PRNewser

Top shelf booze and tuna tartar flowed freely last night at the annual movable media feast that is the Ken Sunshine holiday party, or, the Ken Sunshine & Shawn Sachs party as this is the first year Ken is hosting with a partner.

With a last-minute change (jokingly pawned off as a smokescreen to keep Rudy Giuliani from crashing) the party landed at Meatpacking hotspot One Little West 12th.

I spoke to the gregarious Sachs about the ‘plan’ for a party that put Ben Affleck, Pat O’Brien, John Mayer, media elite including Page6’s Paula Froelich & Bill Hoffman, the News’ George Rush, and GMA’s Monica Escobedo in the same mix as clients 1199SEIU, America’s Second Harvest, New York Organ Donor Network, Do Something and the Transit Workers Union.

(Hoffman, incidentally was overheard talking about the great items publicists could be pitching from books and such but don’t, and that “a lot of flacks should be sent to flack school.”)

According to Sachs, “It’s simple really, we let the staff invite whoever they want from the different parts of the business. Some agency holiday parties are staff only, we open it up to everyone, including other PR people we know. Other agencies have staff-only parties. Who needs to spend more time with people from the office?”

The other benefit beyond plying the media with posh nightclub surroundings is putting like-minded clients together, Sachs continued. “The Second Harvest people talked to Do Something about the current food shortage. They’re meeting today to see how they can raise awareness together.”

Others confirmed on the scene were Access Hollywood producer Jennifer Zweben, Pete Shapiro, former owner of the Wetlands, and new owner of Brooklyn Bowl, GMA’s publicist Bridgette Maney, and of course our boss, mediabistro.com founder Laurel Touby.

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of WIRED magazine, Long Tail blogger, and best-selling “Long Tail” author created a minor stir in the PR world yesterday when he published the email addresses of over 300 “lazy” PR people guilty of invading his In box. There are a lot of ‘info@’ and other newsletter-type address on the list along with dozens upon dozens of brand-name tech PR shops, some with multiple addresses.

Instead of adding to the flurry of opinions, we contacted the man himself who kindly responded with further context to help the shamed understand. He did after all, say ’sorry’ in the subject line, and did not use full names and full pitches to in his spammers-delight list. By the way Todd, though we appreciate your honesty, we don’t think lobbing a generic pitch via Facebook ranks alongside the Edelman/Wal-Mart story.

We can’t go in to PR lessons here. Read Anderson’s note and take it to heart. There are real reasons to pitch him, and there are slews of other editors, writers and contributors you could try first. The commenter who complained about the staff directory is really missing it. The magazine has a masthead, and many of their contributors have personal blogs…nevermind, no lessons.

Since Anderson’s Gladwellian transition to Long Tail superpundit, he’s busier than ever. We were pleased he took the time send his comments to PRNewser (quick disclosure: I did PR for Wired in ‘03-’04). We hope they help:

Jason, Happy to chat about this. Some thoughts for starters: Of course many pitches have “worked”, which is to say that I have a great relationship with many PR people, mostly because they’ve taken the time to get to know my interests, read what I write, and otherwise contact me with ideas that are relevant. The best of them do such a good job at working with me on things I’m following that I think of them as friends and colleagues.

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We’re tracking several interesting reports from yesterday’s “Future of Business Media Conference” held at New York’s Waldorf Astoria. Interesting, to say the least.  From Rupert talk to hiring SEO experts over editors, we offer you some choice quotes.

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And we thought CNET’s CEO dropped a bomb. That statement is nothing compared to the firestorm Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson just unleashed. 

Sick of getting pummeled by spam, Anderson published a LONG list of PR people who will be permanently banned from his inbox.  The list includes both agency and internal folk.  Are you on it?  Check it out here. (Thanks for the tip, Kyle.)

Bulldog Reporter and TEKgroup International, Inc. released a study this morning that takes another spin on WWJD, and examines journalist’s Web 2.0 habits. The study, which surveyed over 2,046 journalists, gives us some interesting nuggets:

While almost a third of journalists do not cover blogs, more than a quarter report regularly reading five or more blogs to research desired topics, and nearly 70% follow at least one blog regularly.

More than a quarter (28%) of journalists visit a social media or networking site, such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, at least once a week, while more than 44% visit at least once a month.

