As Tom Maurstad pointed out in The Dallas Morning News the other day, celebrity couplings have become such big news that they have developed the equivalent of brand names. Bennifer (Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner), TomKat (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes), and so on and so on.

Tom came up with a few projected couplings that would make for great brand names; his best was Viggoria (Viggo Mortensen and Eva Longoria)-- as in, "Viggoria's Secret."

I'll add my own contribution: If Jessica Alba started dating Chow Yun-Fat, we could call them.....

FAT ALBA! (Rimshot!)

Whatever...Bill Cosby would think it was funny.

As the president of Pegasus News, Mike Orren, describes his company's mission:

Pegasus News is a local news company that is reinventing the model of local market content and advertising.

Our beta test will take place in Dallas, Texas in late 2005. We will distribute content via a website, e-newsletters, RSS feeds, SMS messaging and any other medium we can think of. Except for carrier pigeons. They smell bad.

This blog is a diary of the evolution of our concepts; a buzz-builder; a beacon for like-minded media folk; and a way for us to communicate with our growing team.

To get a good idea of what this is all about, we recommend starting with the "Best of" links on the left side of this page. We talk about our key concepts on this blog, but (for obvious reasons) you're not going to get the full business plan here. Our key differentiators are:

-- Hyper-local content to the exclusion of all else.

-- Rich delivery via as many mediums as possible.

-- Subscription price predicated on level of engagement (higher engagement = lower price).

-- Almost exclusively pay-for-performance advertising. Regardless of medium.

We encourage you to join the conversation by commenting on any post, or by emailing us.

A lifetime subscription is only $1 through Monday, Oct. 3. They take PayPal. G'head -- do it.

The AP reports that party-girl Tara Reid henceforth would like to be known as actress Tara Reid.

"I think there must be a journalist school where students are taught how to kill Tara Reid," the 29-year-old boo-hoos in the Oct. 12 Steppin' Out magazine.

Of course, Tara blamed her publicist, who was canned. I'm sure with new representation, she'll be bringing home Oscars annually. (Do the seat-warmers double as designated drivers?)

Here's my suggestion: If Tara really wants to lose her party-girl rep, she doesn't need to fire anybody. She could stay home on Friday night and blog. Extreme image makeover -- done.

The media world has gone so ga-ga over blogs and wikis that now journalists are letting readers write their stories and advertisers are asking customers to supply their creative in return for prizes and/or recognition. For an example of the latter phenomenon, check out Geico's Golden Gecko contest.

Opines Adweek of consumer-generated advertising: "Involving consumers in the creative process goes against the grain of the agency mindset as brand stewards, but the payoff can be more authentic messages."

Although consumer-generated everything is being hyped like crazy these days, I don't think this is just a fad. The prevalence of low-cost production tools, combined with the public's seemingly unquenchable thirst for media attention, makes this likely to be much more than a cultural blip.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is attempting to extract himself from another PR crisis -- the manhandling of an 82-year-old Labour Party member at a party conference. Read the details here and watch the video here.

For public relations practitioners seeking to choose among vendors of support services, including news release distribution services, databases, clipping services and the like, Media Orchard will soon post a rating form that will enable you to rank vendors based on your experiences with them. We'll also post your comments on your experiences.

We'll periodically tally the results and publish them as blog entries. The "Rate PR Vendors" section will debut in this blog's sidebar in the next couple of days.

We're now compiling service categories and lists of vendors, and we welcome your suggestions. Please leave a comment or e-mail us to share your thoughts.

From CNET:

When Esquire magazine writer A.J. Jacobs decided to do an article about the freely distributable and freely editable online encyclopedia Wikipedia, he took an innovative approach: He posted a crummy, error-laden draft of the story to the site.

Wikipedia lets anyone create a new article for the encyclopedia or edit an existing entry. As a result, since it was started in 2001, Wikipedia has grown to include nearly 749,000 articles in English alone--countless numbers of which have been edited by multiple members of the community. (There are versions of Wikipedia in 109 other languages as well.)

