The New York Observer has a piece today about the Associated Press making the decision to no longer cover the exploits of Paris Hilton, which reportedly accounted for at least two wire stories a week. One could argue that they shouldn’t have been covering her that extensively in the first place, but maybe this move will help to redefine the lines between celebrity journalism and real news. Somewhere Lloyd Grove (sub req’d) is asking what took so long.

A bit late to this, but the story is timeless. So maybe I’m early?

Frank Bruni, former Rome bureau chief and current food critic of the New York Times, had less than stellar things to say about Jeffrey Chodorow’s new restaurant Kobe Prime.
Chodorow smartly showed Bruni who was boss by paying his employer $40,000 to rebut Bruni’s claims in an advertisement (pdf) running in the NYT events section. Tres strategic! In all seriousness, Bruni holds great sway over the dining public, and restaurateurs do need to fight back if they feel they’ve been treated unfairly.

The most interesting side note to the ad - other than any creative dept. would cringe at its composition of eight paragraphs and no images - is that it launched Chodorow’s blog. If only kids could do the same for their blogs featuring dissertations on emo vs. screamo.

Only one post, but 144 comments and counting. With Chodorow’s recent track record, maybe he should leave the blog as is.

. Related to that, Bruni responds, by talking to the NYer, but not on his own blog. Pageviews, Mr. Bruni, pageviews help pay your salary.

For those of you who aren’t in the business of reading comments, JetBlue’s Jenny Dervin responded to our blog post about her comments. (How meta!). Anyway, her thoughts are below.

Eech…
Hi everyone. I was addressing my comments to the crazy freelance and very few strange agency calls we received during the height of our media siege, who offered such helpful advice as “You need to have your CEO be filmed at the airport handing out Hershey kisses.” Ummmm… not so much. We needed our CEO exactly where he was - taking command of our airline’s recovery program and developing a meaningful bill of rights.

I have great friends and mentors in the PR agency industry and Corporate Communications departments who offered help - real help - in figuring out our media strategy, and hundreds of others who simply called or emailed their best wishes for our team. I absolutely count on my network to stay informed and knowledgeable of the new media and best practices with traditional media. I have revisited countless times over the last two weeks the lessons I learned from my colleagues and bosses at prior companies, and I can’t thank them enough for teaching me not only great communication skills, but fantastic survival skills during a crisis as well.

Every industry has an ambulance chaser segment, and in crisis situations, this is the group that smells blood and goes in for the kill. I was addressing my comments to those people, who probably don’t even read PRWeek, because they are only interested in the next big company to list on their website.

I won’t make a list. It’s negative and not worth my time. Cream rises to the top, and the rest… well, I actually don’t know what happens to the rest. You get my drift.

I love communications, and I love Communicators. You know who you are!

Best,
Jenny

Be jealous reader! I spent lunch today lounging in a brand new British Airways business class seat and feasting on a steak prepared by an executive chef. True, I never left Manhattan, but that’s neither here or there.

The experience was a New York launch event for the new business class accommodations in BA’s Club World, which began rolling out in November 2006 in London. (PRWeek reports (sub req’d) this week on the airline’s selection of Porter Novelli as its first North American AOR. The firm will be helping with the Club World launch.) BA was the first to introduce the flat-bed seats for business travelers in 2000. Competition has compelled them to upgrade.

The new business class cabin includes seats that are 25% wider, a grab-what-you-like Club Kitchen, and on-demand entertainment with up to 100 movies and TV programs to choose from. I plugged in some dates and it looks like the price for flying at this level of comfort from JFK to London Heathrow will run about $8,000 round-trip.

During the Q&A with Robin Hayes, BA’s EVP, Americas, many talked about the inconvenience of a one carry-on allowance, the timetable for upgrading first class seating, and the chunk of business that the Eurostar had taken from BA’s London/Paris route. I wondered if BA has ever had to deal with anything similar to the continued meltdown at JetBlue. John Lampl, the VP of corporate communications for the Americas, simply crossed his fingers to ward off anything that unfortunate.

“We have a lot more recovery,” said Lisa Lam, VP of corporate communications Americas. She called the problem that JetBlue and other “no frills carriers” would have in this situation a “knock-on effect” where very tight schedules and a lack of resources cause a ripple effect of delays and cancellations. In other words, it wouldn’t happen to them. But, if you are delayed in the BA terminal and you’re a business class customer (what one flight attendant at the event called their “bread & butter” business), they can offer you a meal in their lounge and you can take a shower or have a massage in Heathrow or JFK where the spa is available. That would definitely take the edge off that pesky delay.

A few weeks ago the Denver Post’s Woody Paige told me the NFL had the greatest PR team of all the sports leagues. “If Ford Motor Co. had the NFL PR machine they wouldn’t be losing money” was his quote. He also said that if the NFL PR team had worked for Enron no one would have cared about all the company’s wrongdoing.

