IABC local update: Eric Morgenstern, APR, Fellow PRSA and CEO of Morningstar Communications in Overland Park, Kan., will show how to "Think Excellence, Not Difference: Positioning Strategies for Success" at the Dallas IABC meeting Tuesday, Nov. 14. Register here.
PRSA local update: Ruth Cogswell of Strategic Communications Partners will plumb the finer points of litigation PR -- what it is, how it works, how to craft a successful strategy -- at the Independent Practitioners SIG meeting Thursday, Nov. 16 (different day this month), 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Four Star Coffee Bar, 3324 W. Seventh St. Cogswell has worked in presidential politics and network news in Washington, D.C., and represented law firms and their clients in marketing and litigation PR cases. Her experience spans the S&L crisis, environmental and mass tort class action and white-collar crimes in local and appellate courts as well as before the Supreme Court.
PRSA local update II: The f stops here. Photography, its techniques and talents -- the latter personified by Star-Telegram photo director Max Faulkner; Glen Ellman, freelance photographer (and husband of Greater Fort Worth PRSA president Holly Ellman); and NBC 5 photographer Mike Grimm -- will dominate the PRSA Education SIG meeting Wednesday, Nov. 15, at 11:30 a.m. in TCU's Dee J. Kelly Alumni & Visitors Center. Faulkner will discuss how Star-Telegram photographers now take video footage as well as still shots and how video will influence the paper's future, while Ellman will explain the best way to manage digital assets. Grimm will talk about KXAS using new video technology in the field to get video online and on the air faster. The forum is free for PRSA members, $10 for nonmembers. A boxed lunch will be served. RSVP to Gayla Todd at g.todd@tcu.edu.
PRSA local update III: PRSA Masters, the special interest group for accredited practitioners or those who've been in public relations for 15 years or more, dined in late August with former Fort Worth PIO Pat Svacina, now communications director for U.S. Rep. Kay Granger. Sixteen masters met at Reata and enjoyed Svacina's take on the Wright Amendment, the Trinity River Vision and defense appropriations, as well as his lessons learned from the 2000 tornado and the Wedgwood shootings. The masters also met with the NuPros and TCU and UTA PRSSA students Sept. 28 for a "speed mentoring" session at the Fort Worth Club. Six masters hosted four roundtables while the 12 NuPros and students rotated, mixed and discussed résumés, career paths, technology and new media forms. The 90-minute session introduced the students to the masters and their sage, real-world experiences.
PRSA local update IV: Learn all about "Models for Behavior Change -- How the Cooper Aerobics Center Has Promoted Health for Over 36 Years" at the Dallas PRSA luncheon Thursday, Nov. 9. More here.
SPJ national update: LA Times editor urges others to fight cuts; and when the rhetoric and the votes don't match. Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet, who publicly opposed staff cuts at his paper in September, encourages other editors to push back against similarly inclined owners. "Sometimes when I sit down with editors and managing editors, I find them all too willing to buy the argument for cuts," he told more than 100 editors at the annual gathering of the Associated Press Managing Editors in New Orleans. "We need to be a feistier bunch." Baquet made headlines when he objected to cuts proposed by the Times' owner, the Tribune Co. of Chicago. He said he received support from newspaper people nationwide, as well as from two publishers and even a Wall Street analyst. More here. ... The nation's largest organization of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans has released ratings of Congress members on votes regarding issues affecting U.S. troops, veterans and military families. IAVA surveyed the 107th, 108th and 109th congressional sessions, tallying more than 300 votes. Fewer than one-quarter of House and Senate members scored an A. All Senate Democrats rated higher than any Senate Republicans. Texans Kay Granger and Joe Barton scored a C, Kay Bailey Hutchison a D+ and John Cornyn a D-. "Every member of Congress claims to support the troops, but this guide shows us that more often than not, the rhetoric does not match the reality," said Iraq War veteranand IAVA founder Paul Rieckhoff. More here and here.
SPJ national update II: Judge orders release of White House logs; and "media let the country down." U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina on Oct. 20 ordered the administration to release information about who visited Vice President Dick Cheney's office and personal residence, an order that could renew debate over lobbyists' White House access. The Washington Post asked for two years of White House visitor logs in June, but the Secret Service refused to process the request. More here. ... New York Times executive editor Bill Keller says the American news media failed to do its job in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq when it should have been digging deeper into the administration's rationale for war. "The American media let the country down in its reporting before the war," Keller told a standing-room-only audience at a lecture at the University of Michigan. More here.
SPJ national update III: Evangelical's book says Bush using Christians; and state legislators' financial disclosures from 43 states now online. More than five years after the president created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, the former second-in-command there says it was used almost exclusively to win political points with evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities and that its primary mission -- providing financial support to charities that serve the poor -- never got the presidential support it needed to succeed. "National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as 'ridiculous,' 'out of control' and just plain 'goofy,' " David Kuo, an evangelical Christian conservative, writes in "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction." The political affairs office headed by Karl Rove was especially "eye-rolling," Kuo's book says. It says staff members in that office "knew 'the nuts' were politically invaluable, but that was the extent of their usefulness." Kuo's former boss, James Towey, disputed many of the assertions in the book. More here and here. ... Most states require legislative candidates to disclose their personal finances as well as campaign finances, but about half the states don't post the reports online. The Center for Public Integrity has filled much of the gap. More here.
