In other awards news, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced the semi-finalists for the Emmys this year. Ten drama and ten comedy shows were listed and the final five nominees will be announced on July 17. According to The TV Column in the Washington Post, the Academy released the list this year, after two years of getting scooped by TheEnvelope.com, run by the LA Times.

The team at Disney and Pixar is hoping its newest creation, Wall-E, will bring in the big bucks this weekend, and a campaign has already begun to have the film for the Best Picture Oscar, rather than just Best Animated Feature.

“If today’s moviegoers warm to Wall-E the way an earlier generation embraced E.T. the Extra-Terrestial, then the latest Pixar effort could find itself contending with the big boys for best picture,” said The Hollywood Reporter. New York Magazine’s Vulture blog is already on board with the campaign.

So, do we live in a celebrity-obsessed culture or are celebrities obsessed with journalism?  Next Thursday, Nightline will air a report from none other than Ben Affleck. The actor apparently approached the program with the idea of doing the report as a way to raise awareness about the violence, starvation, and disease that is so prevalent in the region.  Affleck joins a long list of celebrities that have tried their hand at journalism, including U2 frontman Bono, who edited an issue of Vanity Fair last year and Sean Penn, who wrote a series of articles about Iraq for the San Francisco Chronicle.

The blogosphere made much ado earlier this month about the Associated Press’ (AP) decision to send legal notice to the Drudge Retort Web site over seven 39-to-79-word postings that the organization felt was an improper use of its content. For its part, the AP says it is conducting an ongoing dialogue with bloggers over responsible use of content.

However, newspapers, the AP’s traditional base, so to speak, are increasingly unhappy with the organization as well, according to a report by Russell Adams in The Wall Street Journal.

Basically, the AP is adjusting its strategy for a changing media environment by shifting more content toward Web sites and cable TV. That isn’t sitting well with newspaper editors – the editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for one, reportedly compared AP president and CEO Tom Curley to the Politburo’s secretary general – who generally pay high prices for AP content.

In response, the eight largest newspapers in Ohio created a cooperative, the Ohio News Organization or OHNO, which editors in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Indiana have inquired about.

What’s your take on the future of the AP and content sharing among traditional news outlets?

I was hoping to keep it a surprise for some time, but someone got a little overzealous (Thanks Richard!). PRWeek recently held a luncheon roundtable with four legends in this industry: Al Golin, Harold Burson, David Finn, and Daniel Edelman. The transcription, as well as an amazing photo shoot, will be featured in an upcoming, special issue of PRWeek. Our Web site will feature podcasts and videos from the event. We were honored to be in such rarefied company.

On Thursday, the board of Anheuser Busch rejected InBev’s unsolicited $46.3 billion offer as “financially inadequate,” several days earlier than the Wall Street Journal initially reported. This early rejection seems to have been spurred by InBev’s filing suit, yesterday, in Delaware Chancery Court, where the Budweiser manufacturer is incorporated. With the declaratory judgment, InBev seeks to enable shareholders, like James Mayfield, to dismantle its board without cause, not that that would make matters much better.

Last week, PR Newswire announced a new service offered through an exclusive partnership with Two Peas, a Web/mobile applications provider. Using its Total Information Pages (TIP), PRN is now offering TIP iPhone Press Releases, optimized press releases that are delivered directly to your iPhone.

I wrote an Inside Information story earlier this year that talked about why mobile campaigns are useful, but they’re still very much on the ground floor. PRN recognizes this and wanted to be an early adopter, prepared when mobile marketing, inevitably, takes off. Read more »

Hollywood is preparing for the possibility of another strike—and another PR battle—as the deadline for contract negotiations between the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) creeps closer. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), a smaller actors’ guild, will vote on July 8 to decide whether or not to ratify a new contract with AMPTP. That will influence how SAG will look at its own contract negotiations, but currently, SAG is encouraging AFTRA members to Vote No.

The entertainment industry was dealt quite a blow after the writers’ strike that ended Feb. 12, as viewers dropped once shows returned. Studios are working overtime now to get as much done before the current SAG contract expires. And actors themselves are torn, with the likes of Tom Hanks and Sally Field backing AFTRA and Jack Nicholson and Sandra Oh backing SAG.

Read more »

I am at the Edelman New Media Academic Summit (PRWeek is media partner), watching a panel with PRWeek’s own Julia Hood, Lauren Rich Fine, Practitioner In Residence, College of Communication & Information, Kent State University; and Steve Grove, Head, News and Politics, YouTube. There was a hearty guffaw when one of the attendees (won’t rat him out) didn’t know that Dr. No was a Bond movie (Kids today - no sense of history!). Here is some running commentary.

Grove: “All of this [new media] innovation [occurs] during the campaign period. Marketers learning from what the campaigns do.”

He talked about how politicians in the 2008 campaign learned from the George Allen macaca moment. One panelist appearing in tomorrow’s session - is Mindy Finn - director of Finn Enterprises, fellow at George Washington University’s Institute for Politics.  She ran Gov. Mitt Romney’s  director of eStrategy during his campaign. When video surfaced of Romney taking a strong pro-choice stance, per Grove, Finn moved quickly to record a video with Romney explaining why he changed his stance - and smartly tagged it with the same keywords as the offending video.

Grove: “Politicians spring to YouTube and Facebook because they can’t not be there.”

Grove: (This is a paraphrase: It’s not as if Facebook or MySpace invented something new about the human condition).

Another Tribune Co. newspaper will suffer a round of job cuts at least as bad as those announced June 25 at the Hartford Courant.

Baltimore Sun publisher Timothy Ryan told employees that the newspaper, and its community publications, will reduce its workforce through buyouts, layoffs, attrition, and closing open positions. The majority of cuts will occur in the newsroom.

The Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, the union representing 400 employees in various departments, told Sun reporter Lorraine Mirabella that 55 to 60 newsroom jobs are on the chopping block.

Meanwhile, the number of job cuts – 57 – at the Courant had to come as a surprise to many staffers, especially since Tribune COO Randy Michaels cited the newspaper earlier this month, along with the Sun, as two of the company’s more productive outlets. Employees at newspapers that Michaels said were less productive, such as the Los Angeles Times, have to be wondering what’s in store for them.