PR Grants Available for Non-Profit Organizations
2005 Media Trends
Readership Studies: New Media Gains Eyeballs Across All Demographics
Top 10 Internet News Sites
F.r.e.e Media Monitoring Trial
11th Annual PR Blunders List
How to Get a Reporter's Attention?
2006 Full-Year Calendar
Trade Show News - PR Opportunities
Articles Invited on PR

    For the third consecutive year, CyberAlert (www.cyberalert.com), the online media monitoring company, is awarding PR grants to not-for-profit organizations. In each of the past two years, CyberAlert awarded grants to 16 organizations in the United States and Canada.
    The PR grants range in value from $2,700 to $3,900 for each grant and consist of one full year of free online news monitoring services. For the coming year, CyberAlert has committed to awarding a minimum of 10 grants with a total value of at least $35,000.
    All not-for-profit, educational and charitable organizations in the United States and Canada are eligible to apply for the grants. CyberAlert is accepting grant applications until December 31 and will announce the grant recipients in January. Previous award-winners are not eligible for another award.
    More information about the PR Grants program, including a list of the 2005 and 2004 award winners, is available at http://www.cyberalert.com/prgrants.html.
    A simple and secure grant application is available online at https://secure.cyberalert.com/grants.html.
    To forward the PR Grants Information to your colleagues. Just hit "Forward" in your e-mail program and enter the e-mail address(es) of your colleagues.

    Media underwent a major transformation in 2005. Here are some of the key trends.

1. Blogs have bloomed as a major information source. Companies have adopted the new medium as a marketing and public relations tool.
2. Traditional media (newspapers, magazines, TV, radio) lost ground to new media "gadgets" (Internet, Xbox, iPod, TiVO, Slingbox) in terms of "eyeballs".
3. With increased bandwidth, multimedia (audio/video) became more prevalent on the Internet - with online TV slowly becoming a reality (see Slingbox).
4. RSS became the standard tool to create personal news reports.
5. E-mail marketing gained market share and maintained effectiveness, in spite of increased spam.
6. Webinars became a successful new marketing and public relations channel.
7. Cost of click throughs in Web advertising started to decline.
8. Web-based video blogs (vBlogs/vlogs) increased tenfold from about 200 to over 2,000. VBlogs are blogs with audio and video — more like a "webcast" or "video program" than a "publication".

    The Nielsen/NetRatings' Week in Review of 11/22/2005 showed the following Top 10 online news and information sites.

Top 10 Online News & Information Destinations
	2005			2004
Brand or Channel	Unique Audience October (000)	Active Reach (%)	Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)	Unique Audience October (000)	Active Reach (%)	Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)
Weather Channel	12,903	10.12	0:18:38	5.709	5.42	0:05:39
Yahoo! News	12,859	10.08	0:13:52	5,962	5.66	0:09:53
MSNBC	11,182	8.77	0:12:03	4,840	4.59	0:07:52
CNN	10,474	8.21	0:20:56	5,746	5.46	0:10:30
About.com	9,501	7.45	0:03:19	4,147	3.94	0:03:02
AOL News	7,797	6.11	0:21:22	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Yahoo! Local	7,686	6.03	0:05:52	2,909	2.76	0:05:57
Wikipedia	6,142	4.82	0:05:03	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
WeatherBug	6,074	4.76	0:10:36	6,283	6.45	0:14:18
Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division	5,009	3.93	0:09:28	2,506	2.38	0:08:01

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings

Some key points:
    Visitors are spending substantially more time on Internet news sites - and less time with newspapers, television and radio.
    Only one of the ten news sites in the Nielsen/NetRatings' report is a traditional newspaper publisher - and that one aggregates the contents of many newspapers including USA Today. Three of the Top 10 are cable broadcast news or weather stations. Six sites are web-only news and information sources with no print edition.
    The top online news sites have "circulation" ("unique audience") that is far greater than the print circulation of the country's largest newspapers.
    Many print publications publish their news articles first on the Internet. Many of the stories that will appear in tomorrow morning's New York Times, for instance, can be seen on the newspaper's Internet site (www.nytimes.com) the previous afternoon.
    Placement of news releases on Web sites can vastly increase audience size because of the high numbers of daily readers and because Web sites have what is referred to as a "long news tail" or "persistence". While newspapers are usually discarded at the end of the day, information in Web sites tends to persist for weeks or months, readily available to all site visitors and search engine users.
    Lesson: In devising a distribution scheme for corporate news releases, it's important to target Internet news sites - especially those Internet news sources that do not have a print version. To do this, it is best to utilize distribution channels such as Business Wire (www.businesswire.com) that automatically place news releases on those sites. And, bear in mind that the Web sites of TV networks and local TV stations often publish far more news than the on-air news broadcast. News stories that have no hope of making the on-air broadcast are often carried on the broadcaster's website.
    Most news sites on the Internet now use RSS feeds to distribute news. Consumers sign up to receive RSS feeds based on key words. In developing news releases for distribution through Internet news sites, it's important to optimize news release content for key words that consumers are likely to enter into search engines or to specify for their RSS feeds. So, the news release should include not just the corporate name (e.g. Nikon), brand names (Coolpix S4), but also the generic product category names (digital camera, digital photography, snapshots, etc.) that consumers are likely to use to conduct searches.
    Finally, monitoring Internet-based sites should be an integral part of a corporate media monitoring and measurement program.

