Shelby Foote, the Southern historian best remembered for his wise and empathetic tales that animated Ken Burns' landmark PBS series on the Civil War, died on Monday night at age 88.

Foote spoke with me by telephone from his home in Memphis in 1991, when I was writing a story on the controversy over Confederate symbols in public places. You know how I was able to reach him? His number was listed in the Memphis phone book; I called and he picked up on the first ring.

"Have you ever thought about getting an unlisted number?" I asked.

"Oh, I think about it, sometimes," he replied in his soft drawl. I could almost see him scratching his snowy beard as he said it.

I think Foote became a media darling, beloved by the public, primarily because of his honesty -- together with his understanding of people's flaws, and his ability to put these flaws in their proper context.

When I asked him what he thought about calls to topple a famous statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Memphis, Foote said: "Forrest was known throughout the South for his kindness to slaves... Lincoln wanted to send blacks back to Africa; should we take his statue down, too?"

Forrest, a Confederate general, was recruited after the war to be the first leader of the Ku Klux Klan. He's buried at Forrest Park, where the statue stands. And the controversy rages even today; here's a recent piece in the Memphis Flyer.

In fact, they've become a lot like the supposed big, mean corporations they take such pleasure in criticizing. Read this story about a deal between Clear Channel Communications and New Times, which owns the Dallas Observer among many other weeklies.

It's for the Arlington Pediatric Center (Virginia, not Texas), and, appropriately enough, I found it on a Canadian blog called Ads That Suck.

The new Page 6 blog is content theft, not an act of heroism as the thieves claim. Via B.L. Ochman.

When Tom Cruise broke from publicist Pat Kingsley in March 2004, few predicted that it would lead to Cruise becoming an outspoken anti-psychiatry zealot -- who appears to be in need of a psychiatrist.

But Slate did post a fascinating post-mortem on the Tom-Pat relationship in April 2004. Lots of good background, although the writer, Adam Sternbergh, comes to a conclusion he probably now regrets:

Kingsley elevated the flack from media caddie to professional storyteller -- she was, in effect, narrating the story of Tom Cruise, highlighting certain plot lines while burying unflattering details. But flacks can no longer control the story line -- nor is it, in our far more permissive age, as important for them to.

Celebrities like (Colin) Farrell or Britney Spears can only hope to keep their heads above water while body-surfing from scandal to scandal. They may even realize that it's important to give us things to talk about.

A report on VNRs, in today's Washington Times.

From The Associated Press:

"This is a commercial deal, a commercial bid from one New York Stock Exchange listed company to another New York Stock Exchange listed company designed to improve shareholder value for both,'' said Mark Palmer, a managing director at Public Strategies Inc. of Austin, Texas, one of two public relations firms hired by CNOOC.

Here at Media Orchard, Tom Cruise is one of our favorite actors. He's also a smart businessman with good instincts. No actor in Hollywood -- not even Tom Hanks -- has done a better job of picking movie projects over the course of a 25-year career.

But, as Cruise has demonstrated in recent weeks, even the most successful businessman needs a good public relations advisor. Tom fired his PR firm last year in favor of his sister, and now all hell has broken loose. His career may never be the same.

So, to remind all of us of the importance of public relations -- and because it was something fun to do over a beer last night -- Media Orchard has come up with a list of the "Top 10 Celebrity Trainwrecks, 2000-2005."

They are:

1. Tom Cruise. "Matt...Matt...Matt!!" And he's supposed to be making the case against Ritalin?

2. Michael Jackson. The caboose that just keeps crashing.

3. Courtney Love. Needs attention like most people need oxygen.

4. Ashlee Simpson. They aren't booing...they're chanting "Ashlee, Ashlee!"

5. Britney Spears. Quoth Britney in her recently departed reality show: "The sex is real good. Our sex is so good. I've had sex three times today!" But who's counting.

6. Mariah Carey. All that glitters is not gold lame.

7. Robert Blake. Like Michael, he's again free to roam the earth. Those Southern California prosecutors are a crack squad, aren't they, O.J.?

8. Anne Heche. It happened in 2000 so it's kind of old news now but...what beats showing up wacked-out at a complete stranger's house, asking to take a shower and then telling the cops that you are God and will return everyone to heaven in your spaceship?

9. Kobe Bryant. From Goody Two-Shoes to Shoeless Joe before our very eyes. Time to get your Zen on, Phil.

10. Lindsay Lohan. OK, so she hasn't actually had a meltdown yet. But it's coming.

Unfortunately, there were so many deserving candidates that Media Orchard was forced to exclude Mike Tyson, Liza Minnelli, Robert Downey, Jr., Rosie O'Donnell, Whitney Houston, Scott Weiland and Winona Ryder. We're sure their publicists won't mind.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, CNOOC, the state-owned Chinese oil company, is relying on "U.S public relations strategy" in its attempt to win shareholder and government approval for its unsolicited bid for Unocal. Cnooc has hired a pair of U.S. media strategy firms to soften resistence among the public and on Capitol Hill.

