August 2001
MEETINGS
Next at IABC ...
Spirited Leadership From the Author of Same
If you have Aug. 14 lunch plans, you might want to change them. Ellen Castro is coming to the monthly get-together of IABC/Fort Worth.
Author of "Spirited Leadership: 52 Ways to Build Trust on the Job," Castro worked with Exxon USA for 11 years in marketing and management assignments before changing careers. A Harvard University graduate and member of the SMU Business Leadership Center faculty, she now designs and facilitates leadership development and communication workshops for clients including Proctor & Gamble, Aetna, Frito-Lay, Texas Instruments and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
* Time & date: 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 14
* Place: Petroleum Club, Carter-Burgess Plaza, 777 Main St., 39th floor
* Cost: $17 members, $22 nonmembers, $12 students
* RSVP by noon Aug. 10: Dan Frost at (817) 735-6157 or mailto:frostdg@c-b.com
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Next at PRSA ...
Professional Development Seminar to Explore
PR in a World of Advancing Technology
The PRSA Greater Fort Worth Chapter will take a closer look at everything from online press centers to wireless devices to the new ways of the Web during a special seminar Aug. 8, held in conjunction with the regular 11:30 luncheon meeting and lasting through the afternoon. Representatives from some of the best companies in North Texas will discuss the tools and services they use to communicate with all of their constituents, from the media to very targeted markets.
The morning schedule: "Utilizing Your Company's Web Site," 9 a.m., and "Online Media Relations: Using E-mail Pitches and the Online Press Center," 10:30. The luncheon topic will be "Finding and Reaching Your Key Audiences Utilizing New Technology."
* Date: Wednesday, Aug. 8
* Place: Ridglea Country Club, 3700 Bernie Anderson Blvd., just off Camp Bowie Boulevard near Bryant Irvin
* Cost: all day, $45 members, $60 nonmembers, $30 students; luncheon only, $20 members, $23 nonmembers, $18 students; morning only, $30 members, $45 nonmembers, $20 students
* RSVP by noon Aug. 6: Elizabeth Eslick at mailto:elizabeth@stuartbacon.com
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Next at SPJ ...
Summer breather in August. Next meeting in September.
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STRAIGHT STUFF
GFW PRSA membership directories are in. Those not picked up at the meeting this month will be mailed mid-August. ... Gwen Ifill, moderator and managing editor of PBS's "Washington Week" and former White House correspondent for NBC News and The New York Times, will keynote the fourth annual Raggio Endowed Lecture in Women's Studies on Oct. 10 at SMU. More from Lisa Chou, (214) 768-2610 or mailto:lisac@post.cis.smu.edu. ... Entries are being taken for the Dallas Bar Association's 2001 Stephen Philbin Awards honoring excellence in legal reporting. There's a $1,000 grand prize, plus $500 to individual winners in numerous categories. Catherine Crier, a former Dallas judge and host of Court TV's "Crier Live," will keynote the awards luncheon Oct. 26 at the Belo Mansion. Contact Sue Cady, (214) 220-7477 or mailto:scady@dallasbar.org. ... A survey by the Online News Association (http://www.journalists.org) on the credibility of digital journalism takes about 10 minutes, and the ONA covets SPJ input. Go to http://206.31.10.114/surveys/login/46379. Only surveys that are complete will be counted; results will be shared with SPJ members and discussed at the ONA annual conference Oct. 26-27 in Berkeley, Calif. Send questions to mailto:credibilitystudy@earthlink.net. ...
Publishing opportunity, hidden facts division: Mason Duchatschek, president of ExpertArticles.com, suggests that E-Chaser readers, especially PRSA and IABC members, might not know about a new means to get articles written by themselves and their clients published. About 350 authors and international business experts such as Brian Tracy, Dr. Tony Alessandra, Tom Hopkins, Patricia Fripp and Roger Dawson have posted work at http://ExpertArticles.com. Consequently, Duchatschek says, "hundreds of publishers and editors" regularly cruise the 1,300-article database seeking pieces for their publications. Posting is free. No news releases allowed. Reach Duchatschek at (314) 647-8550 or mailto:masonduke@aol.com. ...