    CyberAlert is now offering a 2 in 1 no-risk 14-day F.R.E.E TRIAL of both its CyberAlert 4.0 online news monitoring and clipping service and its CyberAlert TV broadcast news monitoring service. The online news monitoring service monitors over 25,000 online news sources worldwide in 22 languages while the TV news monitoring service monitors the closed caption text of all news programs on more than 600 TV stations in the U.S. The F.R.E.E. TRIAL is available by completing a simple online form at https://secure.cyberalert.com/ftpyoorder.html. Service starts the next day. No credit card is required. In its special promotion for December, CyberAlert is offering a 2 for the price of 1 news monitoring special. New clients who order the news monitoring service at the regular retail price of $225/month also receive the broadcast monitoring service at absolutely no additional charge.

In its 11th annual compilation of PR blunders, Fineman PR of San Francisco has cited a celebrity without a center, Harvardıs president, the military "buying" news, and an electronic game containing hidden sex scenes. The "winners" for 2005:

1. CRUISE, OUT-OF-CONTROL
   Tom Cruise's "War of the Worlds" press tour blew up on the "Today" show after he got on his Scientology soap box and lit into host Matt Lauer. Cruise's diatribe against psychiatry included criticizing Brooke Shields for the medication she received during her post-pregnancy depression. The press jumped all over Cruise, and so did Shields. In a New York Times op-ed, Shields called his remarks "a disservice to mothers everywhere." Cruise's other bizarre antics in '05, including Oprah Winfrey's sofa jumping escapade to show his love for actress Katie Holmes, also earned him public ridicule. "Sure they're in Love — with Publicity," headlined the Boston Globe. PR Week said, "The more you jump up and down about it, the less people believe it's the real thing."
2. PAT ROBERTSON'S DIPLOMACY
   Uncle Sam's relations with oil rich Venezuela worsened after televangelist Pat Robertson suggested the U.S. 'take out' its president Hugo Chavez. The rather un-Christian comments ignited fire and brimstone from the world's press and lent credibility to Chavez' contention that President Bush, somewhat of an evangelical in his own right, is out to get him. "He is that rare preacher who has invited the nation not to pray together, but to prey together," wrote Tom Teepen in the San Jose Mercury News.
3. UAW UNWELCOMES MARINES
   Organized labor is having enough trouble without alienating the U.S. Marines. United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger barred Marine reservists from its parking lot if they drove foreign-made cars or sport pro-Bush bumper stickers. The Marines had parked there for years because they train nearby. Gettelfinger apologized for the unpatriotic ambush after the Michigan press played the story, but the Marines said they would find alternative parking. "In trying to stiff the Marines, the union signaled that its petty political concerns trump the needs of the armed forces and the sanctity of the voting booth," wrote Daniel Howes in the Detroit News.
4. NO BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT FROM BENEFIT MANAGEMENT COMPANY
   It appears that Michigan employee-benefits firm Benefit Management Administrators Inc. needs help managing its own employees. The company fired Suzette Boler for, among other things, taking too much time to say good-bye to her husband who left to fight in Iraq, according to an Associated Press story. The poorly timed pink slip fueled public outrage forcing the company to lock its doors and turn off its phones. When the company's founder responded to TV station Channel 8 in Grand Rapids, he compounded the blunder by pressing additional complaints against her to justify the firing.
5. HARVARD'S SUMMERS STORM
   Publicly expressing sentiments that women are not good at math and science is not the kind of stereotyping you might expect from Harvard. So when Harvard's president, Larry Summers, said gender differences are why fewer women than men excel in those areas, the school's outraged faculty and alumni called for his ouster. According to Business Week, "his remarks about women may make it hard for Harvard to recruit top female scientists," and "harm fund-raising" for much needed reforms. (Added note: Summers also just married a Harvard professor, having ignored the generally accepted rule in corporations prohibiting affairs with a person under your supervision. The CEO of Boeing was recently fired for just such a transgression.)
6. ALL THE NEWS MONEY CAN BUY
   The U.S. military's Washington, D.C.-based communications subcontractor in Iraq has been secretly paying newspapers to run positive "news" articles in an attempt to polish the coalition's image, denounce insurgents and praise U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country. These articles, purportedly written by independent journalists, have been touted as unbiased news accounts when, in fact, they were one-sided stories delivered to Baghdad media by American troops. Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi with The Los Angeles Times put it this way, "The military's effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media is taking place even as U.S. officials are pledging to promote democratic principles, political transparency and freedom of speech in a country emerging from decades of dictatorship and corruption."
7. GRAND THEFT AUTO'S UNDERCOVER ADDITION
   As if best selling video game "Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas" didn't have enough violence and debauchery already, its maker Rockstar Games added hidden animated sex scenes. The soft-core porn ignited a political firestorm forcing a new "adults-only" rating reported the Wall Street Journal. Other coverage said Best Buy and Circuit City pulled the game from their stores.
8. MERCK'S PAIN
   Hiding the risks associated with taking its painkiller Vioxx could cause Merck an $18 billion litigation heartache. Even though studies in 2000 showed Vioxx-takers five times more likely to have a heart attack than individuals using a generic medicine, Merck publicly downplayed the risks. A later study blew the lid off Vioxx resulting in several thousand lawsuits. "Should they have been open about concerns? The failure to be honest is what gets companies (in product liability cases) in trouble," law professor Anthony Sebok told the Associated Press.
9. SNAPPLE'S MELTDOWN
   It was the first day of summer in steamy New York, so Snapple put a 35,000 pound ice pop in the middle of Union Square at midday. When the 25-foot high ice sculpture melted, bicyclists wiped out in the stream of kiwi-strawberry goo, according to the NY Daily News. The tabloid's headline "Gooing, Gooing, Gone" summed up the fiasco for Snapple. "It was a big boo-boo, they should have had that [up] before the sun came out," onlooker Kizzy Vazquez told the Daily News as she watched fire fighters wash Snapple's ill-fated stunt down the sewer.
10. NATL. ACADEMY OF SCIENCES PUBLISHES HOW-TO FOR MILK TERROR
    When Lawrence M. Wein and Yifan Liu of Stanford University wrote a scientific article discussing how terrorists could poison thousands of people by releasing toxins into the U.S. milk supply, the National Academy of Sciences published it over the objections of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Academy president Bruce Alberts editorialized that terrorists would not learn anything useful from the article and that such information is already available on the Internet. However, news organizations reported HHS's vehement disagreement with Reuters quoting HHS spokesperson Christina Pearson, "Our concern is that if the academy is wrong, the consequences can be dire."