The idea is that, despite the fact that anyone can work on any article, Wikipedia's content is self-cleaning because its community keeps a close eye on the accuracy of articles and, in most cases, acts quickly to fix errors that find their way into individual entries.

It's the same argument programmers make about open-source software: Since everyone can see the source code, the community can collectively rid the software of errors better than a few developers at one company ever could.

With that dynamic in mind, Jacobs decided to craft an article about Wikipedia, complete with a series of intentional mistakes and typos, and post it on the site. The hope was that the community itself would be able to fix the errors and create a clean version that would be ready for publication in Esquire's December issue. The original version was preserved for posterity.

"The idea I had--which Jimmy (Wales, Wikipedia's founder) loved--is that I'd write a rough draft of the article and then Jimmy would put it on a site for the Wikipedia community to rewrite and edit," Jacobs wrote on the page introducing the experiment. Esquire "would print the 'before' and 'after' versions of the articles. So here's your chance to make this article a real one. All improvements welcome."

Neither Jacobs nor Esquire would comment for this story.

"For those haven't looked at Diderot's Encyclopedie recently, you should know that it is hopelessly incomplete," Jacobs' original draft began, typos and all. "For instance, it lacks entry on Exploding Whales. There's nothing on Troll Metal (rock music about goblins that eat Christians), autofellatio (a form of masturbation that be traced to the Egyptian creation myth) or Dr. Bombay (the physician warlock on Bewitched).

"No, you can only find those entries in one encyclopedia: The Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia that was launched in 2001 and has become biggest, most wide-ranging, most untamed reference work in history."

According to the Wikipedia page for Jacobs' story, the article was edited 224 times in the first 24 hours after Jacobs posted it, and another 149 times in the next 24 hours.

The final draft, which was locked on Sept. 23 to protect it from further edits, reflects the efforts of the many users who worked on it.

Read the details here. My advice to Tom is to take a valium and not worry about it. Or at least take a "vitamin." Just don't yell at anyone, OK?

From B.L. Ochman: "A Really Lame Fake Blog from HP"

When Mark Cuban posted the e-mail trail that led to a less-than-kind piece about him in the NY Times, it caused a hoo-haw among bloggers. I alluded to it myself in a previous post, noting that it isn't uncommon for journalists to kiss up to interview subjects in order to get a story, even when they know they are going to write something negative.

Anyhow, I was following links in Nicole Stockdale's excellent blog, A Capital Idea, when I came across the post, "Buttering up for an interview." Nicole's post references a 2001 correspondence between a NY Times staffer and author Dave Eggers. For those of you who haven't read it, it's even more interesting than the Cuban post.

Long story short, the Times published a story on Eggers that had an "angry tone," by Eggers' estimation, and he retaliated by going public with the e-mail trail. At one point in the set up, the staffer e-mails Eggers: "Hello! I have to tell you, I belatedly read your book over the weekend, and I really was blown away---- I have never read anything even remotely like it."

I can't play holier than thou; when I was a reporter, I did this same kind of thing on occasion. It can be difficult not to -- especially when you want a story badly.

Nonetheless: take heed.

From MarketingExperiments.com:

PR Campaign Delivers Greater Return on Investment Than Pay-Per-Click Advertising, MEC Labs finds

Atlantic Beach, FL (PRWEB) September 28, 2005 -- A new research brief released today by MarketingExperiments.com (MEC) announced that public relations campaigns can cost less and deliver better returns on investment (ROI) than pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns.

The research brief is currently available for free in the Marketing Experiments Journal (http://www.marketingexperiments.com/pr.asp)...

Over a six-month period of time, MEC tested nine news releases covering various topics that were sent out over professional and free newswire services. MEC tracked the direct incoming traffic and backlinks on its site as well as the interview opportunities that resulted from each press release. It also compared the average cost per visit associated with each news release versus both the cost per visit associated with its average optimized PPC campaign and the cost per click for relevant targeted keywords in Google.

Results showed that the cost per click of the public relations efforts was less than the cost to drive traffic to the site through purchasing keywords in a PPC campaign. They also demonstrated that the news releases created significant spikes in site traffic and helped to create a five-fold increase in the number of incoming links to MEC's site...

