
including the Stockyards, Trinity Trails and the Pier 1 Imports building, the
future home of Chesapeake’s Barnett Shale headquarters downtown. Jones, who grew up in Texas oilfields,
even collaborated on the script, writing much of it himself.
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GET A JOB
Wanted: freelance sports writer to write weekly news release for mid-size DFW
ad/PR agency during the 2008 football season. Must know football and be
passionate about it. Excellence in writing, grammar and style required, plus
ability to meet firm weekly deadlines. Fee negotiable. May work from home
anywhere in the U.S. Contact mcritsch@yahoo.com. ...
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