Quite possibly, according to Frank Rich's column in Sunday's New York Times. Writes Rich:

That the administration's foremost propagandist would also be chairman of the board of CPB, the very organization meant to shield public broadcasting from government interference, is astonishing. But perhaps no more so than a White House press secretary month after month turning for softball questions to "Jeff Gannon," a fake reporter for a fake news organization ultimately unmasked as a G.O.P. activist's propaganda site.

As the public broadcasting debate plays out, there will be the usual talk about how to wean it from federal subsidy and the usual complaints (which I share) about the redundancy, commerciality and declining quality of some PBS programming in a cable universe. But once Big Bird, like that White House Thanksgiving turkey, is again ritualistically saved from the chopping block and the Senate restores more of the House's budget cuts, the most crucial test of the damage will be what survives of public broadcasting's irreplaceable journalistic offerings.

Debut column from Simon Dumenco, the new AdAge "Media Guy."

From The Associated Press:

Despite growing doubts about the news media's patriotism, most people still have a positive view of news outlets, according to a new poll.

While the public views much of the news media favorably, they are less inclined to consider those sources of news believable, according to the survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Seven in 10 people said they have a favorable view of their local newspaper, and almost as many say that about local TV news, cable news networks and network broadcast news.

News organizations in general have seen a drop in the percentage of people who find them believable. Almost three-quarters said they think the news media tend to favor one side in their coverage – up from half who felt that way in the mid-1980s.

But a solid majority of those polled, six in 10, said they feel the news media's criticism of leaders plays an important role in preventing those leaders from doing the wrong thing.

While people are critical of the press, "there is an enduring support for what the press does," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which co-sponsored the poll.

People were evenly divided on whether the news media "stands up for America" or is "too critical of America." Republicans were more likely to view the media as critical of America.

The source of news is changing for many – with the use of online news highest among younger adults. Television remained the dominant source of news for all people, the poll found.

Newspapers were the primary source of news for at least half of people 50 and over.

The poll of 1,484 adults was taken June 8-12 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

I guess you've got to admire Big Tobacco for trying to do more to get smokers to quit. Philip Morris is now promoting a program called QuitAssist (see the news release). States the release:

"Taking steps to help smokers who have decided to quit is one of the ways we are working to reduce the harm associated with our products," said Howard A. Willard, Philip Morris USA executive vice president, corporate responsibility. "As a manufacturer of a product that is addictive and causes serious diseases, like cancer and heart disease, we believe we have a role to play in communicating to smokers about the serious health effects of our products and resources that can help smokers quit."

Yes, it's a little rudimentary, but it's a start. Check out Media Dallas; it's an attempt to pull together articles of particular interest to the PR and media communities in Dallas/Fort Worth.

I would be delighted if I could attract a couple of volunteers to help the Idea Grove keep this updated.

Communications students are invited. We'll give you full credit -- not academic credit, but at least a link to your blog or Web site. We believe there's a need for this kind of resource in Dallas.

OK, we know that blogs are replacing press releases. Are they also replacing focus groups?

From AdWeek: "In promoting a new calling plan this spring, U.S. Cellular wanted to reach college-age consumers and speak to them on their own terms. While normally that might mean convening focus groups, commissioning surveys and poring over market-research reports, the Chicago company's youth-focused ad agency, G Whiz, decided instead to listen to what their potential customers were saying on their blogs."

Media Culpa, an excellent media and PR blog based in Sweden (which also has the best name of any media blog), reports: "Polish blogs are often password protected so they are not open for everyone to read. It is also common in Poland that people steal others blogs, which means that they try to find out their login and password and then take over the blog."

From Denver's Westword: "Public-relations experts believe that when people in the spotlight screw up, they're usually better off admitting the mistake, expressing regret and then hoping for a change of subject. So when Ray Gomez, the associate vice president for university communications at CU-Boulder, learned that an e-mail in which he'd criticized a Boulder Daily Camera journalist had accidentally been forwarded to the reporter herself, he immediately went into full contrition mode. And he's been there ever since."

Read the rest here.

From MediaPost: "THE MAJORITY OF ONLINE ADULTS--53 percent--use search engines most or all of the time they go on the Web, while only 4 percent say they never use them, according to a study released Tuesday by search engine marketing firm icrossing. The report, "How America Searches," based on a Harris Interactive survey of more than 2,000 online adults, also found that most searches are conducted with specific topics in mind.