While most of my clients use paid news release distribution services such as Business Wire or PR Newswire, I would add that, for a low-cost campaign to drive traffic, free news release services such as PR Leap and PRZOOM can be very effective.

From DMNews: "Blogs and Bling Bling: Companies See More Sales, Improve Search Position"

What is your company waiting for?

B.L. Ochman, who I am coming to love for her pull-no-punches PR commentary, today has sounded off on the topic of "ghost-blogging," the ghostwriting of blogs.

Her take:

A well-known conservative political and religious blogger is offering to ghost write corporate blogs, a service that I find disturbing. The point of blogging is to chronicle the original thoughts, opinions and knowledge of the writer, and to have that writer engage in conversation with readers. There's no room in that equation for a ghost writer.

A ghost writer, by definition, writes under someone else's name. That starts the blog on a dishonest premise.

The ghost-blogger in question is La Shawn Barber.

I don't necessarily agree with B.L. on this one. I think ghostwriting is dishonest under certain circumstances; for example, if the named author has very little to do with the conceptualization and content of the work.

However, if the named author simply needs a ghost to help convert his or her ideas into words, I don't see any problem. A good ghost writes as the named author would, incorporating not only the author's ideas but also his or her personality. Without ghosting, the great majority of celebrity and CEO autobiographies you find at the bookstore simply would not exist.

So it's not the worst thing in the world, B.L. Really.

From AP: "'Intelligent Design' Court Battle Begins."

This one makes me go ape-#$%@! -- not only because we're still debating a topic that scientists put to rest 100 years ago, but because I'm afraid I will throw something at my TV and break it when I see how the brainless 24-hour news channels debate the undebatable.

There's a difference between fact-based objectivity and giving equal time to competing idealogues. But 24-hour cable shows don't want to be confused with the facts; it's much easier for the producer to book two combatants and let them go at it, the host acting as referee.

How would this courageous media approach have worked at different times during history, I wonder...

Why don't we hop in our time machine and find out?

---
The time...circa mid-1930s

Anderson Cooper: Mr. Goering, there are many people in the U.S. who believe your policies toward the Jews are cruel and unfair.

Hermann Goering: Jews are responsible for virtually every social ill in Germany; this is documented fact. We are simply protecting our country, which was on the verge of collapse before the Nazi Party came to power.

Cooper: Mr. Bonhoeffer, you have a different perspective?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Goering and his Nazi Party are making scapegoats of the Jews. Jews represent a tiny percentage of the German population; how can they possibly be responsible for all of the country's problems? The Nazis have a hateful agenda that will ultimately consume us all.

Goering: This man is lying, which is especially shameful because he claims to be a man of God. He knows that the Jews controlled the Social Democratic Party, and this is exactly the kind of disproportionate, harmful influence that the Nazi Party was formed to combat.

Bonhoeffer: Yes, I AM a man of God, and your party has forced our church undergrou...

Cooper: I'm sorry, that's all the time we have. Thank you both for sharing your opinions here tonight.
---

Speaking of Goering, he said this at the Nuremberg Trials:

Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

We never learn, do we? And in our loud-mouthed, media-sanctioned tit-for-tat that passes for intelligent debate today, we never will.

Here's a funny bit from John Woestendiek of the Baltimore Sun.

(Via Romenesko.)

Actually, PBS hasn't made a pro-creationism documentary yet ... but at this point, it may be only a matter of time.

Of course, "lifetime" is a relative term. The lifetime of a sheep tick is about four months, for example.

Here's the scoop, courtesy of D Magazine.

Swedish fashion giant H&M, specifically. As my friend Hans Kullin at Media Culpa , the Swedish PR blog, describes the situation:

I read in Expressen that H&M are investigating the possibilities to sue super model Kate Moss for damages. H&M are looking at recovering some costs that came as a result of the recent cocaine scandal. From a PR perspective this seems like a very very bad idea. Here's why:

1. She's sorry. She made a stupid mistake and admitted it. She apologized to everyone that might have suffered from her behaviour. Going after someone who is truthfully apologetic does not give your company a sympathetic image, even if you technically are entitled to do it.