PRSA national update: More than 180 professional development offerings and 20 networking activities, plus keynote speeches by human rights advocate Andrew Young and MIT economist Lester Thurow, will highlight PRSA's redesigned International Conference in Atlanta, Oct. 27-30. The new format features workshops Saturday, an earlier start time Sunday and 40 percent more workshops. Special events include an opening night gala at the CNN Center; "Hit Us With Your Best Shot," four interactive sessions where participants interrogate a panel of experts on practice issues; and "Are You Talking to ME?," a panel featuring AARP executive director Bill Novelli and Cory Takahashi, a writer for The New York Times and Newsday, on ways to reach audiences in 2001 and beyond. Register online at http://prsa.org or call (330) 425-9339; sign-up by Sept. 7 saves $100. For a brochure, call Genevieve DeLaurier, (212) 460-1408. ...
SPJ national update: 3 thumbs up, 3 down. U.S. Senate leadership shelved plans to snag space allocated to the press galleries. The Senate secretary's office had planned to take over rooms on the third floor of the Capitol used by magazine writers, photographers and other reporters. ... SPJ is hailing a federal court decision that altered photos used for journalistic purposes -- and clearly ID'd as alterations -- are entitled to First Amendment protection. The Ninth Circuit Court reversed a district court decision for actor Dustin Hoffman, who claimed right of publicity and copyright infringement against LA Magazine for using an altered photograph from the movie "Tootsie" to illustrate a fashion article. The trial court had awarded Hoffman substantial damages. ... The records of private companies doing state government functions are now open in Connecticut. House Bill 6636, signed into law by Gov. John Rowland last month, states that when a private firm contracts with a state agency to perform public functions, those records are subject to the state's FOIA and shall be made available through the public agency. ... The University of Oregon has proposed that television may air no more than 20 seconds of highlights for 48 hours after a game, 30 seconds of highlights for a week after the game and no highlights from then on. The university also wants to limit video interviews of coaches and athletes and choose which journalists may conduct them. SPJ, along with the Radio-Television News Directors Association and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, has objected. ... Ohio's Supreme Court backed away from deciding whether requiring anonymous juries in all civil and criminal cases violates First Amendment rights. In State vs. Hill, the court said that the issue of anonymous juries had not properly been raised at trial, so no decision could be made. "We're disappointed because we believed that the issue was ripe for consideration," said Bruce Brown, SPJ First Amendment legal counsel. "Anonymous juries are a slap in the face of this country's tradition of openness in court proceedings." ... In support of Nepalese journalists, SPJ wrote King Gyanendra and the country's civil authorities expressing concern over the recent detention of Kantipur editor Yubaraj Ghimie, director Binod Raj Gyawali and managing director Kailash Shirohiya.
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PRSA Creates SIG-nificant Organization
A start-up meeting in September and a half-day professional development workshop in November are among early plans of the Sole Practitioners Special Interest Group being formed by Greater Fort Worth PRSA. An offshoot of a panel presentation in January, SPSIG will provide networking and information for independent practitioners in PR, advertising, graphic design, marketing and related disciplines.
A quarterly brown-bag or catered lunch is envisioned, likely with a speaker and likely free or with a minimal charge for lunch. Involvement is not restricted to PRSA members. To jump-start the process, check the topics below that interest you and reply to organizers Andra Bennett, APR, at mailto:prandra@flash.net or Holly Ellman at mailto:ellmanh@txwes.edu.