It seems that Paige might be right. And I’m not saying that because of anything the league’s PR staff did around the Super Bowl, it’s because the NFL continues to remain untainted by all of the trouble its thug representatives are causing these days. There’s Tank Johnson and his arsenal of guns and what seems like the entire Cincinnati Bengals team at this point getting arrested for one thing or another.

And now perennial troublemaker and wannabe gangster Adam “Pacman” Jones, of the Tennessee Titans made news again when he threatened the life of a bouncer at a strip club in Las Vegas, according to the club’s owner, telling him he would be dead by the end of the night after Jones was removed from the club. A gunman later proceeded to shoot three people outside the club injuring two and leaving one paralyzed from the waist down for life. The club owner swears it was a member of Jones’ posse.
Either NFL commissioner Roger Goodell or Titans ownership needs to do something, and fast. In one of the greatest rants ever New York sports radio host Chris “Mad Dog” Russo went (YouTube link), on Friday about why the league needs to get rid of Jones and anyone else who can’t “act right” immediately.

The new commissioner needs to step up, start cleaning house and show some guts here because eventually that shine is going to wear off and these issues are going to start causing some serious image problems for the almighty NFL.

A delightfully candid quote from Jenny Dervin, Jet Blue’s director of communications, in our cover news story this week. I shall reprint it below.

“Jet Blue corporate communications does not have a PR agency of record nor do we ever intend on getting one,” she said. “Those agencies that felt the need to contact our CEO and the corp comms department directly, telling us exactly what we were doing wrong, were not helpful and they are all going to go on a special list that I’m going to share with my colleagues in the PR industry encouraging them never to do business with those companies.”

So, fess up. Are you on the list? Anonymity is guaranteed. If you’re not on the list, what do you think about her comments?

Just how much do you know about biomimicry? That’s what I thought. The fascinating process of studying nature to develop solutions to human problems was one of the many topics addressed Tuesday at The Cleantech Forum XII in San Francisco. Steve Jurvetson of venture capital firm Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson and Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature talked about how technology solutions came from studying things like bats, algae, and whale fins. Check out what humans can learn from mollusks. The conference of investors, scientists and 30 international companies continues today, with PR executives from Bite Communications, Blue Practice, and Weber Shandwick in attendance.

I received a press release last Friday from Freewebs, a social networking site based in Washington DC. They sent the release on behalf of one of its sites, “Sit Here,” which encourages people to hang out on their stoops (New York-ese for front porch) and talk to their neighbors. The site was a school project created by three Parsons students who came up with the idea after talking to an old man who lamented the lack of stoop conversation in Brooklyn since the good old days. Incredibly, the project has been mentioned in an story that was picked up by a ton of media outlets nationwide.

The release included a line that I find curious, saying the site “addresses the decreasing culture of social interaction in cities across the United States.”

While the type of interaction has changed drastically, the level of communication is at a high right now, especially among the younger demographic, who seem to be the ones most responsive to the ‘Sit Here’ site and social networking in general. Comments on the site include personal anecdotes and links to other sites of interest. Here’s some advice on how to reach young people from Sarah Feldman, one of the “Sit Here” creators: “Don’t try to make something look cool. You know those [anti-]drug ads, they try to be cool, but in school, we laugh at them. They should be serious.”

In other words, don’t try so hard. In the few months that I’ve been with PRWeek, I’ve noticed that there’s such a focus on tapping into consumer lifestyles that some of the events and strategies become outlandish. Here are three people who used flyers to invite people to their site and to their front steps, and they get in the AP. Fluke? Maybe. But the whole thing is so natural and easy, it couldn’t help but to work.

Last week we reported that Merck’s lobbying efforts to get the HPV vaccine Gardasil mandated in states across the country could backfire and actually slow the process. Yesterday, low and behold, the pharmaceutical company announced it was halting its lobbying efforts nationwide after facing a growing contingent of critics, some of whom were supporters of the vaccine itself. The misstep is particularly bitter for the drug giant as it has been enjoying overwhelmingly positive press following Gardasil’s approval last June, and likely didn’t need an overzealous lobbying effort to ensure it became status quo for young women around the country. It will be interesting to monitor how states considering legislation on the vaccine proceed from here.

News first in AdAge that Aflac was planning to “shut the duck up,” referring to its “spokesduck” was rebutted by the company in a statement titled “Long Live the Aflac Duck.”

“Like all of America, we love the Aflac Duck,” said Jeff Herbert, Aflac CMO said, in the statement. “It is as central to our marketing efforts today as it will continue to be going forward.”

The conversation highlighted the unique intersection of marketing and consumerism, whereby the company’s marketing goals, per the AdAge story, is clearly to focus on advertising that highlights Aflac’s business of supplemental insurance rather than just strengthen its name recognition, but didn’t want to alienate the people who just love the duck, regardless of what company he’s representing.