About the Fineman PR Top 10 PR Blunders List Fineman PR assembles the annual PR Blunders List as a reminder of how critical public relations is to businesses and organizations. Selections are limited to Americans, American companies, or offenses that occurred in America. Selections are limited to avoidable acts or omissions that cause adverse publicity; image damage was done to self, company, society or others; and acts were widely reported in 2005.

SOURCE Fineman PR

1. Get the story into an industry-focused blog - and then bring the blog to the reporter's attention. (Stories often originate in blogs and then move to mainstream media.)
2. Provide the reporter with a "scoop" before the story is released on the Internet. ("Company X will announce tomorrow....")
3. Produce a company blog that provides a "behind the scenes" view of the story - written by knowledgeable insiders and enabling feedback from readers.
4. Create triangulated customer stories. That is, customer stories that have three angles - yours, your client's, and the reporter's readers. Arrange to give the reporter access to your client (who agrees to do it in order to advance her own PR agenda).
5. Throw a party. Invite journalists. Meet them at the door. Immediately introduce them to your executives. (And make sure the executives are prepared with "talking points".)
6. Instead of a holding a poorly-attended press conference, take a page from the entertainment industry and grant individual reporters an interview with your company "celebrity".
7. Work the press room of the industry trade show and then invite key reporters to walk the trade show aisles with one of your executives. (What technology reporter would pass up an opportunity to look over Bill Gates' shoulder as he explores new technologies on a trade show floor and points out interesting stuff?)
8. Make it easy for the reporter to see the product demo. Bring it to him.
9. Feed a reporter an interesting story not about your company.
10. Find ways to say "Yes" to most reporter requests.
11. Obtain the reporter's permission to include him on the mailing list of newsletters you distribute to customers.
12. Use technology that saves the reporter's time.

    Full-year calendars on 8-1/2 x 11 are often difficult to find - especially ones that are easy to read. Here's one that you can print out and post near your desk for quick reference.

    Searching for PR opportunities? Business Wire (www.businesswire.com) publishes a list of trade shows that offer opportunities to reach trade press - and other opportunities for specialized public relations activities.

    Media Monitoring News (MMN) invites PR and marketing professionals to submit articles for publication. Articles on any subject of importance to public relations are welcome. Article length can vary. With distribution to 150,000+ public relations professionals and an extraordinarily high "open" rate, MMN has one of the highest circulation figures of any PR-focused publication. Submit articles to Bill Comcowich at comcowic@cyberalert.com and use the subject line "Article Submission for MMN."

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