___ accounting and legal issues
___ rates, billing structures and profit margins
___ positioning yourself/proposal writing
___ subcontracting
___ managing an unsteady workload/income
___ freelancing with agencies
___ isolation and other home-office distractions
___ life and health insurance
___ developing a business plan
___ new business presentations
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Sex, Money, Mayhem: Murders at the Mansion
Still Hold Fascination for Fort Worth
by Frank Perkins
The most memorable SPJ program of the year kept 103 guests on the edge of their chairs as Star-Telegram senior writer Mike Cochran and former Tarrant County prosecutors Joe Shannon and Jack Strickland revisited the Cullen Davis murder and murder-for-hire cases.
Twenty-five years ago this month, Davis, then a multimillionaire, was accused of entering the family mansion in west Fort Worth and opening fire. Stan Farr, Davis' ex-wife Priscilla's live-in lover, and Andrea Wilborn, her 12-year-old daughter by a first marriage, were killed. Priscilla was shot, and Gus Gavrel, the date of a friend of Priscilla's older daughter who was to spend the night at the mansion, took a bullet in the spine.
Priscilla Davis would testify that her estranged husband entered the house wearing a black wig, said, "Hi," then shot her once in the chest with a .38 pistol. She testified that she watched, critically wounded, as he shot and killed Farr, then went down into the basement, where the body of Andrea Wilborn was found.
Davis has steadfastly denied any involvement and did so again at the July meeting via an Arts & Entertainment Network documentary secured by former Channel 5 news director Lee Elsesser. Shannon, who prosecuted Davis in a marathon, five-month trial in Lubbock, to this day has other ideas. He said he was shocked when the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. "The only way that jury could not convict Davis was to believe the eyewitnesses lied," he said. "When you have $250 million and the Bill of Rights on your side, the scales of justice can get a little skewed. In my opinion, justice was not done."
One of those eyewitnesses was Priscilla, whose flashiness, Shannon acknowledged, worked against her at trial. "She was from the wrong side of the tracks and wanted to make it in Fort Worth society, so she didn't handle herself well when the defense brought out some wild times in her past. The fact that that all occurred 15 years before seemed to have been forgotten."
Still, Priscilla had a proclivity for cleavage, which only stoked the case in the press. Larry Roquemore, Jack Tinsley and Carolyn Poirot all had a hand in the coverage and shared insights at the meeting. Cochran, then with the Associated Press, would go on to write the exhaustive and detailed "Texas vs. Davis."
Both Strickland and Shannon teased Cochran about the book and his "fixation" on the case. Said Shannon: "Cochran is the only reporter I know who can milk a story for 25 years!"
But it was a lot of story. Two years after the shootings, Cullen was again in court, this time charged with solicitation of capital murder after allegedly asking an employee, David McCrory, to have Tarrant County Civil Court Judge Joe Eidson killed. Eidson was presiding over the Davises' bitter divorce. Evidence included FBI tapes of Cullen meeting with McCrory and expressing pleasure over a photo showing Eidson's "corpse" in a blood-stained T-shirt. Eidson had posed for the picture in the trunk of a car.
"We were so certain of a guilty verdict that we had met with the judge to set a date for the penalty phase," said Strickland, who was lead prosecutor. Then came the astounding not guilty verdict, the seeds for which, Strickland said, were planted when the presiding judge refused to move the trial out of Tarrant County: "I must in all candor tell you that my heart sank when the judge refused to move the trial."
The DA's office had commissioned a survey on public perceptions. Around 80 percent of the respondents thought Davis innocent of the mansion killings, and a number of those polled figured the prosecutors were conspiring with Priscilla to convict him. Cullen's power was an ally as well, Strickland said, resulting in a not guilty verdict "by reason of extreme wealth."
"People just believed that anyone that rich, powerful and well-connected is better and smarter than the rest of us," he said. "If anyone ever proved that concept fallacious, it was Cullen Davis."
