Stanley Bing, the nom de guerre of CBS News chief flack Gil Schwartz, wrote another one of his throwaway books recently, Executricks: Or How to Retire While You're Still Working, and got himself booked on Wednesday's The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson to promote it. Ferguson asked Bing how, exactly, he had time to write the book while still holding down an executive gig at CBS, to which he responded: "I practice some of the tricks in the book." Those who might think he's just kidding around would be sorely mistaken.

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CBS communications chief Gil Schwartz has run afoul of the rules of PR – and Katie Couric – many times in the past. This time, the sometime byline also known as Stanley Bing (his author alter ego, who writes a Fortune column – has gotten himself intro trouble with the book biz.

It appears that Schwartz offered not one, but two glowing book jacket blurbs for Damage Control, the new book by Eric Dezenhall and John Weber. The second item of praise was attributed to Bing, but made no mention that they're the same people.

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On the eve of Katie Couric's biggest night since starting her nightly Nielsen disappointment, one might think CBS chief spinman Gil Schwartz would be running around town bragging about her capabilities, showcasing the confidence CBS has in her, and making vaguely concrete promises that she'd perform better than expected with election coverage.

But we're talking about Gil Schwartz here. The same man whose internal CBS magazine Watch put a slimmed down Katie Couric on the cover. The same man who didn't just miss, but turned his back to, the mark when it came Dan Rather's Memogate fall out. The same man who'd rather promote his author-columnist alter-ego Stanley Bing than take charge of Katie Couric's PR nightmares.

So it should come as no surprise that he's using Katie's election lollapalooza to – what else? – promote his own interests. This time it's his new book: the very appropriately titled 100 Bullshit Jobs … And How to Get Them.

In the book, reports TV Week:

The author says that bloggers can become very famous (I hope) "since the established media, increasingly devoid of excitement and ideas of its own, has taken to siphoning off daily blogging activity as a much better and more interesting alternative to actual news."

Well Gil, if you didn't make yourself such an easy target, perhaps we would have to deal with actual news. Like Katie's potential misfiring tonight and the week's worth of criticism she'll endure at your hands. Good luck with sales, though!

When it comes to Katie Couric, CBS's official line is "While CBS News ratings are up, NBC and ABC ratings are down." Technically, when CBS spokesman Gil Schwartz points out the numbers – CBS is up 8 percent from this time last year, with 7.4 million viewers, while NBC is down 8 percent (to 8.5m) and ABC down 5 percent (to 7.9m) – he's right. But that still leaves Couric dragging in third place, and more than a few CBS insiders have declared the $45 million investment in the former Today show host a flop.

But what about the investment in PR chief Schwartz (aka Fortune columnist Stanley Bing)? Schwartz – who's held his job in one form or another since 1994 and reports directly to Les Moonves – continues to draw ire from industry insiders. It was only Monday night, at Broadcasting & Cable's Hall of Fame Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria, that many a mouth were wagging about his current Katie Couric tragedy. And this time, it wasn't just about the slimmed down photo than ran in the CBS promotions magazine Schwartz oversees.

Nobody can quite figure out how Gil has managed to bungle Katie Couric's rep so badly. While the numbers may do the talking, Schwartz should be doing the spinning — and NBC's Jeff Zucker has given him the perfect platform. The GE-mandated 700 job cuts at NBC Universal is, one would think, the perfect platform to cast the network TV spotlight entirely on the Peacock's problems. But Gil hasn't managed to do much of that, evidenced by the continued hounding of Couric. On the attack: USA Today's Peter Johnson, Matt Drudge, the Los Angeles Times, Broadcasting & Cable's Andrew Tyndall, the New York Times, Newday's Verne Gay, and the New York Post's Page Six all raking Katie over the ratings coals. NBC's press coverage, meanwhile, remains plenty anti-Zucker, but sometimes apologistic.

And it's not just the random hacks in the TV news business kivetching: We hear Katie herself is fuming over Schwartz's inabilities to put the spin in her favor. Not one to befriend a network's PR team, Katie already has Freud PR chief powerhouse Matt Hiltzik on her roster. And (indirectly) taking Katie's side is former CBS head Andrew Heyward. Speaking to The Strategist's John Elsasser:

In the frenzy that erupted, you, along with many of your colleagues at CBS, found yourself in the media’s crosshairs. How did you deal with being part of this media onslaught? What can PR professionals learn from your experiences?

Heyward: First of all, I think we handled the aftermath poorly and exacerbated the problem. There are lots of lessons there for PR professionals. In retrospect, they seem so obvious: Be quick to recognize not only that there is a problem but also the magnitude of the problem; be quick to address it, not only with the outside world but also with your own colleagues; and be open-minded about what your critics are saying. At the beginning, it might have been a commendable instinct to stand by your colleagues, [but] loyalty . . . should have been balanced more effectively and quickly with the responsibility to get to the bottom of the criticism and find out what had really happened and whether we had, in fact, fallen short in our reporting — which we had. That took way too long, and that was partly because we were too busy fending off attacks and had placed too much faith in colleagues based on their track records as opposed to the evidence that was before us.

It was only 2004 when Gil's head was rumored to be on the chopping block after his continued follies advising Heyward on how to handle the Dan Rather fall out. And you know what happened there. Unfortunate for CBS and Katie Couric, it sounds like Les Moonves doesn't know what's happening here. "I like Gil, he's a nice guy," a senior level CBS insider tells us. "But he's a disaster."

The lead up to Katie Couric's kick-off tonight on CBS News has been anything but the smooth travels one would expect with a $10 million promotional campaign from war-torm Viacom. With so much at stake – like pulling CBS's news broadcast out of third place – TV news insiders are wondering why 1515 Broadway has let in-house PR honcho Gil Schwartz continue to handle its huge projects after continual blunders.

Last week's Watch magazine flub – where a slimmed-down version of Couric appeared, without her knowledge, on the cover of the for-CBS-staffers pub – was only the latest in a series of publicity nightmares. CBS News, and Katie in particular, have been adamant about downplaying any sense of gender bias at the anchor desk; the Watch Photoshopping certainly didn't help. The network's talking heads, like Dana McClintock, were quick to throw blame at CBS's promotions department (helmed by Schwartz) for the gaff and, as TVWeek yesterday reported, CBS News president Sean McManus is now laying blame on a sole graphics staffer — who will remain employed.

For Schwartz – whose official title is "executive vice president of communications for CBS Corp." – the Watch debacle is just another malfeasance headboard notch. Which, as insiders point out, isn't surprising given his gig at CBS is only one part of his employment roster: He's also very busy promoting his alter ego Stanley Bing, the Esquire and Forbes columnist and author. And he was doing just that in 2004 during Nipplegate, when Janet Jackson's exposed teet drew the wrath of Middle America and the FCC. Schwartz-Bing made the cable show rounds, we're told, but did more book promotion than network defending.

Elsewhere, when Dan Rather's Memogate scandal broke in September '04, Schwartz could be seen hitting the lunch circuit at Michael's — and little else. Ditto in 2003, when CBS touted its The Reagans miniseries but had to scrap its sweeps week run and give it to corporate cousin Showtime after backlash arose from supposed factual gaps.

Says one TV news insider:

Perhaps if he spent fewer afternoons at Michael's promoting himself and more time protecting his talent, he wouldn't be regarded as an industry joke. He was pants'd in a huge way before one of the biggest program launches in the network's history — that tells you all you need to know about Gil and his PR acumen. Katie must be furious.

As millions of Americans are set to tune in tonight to see what Katie Couric will be wearing – and reporting – the man responsible for ensuring a solid debut could just as well be working on his next manuscript.