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, I suppose this program could help. Or maybe, if the anti-smoking cause were really important to Philip Morris, it could shut down operations altogether?

I don't blame Philip Morris. Corporations, including tobacco companies, are in business to sell product and make money. As long as they have the legal right to do that, that's what they should do. They won't make money if everyone QUITS --so QuitAssist is clearly not in their interests, is it? BUT, if they seem insensitive to the health problems, they look like louts, which could cause more lawsuits, legislation, and the like.

It's a fascinating story, this tobacco war in the United States -- a war that's been going on for more than 100 years now, if you can believe that.

Because of the central role that public relations has played in this war, on both sides, I highly recommend Richard Kluger's Ashes to Ashes for the comprehensive narrative on this truly American saga.

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.

Ketchum Public Relations unveiled an agency blog recently and it's gone over like a lead balloon. See this post, and the accompanying comments, on B.L. Ochman's blog. The Ketchum folks have gotten a little more negative attention than they'd like of late; as you may recall, they were the ones who hired Armstrong Williams to talk up "No Child Left Behind" for the Bush Administration.

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.

Maybe. But then again, look what happened to the Daily Cuneiform...

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.