2. You forgave her. H&M's initial reaction to the story was to give Moss a second chance. By suing her, H&M make a 180 degree turn and does not come out as a company with a clear strategy on this matter.

3. Big vs small #1. H&M is a huge company, partially owned by one of Sweden's richest men. It has all the resources one can wish for, whilst Moss is an individual, a small woman, albeit wealthy and big enough to snort cocaine. Nevertheless, readers are more likely to side with David than Goliath.

4. Big vs small #2. Does it not look somewhat greedy for a company that last year made a net profit of SEK 7.2 billion to sue an individual for damages? Um, yes it does.

5. Addiction is a disease, even if self inflicted. Moss is obviously sick. She needs help, not law suits. Sure, she caused the situation herself, but then what? Do H&M want to destroy her?

6. Enough already. The more H&M talk about the incident, the longer it will continue and they run the risk of being associated with a drug addict. Just drop it and focus on your new campaign. Use the massive attention to do something positive.

7. The story broke on 15 Sept. First they forgave her, then H&M didn't communicate that they are dropping Moss until 20 Sept. I can understand that H&M feel they are in a business relation with Moss and that she broke the contract and cost H&M some serious money. But had the company had a clear strategy from the beginning it might even have gained credibility and brand recognition from the story. Now, it is more likely that the brand will suffer from whimsical public relations than from the cocaine scandal itself. (H&M now claim they decided to drop Moss on 17 Sept. Which is worse, having trouble deciding or not being able to communicate what they have decided?)

Media Orchard sometimes wonders if any behavior is outrageous enough to create a PR scandal that actually hurts a celebrity's career.

After all, we live at a time when a homemade porn tape launches the career of Paris Hilton ... when Tara Reid lands a reality show on E! based on her curriculum vitae of late-night drunkenness ... when publicist Lizzie Grubman gets a reality show on MTV based on her notoriety for calling people white trash and running them over with her car ... and when both rap stars and Martha Stewart can enhance their cred through jail stints.

All of this makes it very difficult for celebrities to know, as they hurdle from indiscretion to indiscretion: "Am I just having harmless fun -- or am I walking into a PR nightmare?"

Poor Kate Moss. You can't blame her for being confused.

Here's the back story.

London's Daily Mirror last made headlines on this side of the pond in 2004, when it published fake pictures of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners of war. The paper said it was very, very sorry for publishing fake pictures, fired its editor, and vowed to do better in the future.

Media Orchard doesn't know if this story qualifies as better -- but at least the pictures are real. Too real for Kate Moss. The Daily Mirror published a front-page pic, with more inside, of the erstwhile "teen waif" apparently using cocaine.

As the always-understated Mirror put it:

THE Daily Mirror today reveals shocking pictures of supermodel Kate Moss snorting a fat line of cocaine during a debauched drugs and drink session with junkie lover Pete Doherty. As the white powder induces a sudden rush to her brain, she rocks back in her seat and laughs hysterically. The coke is kicking in.

Within seconds she leans forward and again sniffs into a tightly rolled-up five-pound note, hoovering up every last grain of the Class A drug.

It is clear from the extraordinary images, captured during a Mirror undercover investigation, that the 31-year-old catwalk queen is a practised user.

After the story broke, Kate came clean and admitted the drug use in private meetings with her employers. It couldn't have been much of a shock; Kate's been in rehab in the past. And so employers of Kate, including Swedish clothing giant H&M, initially came out in her support.

Initially.

Then the angry calls from customers started pouring in, and Kate's employers wilted in the backlash. H&M, Chanel and Burberry all have dropped their contracts with the woman the London tabloids now brand the "cocaine shame model."

An H&M spokeswoman told the New York Times : "After the feedback from customers and other papers, we decided we should distance ourselves. If someone is going to be the face of H&M, it is important they be healthy, wholesome and sound."

At least it's important now.

Kate's mistake -- besides the obvious one -- is that she focused her damage-control efforts on her most immediate constituency, her employers, but not on the general public. She should have spoken to the media the day the story broke and followed with a major television interview two or three days later.