When asked why they used a search engine...64 percent were seeking news or information about current events. Of the approximately 1,300 adults who said they used search engines to look for news, almost half--45 percent--said they specifically sought alternative viewpoints, while 42 percent wanted additional information.

The report also found that more than four out of 10 users--44 percent--didn't know the difference between sponsored and organic listings. That percentage varied by age and gender, with 53 percent of men reporting that they understood the distinction between paid and natural results, compared to 36 percent of women. Almost half of respondents ages 18 to 34 (47 percent) said they were familiar with the difference between sponsored and natural search, compared to 45 percent of respondents ages 35 to 44 and 42 percent of those ages 45 to 54; just 38 percent of those over 55 said they were familiar with the paid-natural distinction.

This article from MarketingProfs.com offers some good advice on how marketing and public relations teams should work together in crisis management situations.

As Dow Jones reports, "Newspaper companies have fallen out of favor with investors amid concerns that advertisers and readers may be permanently abandoning the medium for the Internet."

At this week's Mid-Year Media Review in New York -- one of the biggest annual investor conferences for media companies -- newspaper execs defended themselves.

Corporate blogging is finally beginning to come into its own, as the Wall Street Journal and others have reported. Here's a select list of blogs authored by CEOs and other corporate execs.

The Idea Grove has recently added consultation on consumer-generated media channels, such as blogs, wikis, and podcasts, to our service offerings. We'll assess what online influencers are saying about you; then, we'll help you engage in a dialogue with them. If it makes strategic sense for your company, we'll also help you create and maintain your own blog.

E-mail Scott Baradell at info@ideagrove.com or call 972.235.3439 for more information.

For naysayers (like myself) who bemoan today's obsession with celebrity news and relative disinterest in "hard" news, particularly among those under 30, the Wall Street Journal offers this clever column that argues that the sky isn't falling.

As the writers state:

If a time machine could whisk us back to ancient Sumeria, we bet you we'd find the stampers of the Daily Cuneiform pulling their beards and muttering that kids these days are interested almost exclusively in frivolous things: the hot new Gilgamesh adventure, putting away too many bowls of fermented barley beverage, and the doings of other youth, as opposed to worrying about crumbling canals and what the Hittites are up to.

Thanks to Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion for spotting a study by Euro RSCG/Columbia University, which shows that more than 51 percent of journalists use blogs regularly, and 28 percent rely on them to help in their day-to-day reporting duties, including finding story ideas and sources and researching and referencing facts.

The most amusing part of the study is that of these same journalists, only 1 percent said that they found blogs "credible."

Funny stuff. Hurts a little getting off that high horse, I guess. Here's a full report on the study.

I don't think so. The so-called profession of "celebrity journalism" is so degraded by the sheer power of Hollywood stars that you can't really call it journalism -- just shameless boot-licking. And now the U.K.'s OK!, the biggest friend of all to celebrity publicists, is coming to the U.S. OK! pays stars big money for exclusives and gives them pre-approval on all stories -- no-nos in the traditional world of journalism. Read all about it.

Via Micro Persuasion, here's a little cautionary tale about spilling the corporate beans on your blog. (I say "little" because the so-called scoop in question wasn't that big a deal.)

Thanks to PR Watch for noticing this Rocky Mountain News column bemoaning the self-serving promotion of network programming on local TV newscasts. You know, like when your ABC affiliate does a profile of a local woman who's on The Bachelor, and so forth. The column is well-written, but misdiagnoses the problem as one of disclosure:

I think ... journalists at local outlets should give their news judgment an extreme makeover and drop most entertainment news tie- ins. They're not newsworthy, unless you want your newscast to look like a prime-time show - which is clearly the trend, I know, but it still makes me ill.

In any case, if the local TV outlets insist on broadcasting "news" about entertainment programming, they should inform viewers when they have a financial interest in the success of the show mentioned.

In the wake of the Armstrong Williams scandal and other concerns about pay for placement in the news media, the FCC has added a page to its Web site outlining rules against payola.

"What is a Journalist?" -- hilarious, insightful blog entry by comedian Harry Shearer.

Here are some nice tips from a technology journalist on getting PR for your company.

From this week's Barron's: "The $82 billion stock-market value of Google tops that of the 12 largest newspaper publishers combined."

Ouch. That's a low blow, boys. The article does go on to argue that newspaper stocks are undervalued, and specifically recommends Gannett, Tribune, and Knight Ridder. Personally, I think I'll just hang on to my Belo stock.