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PEOPLE & PLACES
Award-winning reporter Karen Brooks, 4 1/2 years at the Star-Telegram, is freshening up that Spanish she learned in high school and at the University of Missouri in preparation for establishing the S-T's Laredo bureau. She will spend several weeks in Mexico in immersion training. The bureau should be up and running this fall. ... Suzie Pritchett has a passion -- Tarrant County history -- and a request: Help her save it. She wants to collect as many company histories as possible to supplement county history. Her employer, the Tarrant County Archives, is eager to accept these documents and keep them safe; call the archives at (817) 884-3272. ... Larry Shannon, SPJ's Web hoster and a man with all 10 fingers in copious pies, has started an online radio newspaper and daily newsletter through his http://radiodailynews.com site. "It is growing rapidly and serves radio visitors (and readers via e-mail) from coast to coast," he reports. He also is setting up a Texas Radio Hall of Fame.
Kudos & Contracts ... Stuart Bacon Advertising-Public Relations will create a comprehensive PR program for Fort Worth-based NAI/Stoneleigh Huff Brous McDowell. Stuart Bacon will develop strategies for the commercial real estate services firm that include ongoing media relations and special events. ... For the second year in a row, Carl Morris Associates has named the Star-Telegram one of the nation's top five newspapers for diversity; the other four papers are the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The Honolulu Advertiser and The Dallas Morning News. Carl Morris Associates does annual surveys about people of color in American newsrooms.
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GET A JOB
The Keller Citizen, a weekly broadsheet serving Keller, Haslet, Trophy Club, Roanoke and Southlake, is looking for an editor. Pay $30,000-$35,000. Call Bill Lewis at (817) 431-2231. ... dfw.LifeontheNet.com needs an entertainment critic to review restaurants, movies, theater, gallery/museum exhibits, etc., "and then write the most beautiful prose the Internet has ever seen," says chief Lifer Susan Darovich. "Not asking for much, eh?" Go to http://dfw.lifeonthenet.com/employment/Employ.dll/EmpPositionDetail?positionCR=18831.48936186.
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NEW MEMBERS, WELCOME
PRSA ... Lisa Albert, assistant PR account executive at Stuart Bacon ... Christiane Dwyer, PR coordinator at Pier 1 Imports ... Jennifer Lanter, marketing and outreach coordinator at the Gladney Center for Adoption ... Cathy Mueller, Denton-based assistant VP for the Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corp. ... Kathy Walker, communications consultant and grant writer ... Pam Wood, director of development at the James L. West Alzheimer Center
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COMINGS & GOINGS
Shiftings ... consummate wordsmith Gene Zipperlen, a Star-Telegram copy editor since 1983 and senior copy chief since '95, has moved to the rim part time as he begins linguistics classes this fall on his way to a doctorate in journalism; his goal is to teach
Exits ... at the S-T: copy editor Gwynne Elledge, to the Albuquerque Journal copy desk ... cops and suburbs reporter Kathy Sanders
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A NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT
Mary Dulle, GFW PRSA
The summer doldrums have hit, but your GFW PRSA board is still going full steam ahead. Next up on the agenda, Aug. 8, is a morning seminar and luncheon where we'll learn how technology is changing the way PR professionals do business. Special thanks to professional development chair Holly Ellman and program VP Laura Squires, APR, for putting together this informative and useful program.
Thinking cooler thoughts, we've begun working on our annual holiday party. SPJ and IABC have agreed it's so much fun that they want to participate again, so mark your calendars for Wednesday, Dec. 12, 5:30 p.m. Details later, but start thinking about some nifty prizes for our benefit raffle. And if you'd like to serve on the organizing committee, give me a call.
On into 2002, we're busily planning the PRSA Southwest District Conference for Feb. 21-22 in Arlington. The Fort Worth and Dallas chapters are cooperating as they did a couple of years back, so expect an outstanding program. Topics under discussion include "Integrated Marketing: a Success Story"; "How to Handle Layoffs" (whether you're the victim or the unfortunate soul who has to take the action); "Media Relations in the New Electronic World"; "PR for Private Organizations"; "Litigation Communications"; "Creativity at Work and in Private"; and "Cause Branding." If you have ideas for programming or for speakers, or if you'd like to serve on a committee, contact me -- mailto:mary.dulle@alconlabs.com -- or Kristie Aylett, and we'll put you to work with the rest of us!