Nearly 16% of journalists receive five or more RSS feeds of news services, blogs, podcasts or videocasts every week, and about 37% receive at least one regular RSS feed.

While more than half of journalists never seek audio or video material from corporate websites, nearly 20% say they seek such material at least once a month.

While a large majority (76.9%) of journalists report that they use local newspapers to follow news, some 64% report that they use Google or Yahoo! online news services.

The full study can be found here. The second to last stat really surprised us. We thought A/V would be getting much more pickup considering our increasing appetite for content. Did the journos just not want to own up to using corporate content, or do these numbers not surprise?

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Speaking of CNET, their CEO Neil Ashe just slapped us bloggers around. But you know what, we sort of agree with him. In an interview with PaidContent’s Rafat Ali Ashe stated:

“While others in the blogging community have anointed themselves as CNET competitors, the reality is that CNET is 20 to 50 times the size of any of those. CNET added more users in a month than the audience Engadget and Gizmodo combined have in total. So we have a major perception and reality gap between what is actually going on and what people attempt to benefit from saying what’s going on. The practical reality is that CNET is materially bigger than anyone who claims to be competing with us, and as a result, materially more effective. We build brands that move industries.”

He added, “Take that, Arrington!” Ok, just kidding, he really didn’t. However, this does bring up several issues for tech PR pros to think about. Do we sometimes focus too much on the “hot” properties like TechCrunch or Engadget? Would you give CNET an exclusive over either of these outlets?

Today’s lesson in our ongoing series with Choire Sicha on Conquering All Media has a bit less to do with tweaking the blogodome. While many enjoy my boss’s seating chart blog series on VIP media watching at Michael’s, we explore why Sicha prefers bratwurst on 9th Aveune for offline deals.

His answer peels back the layers further, revealing the depth of his love for our profession. Stay tuned for reactions from PR luminaries on the McCarty game (now available in the home edition):

PRNewser: Tips for Michael’s; where should PR people sit? Should we create new mystique, sit at the bar and glare at the bold face names? What should we wear? Read the rest of this entry »

Our buddy Hamilton Nolan at PR Week has an interview up with Paul Pendergass, aka Jack Flack, who writes Portfolio’s “Business Spin” column. When asked what advice he would give the PR industry, Pendergass responded:

I think in general, flacks need to have more conviction in what they do. And I think they need to be able to express that conviction internally, and advocate that there is a new day of scrutiny coming, when the integrity of your story is going to be essential, and the ability to tell it not just honestly, but in a compelling way, is going to be important. They have to be the outside ears of the organization in terms of sensitizing it to how the world is seeing it, and to the outside world they have to be the advocate that explains what this organization is going to accomplish. It’s not a new role, but given the intensity of the media environment now, it’s just going to get more intense. It puts a lot of pressure on them to be able to do most of those things well.

We have to admit to being regular readers of Paul’s column. He puts out some hard hitting stuff without overdoing it on the blog snark. Ok, well not all the time. You can email Paul, or “Jack,” here: jack_flack at condenast dot com

With the major newsweeklies - TIME, BusinessWeek, U.S. News and World Report, and Newsweek - all experiencing a decline in circulation and ad pages, they are quickly beginning to develop new strategies, the foremost of which seems to be re-designs, and lots of them. On the heels of several major re-designs to both the web and print editions of these titles, PRNewser spoke to MEDIAWEEK Senior Editor, Lucia Moses to get her take on who will come out on top.

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Hmm. Maybe this is why no could talk to us yesterday? Jossip reports:

Are things going downhill fast at Fox News Channel’s media relations department, just as they’re trying to generate positive buzz for today’s launch of Fox Business Channel?

Michael Murphy, a senior staffer at FNC’s D.C. bureau, just walked off the job — following director Leah Yoon and regular spokesman Darin Johnson. For what it’s worth, Michael emails us to say that he’s “leaving on great terms,” and, “I’m leaving to actually relocate home and be with my family at this time for personal reasons.” Mainstay publicist Dana Klinghoffer, however, remains — as some of your pitch-filled inboxes can attest to.

What else is going on over there? Alessandra Stanley calls the FBN debut, “perky.” What did you think?