The old saw is that the fans build you up just to tear you down. While this may be true, fans can also be very forgiving when given the chance.

The Daily Mirror reported Sunday that Kate has finally agreed to a TV interview, with U.K. personality Michael Parkinson. This comes after Kate issued an apology through the media late last week. Let's hope for Kate's sake that it's not too little, too late.

Of course, if nothing else, there'll always be a role ready for her on MTV's "Surreal Life."

From MarketWatch: "Worrying about media industry layoffs."

I met Molly Ivins when we worked at the Dallas Times Herald together in the early 90s. I admire her greatly; whatever you think of her politics, she's a talented writer and a true original.

Ivins' column today calls for more self-reflection by the news media.

What we need in this country--along with a disaster relief agency--is a Media Accountability Day. One precious day out of the entire year when everyone in the news media stops reporting on what's wrong with everyone else and devotes a complete 24-hour news cycle to looking at our own failures.

She specifically points to Project Censored and its list of the Top 10 overlooked stories of the year. "Yep, missed that one, and that one and ..."

I'm not sure why there is such fascination with the topic of whether blogs will replace press releases (they won't), but for some reason people keep reading that little post of mine I did on the subject months ago.

Shel Holtz has addressed the question in much greater detail, in an excellent article posted as part of Global PR Blog Week 2.0.

Yes, we've finally cracked Alexa's top 150,000. For those of you who don't know, Alexa ranks Web site traffic. So while 147,327 may not be Yahoo! territory, it's not bad in a universe of millions.

Media Orchard thanks you for coming by.

Via Romenesko, here's an interesting commentary by Lou Alexander on the future of the newspaper business. Alexander spent 20 years in the advertising department of the San Jose Mercury News, rising to the top jobs in both display and classified before retiring in 2004. Before turning to the business side, he was a journalist for eight years.

Writes Alexander:

Michael Socolow, a professor of American Studies and journalism program director at Brandeis University recently wrote: "Daily newspapers should drop the consultants, lower their unrealistic earnings targets and do what they do best. If they fail to do this, they will have nobody to blame for their demise but themselves."

It might be fun to fantasize about cutting newspaper margin expectations to something under 10%, but the way the world works makes it impossible. Journalists need to understand this and quit wasting time talking about it.

If the CEO of Knight Ridder, Gannett, Tribune Company or one of the other major newspaper companies announced they were going to cut margin expectation and plow massive additional money into journalism, they would set off a chain of events that would likely lead to the demise of these companies.

Right. Why some people don't get this, I don't know.

For some reason, the media seems to think it's the strangest thing in the world that George Bush refuses to acknowledge even the most obvious mistakes made by his administration.

As a PR exec who's been around the block a few times, I am occasionally asked, "What is he thinking?" (or by the more hardcore politico types, "What is Karl Rove thinking?")

The answer is really very simple.

The last time we had a president who truly admitted mistakes -- or showed any sincere introspection whatsoever -- he was run out of office on a rail.

Can you believe, in 1979, we actually had a president who told the American people these words:

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

Braver words have rarely been spoken by a politician. In fact, this remarkable speech by Jimmy Carter -- hence derisively labeled the "malaise speech" -- is one of the most honest, heartfelt addresses I've ever read by a president.

And look where that got him.

So, in other words, it's NOT Bush's fault, or Karl Rove's fault. None of it.

It's your fault, and mine.

You know, and I know, that real estate PR is NOT inherently interesting. Even in New York.

However, because everyone seems to want to have some kind of gossipy, "Sex in the City" lifestyle these days, contrived drama is everywhere.

Check out this post and this post from Curbed, a New York real estate blog, and this blog from PR person Kelly Kreth, who claims she was canned over some of her postings.

Of course, Kelly posts things like this:

Today I had a full day at MotFu and really wanted to quit so many times. The woman I report to is so dominant that I feel I am a little kid who needs permission to piss. I was there till after 7 which is early considering it was the FRIDAY BEFORE LABOR DAY. Nothing is organized and I coudln't even breath. They are all nice to me because they hate the old publicist so much that even if I were Hitler they'd welcome me.

