MEETINGS
Will the Day be a Bronze Bust? Not Hardly
Pat Svacina, formerly the Fort Worth public information officer and now communications director for U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, will keynote IABC/Fort Worth's awards extravaganza -- the Bronze Quill luncheon -- June 1 at the Petroleum Club. The presentation annually recognizes Tarrant County communicators' best work in a plethora of print and visual categories.
Time & date: 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, June 1
Place: Petroleum Club, Carter-Burgess Plaza, 777 Main St., 39th floor
Parking: $2.50 in parking garage at Seventh and Commerce streets (get ticket validated)
Cost: $25 members, $35 nonmembers, $20 students
RSVP: Julie Trowbridge at trowbridgeja@c-b.com (deadline was May 27, but it's worth a try, to see if there's still room)
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Pitch a Home Run for Your Company or Client
Attend the June 9 PRSA professional development seminar and leave the Petroleum Club armed with tactics to increase your coverage, cultivate newstory angles and sell the toughest business editor in 10 seconds or less. Margo Mateas of The Public Relations Training Company (San Jose, Calif.) will lead the seminar and also address the monthly luncheon.
Regardless of how scintillating the news release or how crafty the strategic planning, anyone's cold-calling skills may need some fine-tuning. Mateas, a.k.a. the Media Maven, responds with "Four Things Every Editor Wants to Hear From You" and "Ten Do's and Don'ts of E-mail Pitching."
A former journalist who has trained PR practitioners to secure coverage in such outlets as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN and Investor's Business Daily, Mateas founded The Public Relations Training Company in 2001. Her clients include Weber Shandwick Worldwide, Six Flags Theme Parks, Kaiser Permanente and Marshalls/TJ Maxx.
Time & date: seminar 9-11:30 a.m., luncheon 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m. Wednesday, June 9
Place: Petroleum Club, Carter-Burgess Plaza, 777 Main St., 39th floor
Parking: free valet in parking garage at Seventh and Commerce streets (get ticket validated)
Cost: seminar and luncheon $45 members, $55 nonmembers, $30 students; seminar only $25 members, $32 nonmembers, $12 students; luncheon only $20 members, $23 nonmembers, $18 students
RSVP by 5 p.m. June 4: rsvp@fortworthprsa.org; due to policy changes at the Petroleum Club, RSVPs for PRSA's monthly luncheons must be received no later than Friday preceding the date (RSVP no-shows will be billed, and RSVPs received after the deadline will be charged the nonmember rate)
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Success in Life: It Begins with Knowing Your Hats
Scheduling difficulties jammed the June program, and the chapter customarily takes August off. Gather among yourselves for those two months, if you like, and tell us what you learned. Professional development meetings will return full-force in September, with the first one already planned -- Star-Telegram reader advocate David House and perhaps a panel of disgruntled readers (shouldn't be hard to find) plumbing the perceptions and pitfalls of covering Iraq, the November elections, etc. Treasonous liberal rag! Wear your hardhat.
No scheduling conflicts should derail the summer party in July at breathtaking Cabo San Hardee on the sun-dappled shores of west Grand Prairie. Details next month. Leave your hardhat home.
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STRAIGHT STUFF
A little orange juice with the agenda. The next meeting of the D/FW Network of Hispanic Communicators will be at 9:30 a.m. June 5 at IHOP in Euless at 2309 W. Airport Freeway. The Hispanic Media Fair will be June 22 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Center for Community Cooperation, 2900 Live Oak St. in Dallas. More at dfwhispanic.org. ...
Deadline to file for one of seven seats on the national PRSA 2005 Board of Directors -- president-elect, treasurer, secretary, four directors -- is 5 p.m., EDT, June 28. One director position will be filled from the Southeast District and one from the Southwest District, and two are open to members from any district. Also nominated will be three Assembly delegates at-large and one Canadian delegate at-large. Candidates must be accredited and have served in local leadership positions. More at prsa.org/_about/leadership/candidates.asp or from Debbie Girard at (212) 460-1484 or debbie.girard@prsa.org. ...
Application deadline is July 15 for the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation's $40,000 Eugene C. Pulliam Fellowship for Editorial Writing. Pulliam fellows take courses, pursue independent study, travel or tackle any other endeavor that enriches their knowledge of a public interest issue. In some cases, the fellowship has resulted in editorials and other writings, including books. A candidate must be a full-time editorial writer at a U.S. news publication and have at least three years experience as an editorial writer. Fellows do not have to leave their jobs. More at spj.org/fellowships_pulliam.asp, or contact Joyce Dobson, Sigma Delta Chi Foundation, (317) 927-8000 ext. 213 or jdobson@spj.org. ...
The next PRSA Nu Pros happy hour social will be at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 16, on the patio at Blue Mesa Grill. The Nu Pros group offers career development support and other services geared to new PR professionals. Says organizer Adrienne Gaviglio: "Join us every PRSA meeting at the Nu Pros table. We have reserved a section especially for you and your friends." Reach her at gaviglioa@aol.com. ...
The American Cancer Society needs communications volunteers for leadership positions (committees meet the third Monday of the month at 6 p.m., beginning Aug. 16). Upcoming campaigns include Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Great American Smokeout, Colon Cancer Awareness Month and Relay for Life. More from Theresa Davis, (817) 927-1616.
SPJ national update: Portrait of a soldier; making the world safe for Halliburton; and meet the new boss, same as the old boss. A frustrated and bitter Secretary of State Colin Powell is uneasy with the president's agenda and fatigued from battling the Pentagon, Wil Hylton writes in the June GQ. Powell's chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson: "I have some reservations about people who have never been in the face of battle, ... who are making cavalier decisions about sending men and women out to die. ... I don't care whether [these] utopians are Vladimir Lenin in a sealed train going to Moscow or Paul Wolfowitz. Utopians, I don't like." ... Twelve current and former truckers who regularly made the dangerous 300-mile resupply run from Camp Cedar in southern Iraq to Camp Anaconda near Baghdad tell Knight Ridder that the trucks were empty while their employer, a subsidiary of Halliburton, billed the U.S. for hauling what they called "sailboat fuel." More here. ... Many of the editors and reporters at al-Sabah, a U.S.-funded newspaper that occupation officials called a model for Mideast journalism, walked out May 4, citing threats to their editorial independence. More here.