Since 1975, obesity rates among U.S. children have more than doubled -- and more than tripled among kids aged 6 to 11. Lawmakers, consumer groups and class-action attorneys are increasingly laying the blame for this trend on the "deceptive" marketing campaigns of major food companies.

Gradually -- too gradually for their own good -- food companies such as McDonald's and Kraft have recognized the obesity trend as a PR crisis that needs to be addressed head-on, as this week's Adweek details.

Marketing food (or anything else) to children is a touchy subject. As parents know, many advertisers aggressively use the "nag factor" to push product. They want children to bug their parents until the parents break down ("OK, OK, I'll take you to McDonald's if you promise to be quiet!") I've seen marketing presentations where the efficacy of the "nag factor" is quantified in detail.

But we can't lay the blame for our fat kids on food companies and their advertising. It's actually a relatively minor factor in the obesity epidemic. Other, more important trends are involved. For example:

-- With the increase in single-parent homes and homes where both parents work, parents simply aren't preparing nutritional meals for their children.

-- Children are spending far more time with sedentary pursuits such as television, computers and video games.

-- Children don't walk or ride bicycles nearly as much as in the past, due to the evolution of urban and suburban design as well as parents' crime concerns.

These trends are difficult, if not intractable. The easier solution for politicians, therefore, is to scapegoat food companies and their advertising agencies.

Perhaps it's a good thing to restrict advertising directed at children. But in this case, it won't solve the problem. Now that food advertisers have finally realized the importance of PR to their defense, perhaps they will make a stronger case for themselves.

I got an incredulous e-mail in response to my post about journalists being conservative, and -- even though it was more or less a play on words and meanings --I thought a brief follow-up would be in order.

OK, I'll admit it. Most journalists are relatively progressive in their politics. Recent surveys once again have demonstrated this.

Now, I will tell you (1) why this is the case, and (2) why it's a non-issue:

1. Journalists generally don't enter the profession to make a boatload of money. If money was their goal, they would apply their college educations and insatiable curiosity in more profitable directions. Young people enter journalism, for the most part, because they want to make a difference. Their egos are fed not by the money they make, but by the impact they have. Journalists have impact by causing change. And change is inherently anti-conservative (although not necessarily anti-Republican.)

2. While individual journalists tend to be progressive, virtually all major media organizations are owned by large corporations that are inherently conservative. There are a small handful of exceptions, but for the most part, companies like General Electric, Disney, News Corp. and Time Warner control our media -- and these organizations have a very strong interest in maintaining the status quo.

So individual media members and their corporate owners are fundamentally at cross-purposes -- like an evenly divided Congress that produces mostly gridlock.

The media is in gridlock today, compared to 30 years ago. Do you think a Woodward and Bernstein could emerge today? I don't. In 2005, the media too often allows the political parties to dictate the agenda, instead of acting as an independent "fourth estate."

I think our only hope may be a return to the advocacy journalism that was so common in our country's past. By advocacy journalism, I don't mean radio or TV loudmouths who spout their political party's talking points and pretend it's their own opinion. I mean advocacy journalism in the style of the reform newspapers of the 19th century -- like William Lloyd Garrison's the Liberator, which beat the drum of abolitionism for 34 years before the rest of the country came around.

Bloggers have a better chance of being this century's William Lloyd Garrisons than traditional journalists do. Bloggers can afford to be truly independent. They can be the journalist-advocates for critical but neglected issues such as poverty and the environment. I encourage all bloggers to take advantage of their opportunity to have an impact.

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting analysis of the change in Tom Cruise's media strategy since he dropped Hollywood PR firm PMK/HBH in favor of a new publicist: his sister Lee Anne De Vette, a fellow Scientologist.

Here's the latest on the broadcast indecency debate as overviewed by USA Today. And here's my take on the subject.

An ESPN columnist has written a nice piece on the Kirk Reynolds debacle. PR man Reynolds was practically run out of town on a stripper pole for producing a media training video for his employer, the San Francisco 49ers.

The video, designed to teach players the do's and don't's of working with the news media, included some R-rated elements (topless strippers, double-entendres)to hold the players' attention. The video was obviously for in-house eyes only, but was leaked to the media -- probably by someone who wanted to see Reynolds fired (which was the outcome).

Fact is, Reynolds was doing his job. He went a bit over the top in an effort to appeal to his audience, but that happens. No real harm was done. The only injuries here -- besides those to Reynolds' career -- are the bumps and bruises suffered by those scrambling into the media pulpit to pronounce themselves holier than thou.

No, that's not a misprint. American journalists -- particularly of the print variety -- are among the most conservative folks on the planet. And it's something that is hurting the newspaper industry from a competitive standpoint.

Ne