In the middle of the day I sat dazed, hungry and exhausted, at a lucite conference table and planned the call I'd make to my old CEO begging to come back. I actually did just email him and while not a straight-out plea for return, I did kiss ass and allude to a mental quandry and sadness about leaving. I need comfort. I am made for it. The minute I get uncomfortable I start to cry and panic. I'm not made for complicated things. Really, give me a simple job in a laundromat and I will be ok.

Infringement of freedom of speech -- or deserved end to another contrived chic-lit reality drama? You decide.

I'm jealous of my friend John Wagner. He and his client, an advertising startup called qtags, got some great exposure in BusinessWeek, which discusses the advantages of small businesses starting blogs.

I'm sorry, did I say "jealous"? I meant, I'm HAPPY FOR John! HAPPY! Congratulations.

Here's an excerpt; the whole article is here.

Allison Gower was already running two companies, one a promotional packaging outfit and the other an advertising startup called qtags. So she had plenty of doubts when she sat down last spring with consultant and qtags investor John Wagner to ask if it made sense to add one more job -- chief blogger -- to her long list of duties.

A blogger himself, Wagner said yes. The logic was clear. While many traditional businesses can afford to take a wait-and-see attitude toward blogs, it's a different story for buzz-hungry startups in technology and marketing. The universe of self-published Web logs is the most active and fastest-growing part of the Net. The blogosphere brims with contacts, potential customers, and fresh ideas. Done right, blogging is like setting up a booth in the biggest trade show on earth -- every single day. Qtags couldn't sit it out.

This is very, very irritating. Why am I writing about this posted excerpt from Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, Bait and Switch (in which our heroine talks with a career coach), when I've already written terrible, eviscerating things about the whole concept of this book?!

I may have anger management issues.

My wife and I are crate-training our puppy. For those who haven't had the pleasure, it's no fun -- not for me, not for Cathy, and especially not for little Reggie, our four-month-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

It probably didn't help that I kept referring to the crate as a "cage," which made it seem even more barbaric each time we pushed him kicking and screaming into the little blue box at bedtime or when he had a potty-training mishap.

Then, Cathy's dad suggested we call it a "den" instead.

Reggie's den! That sounds like a nice little cozy place, doesn't it! It certainly doesn't suggest a shipping container for inanimate objects, or a restriction of freedom and movement of any sort. Just a comfy, secluded room.

"Reggie, time to get in your den!" "Den time!" "Hey, boy, let's see what's going on in your den!"

Now that's spin.

Unfortunately, Reggie doesn't understand English. I don't think Edward Bernays could have helped us. Let's hope puppy school works.

Here's your first hint as to the content. More details later.

The American Gaming Association, fed up with casinos paying higher tax rates than other businesses, is working on a new educational campaign to try to convince the public -- and ultimately lawmakers -- that casinos are a valuable contributor to local communities.

For many people, "sin taxes" might seem as anachronistic as bygone blue laws. But in most states, cigarettes, alcohol and casinos are still taxed heavily because such levies play well to both "tax-and-spend" liberals and religious conservatives.

The AGA hopes an argument based on free-market economics can trump those groups. As a gaming industry defender tells the Las Vegas Sun: "Realistic tax rates create more capital investment and jobs."

Of course, if the AGA wants to talk investment and downplay sin, the current "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas" advertising campaign might not be the perfect complement to its efforts.

(Oh, and for you intellectual types, here's an analysis of sin taxes by the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.)

Sorry, this is another cleaning-out-the-closet post, like the previous Bacon's-Vocus entry. Some time ago I ran across this thoughtful essay on the PR business by Paul Graham. My favorite line:

One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.

As for the relationship between PR people and bloggers, Graham says:

PR people fear bloggers for the same reason readers like them. And that means there may be a struggle ahead. As this new kind of writing draws readers away from traditional media, we should be prepared for whatever PR mutates into to compensate. When I think how hard PR firms work to score press hits in the traditional media, I can't imagine they'll work any less hard to feed stories to bloggers, if they can figure out how.

In the few months since Graham wrote this story, PR firms haven't successfully "mutated" yet ... but they're working on it.