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PRESIDENT'S COLUMN
Cecilia Jacobs, IABC/Fort Worth
So it's been an oatmeal day. Or week. Or month. You know the kind. Colorless. No fun. A long time between dazzles. Instead of oatmeal, you'd like French toast with lots of cinnamon and powdered sugar. Maybe pancakes, deliciously loaded, or an omelet covered in melted cheddar. Here's what you need: the August meeting -- every meeting -- of IABC/Fort Worth.
There's nothing oatmeal about our group. Last month, IABC District 5 board member Janet Allton explained how communications at ONEOK, Inc., has kept up with technology and increased effectiveness to boot. (Just a sprinkling of cowboy lingo for the diehard Texan.) Janet's presentation was definitely French toast. I plan to introduce a few of her ideas to the trail bosses where I hang my Stetson -- Fort Worth City Hall. Keep it quiet, though; I want to take 'em by surprise.
This month, Ellen Castro is bringing pancakes (or should I say flapjacks) with blueberries and whipped cream for us to sink our teeth into. What a treat! Ellen is a dynamite lady who can help communicators eliminate oatmeal from their diet FOREVER. A strong believer in passion in this business, she devoted a whole chapter on it in her book, "Spirited Leadership: 52 Ways to Build Trust on the Job." "Passion ignites the soul," she says. And I thought that burning sensation between my ribs was indigestion from so much oatmeal.
The September luncheon promises to be a real hoot -- omelet with cheddar, I mean. We'll explore a fresh way to make IABC/Fort Worth luncheons a boot-scootin' experience. Don't be surprised if president-elect Patrick Grady personally calls you about this meeting. And if you're fortunate to have co-workers or friends in the communications profession, bring them along. Encourage them to join IABC/Fort Worth. Stand up and testify. One meeting, and they'll be hooked.
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OVER & OUT
John Dycus, Fort Worth SPJ
Two dozen enthusiastic SPJ members and friends hit the Renaissance Worthington for the kickoff planning session for the 2002 national convention. Robert Leger, who'll be national president in '02, and Tammi Hughes and Stephanie Berry, possibly the only true multitaskers in Indiana, kept it lively. But you say you missed this meeting and thus it's too late to play? Hah! E-mail Kay Pirtle at mailto:mkpirtle@ev1.net and pick a team. ... From the Going Out With a Bang department: In my last public gathering as chapter president, Mike Cochran, Jack Strickland, Joe Shannon and Lee Elsesser delivered an enlightening retrospective at the hospitable UNT Health Science Center on the murders 25 years ago at Cullen Davis' west side mansion. Guys, what a send-off. Penny Cockerell and Linda Swift even gave me a standing ovation; group follow-through lacked zest, like the wave trying to ignite during croquet, but I was warmed nonetheless. Another fan said she thought about scrambling to her feet but she was eating, and in the six seconds it took her to commit, the spontaneous groundswell of affection was pretty much over. To them and executive secretary Lou Brooks and the chapter's other officers and directors -- people of wit and wisdom who can make things happen, champions all -- and to everyone who did a program these two years or attended a meeting, you came through for me, and I'm grateful. Under new prez Max Faulkner the newsletter, convention preparation and monthly programs will continue with verve and vigor. I remain in the hierarchy as E-Chaser editor and Balding Sage, with a title like immediate former factotum. OK, let's move on. ...
This'll cheer you: The Poynter Institute is chronicling the downsizing trend at http://poynter.org/crunchtimes. The site offers a layoff chart, related news stories and job openings. It evolved out of the controversy surrounding Jay Harris' quitting as publisher of the San Jose Mercury News. "The story is clearly about a lot more than Jay Harris or Knight Ridder, so we figured it would be a good idea to expand the focus accordingly," Poynter's Bill Mitchell said.