Dude, did you hear about that tiger that escaped from the San Francisco Zoo and killed that guy? Total P.R. disaster for that zoo, right? Dealing with the fall-out from a loose tiger is not exactly how we would want to be spending the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Then again, neither is blogging about it.

Anyway, turns out that tiger might have been provoked. Yeah, the P.R. gurus at the San Francisco Zoo think that one of the victims dangled a leg or body part over the edge of the moat that was supposed to protect the public from the tiger.

This sort of reminds us of Jurassic Park, when that scummy lawyer gets eaten on the toilet. Not that anyone deserves to get eaten by a dinosaur while scared, literally shitless, on a toilet, but he sort of had it coming.

Seriously, you P.R. guys should be getting overtime for this.

Know what PR firms like Pierce Mattie are good at doing? Sending out press releases. So turn down the shock value when you learn that as we near 2007's close, they're ready with a list of the top twenty magazines to watch in '08. Then, color nobody surprised that Vogue took the No. 1 slot, or that it was followed down the list by Esquire, W, and Nylon. Those magazines traffic in hype.

Which meant it was a little more surprising to find titles like the best-of-both-worlds Garden & Gun, online fashion social networking spin-off, IQONS, and cosmetics industry quarterly On Makeup Magazine.

Not that Pierce Mattie's judgment, as to who deserves to make their ranking, is clouded or anything. They only represent scores of clients in the fashion and beauty categories who might hope to get into those magazines. Or does that make them even more qualified to forecast 2008's influentials?

Harsh truth time: Facebook will be more popular than MySpace. It has better page layout, a wealthier base and more potential. MySpace is still good for music though.

But these harsh truths doesn’t stop USA Today from running a puff piece on the pretense that MySpace still stands a chance:

The goal is to make MySpace the starting point for people on the Internet, where they can check in on the activities of friends, peruse e-mail, get the latest on news and weather, and post their favorite photos and videos. "We're offering one place where people are in control," [Chris] DeWolfe coolly explains at an L.A. restaurant near MySpace's offices, cradling a cocktail.

Thanks, but no thanks. Our starting point on the internet doesn’t have flash ads.

It's hard to feel bad for the nightclub Home, which is at least 38 percent responsible for turning West 27th Street into B&T-ville. But after forking over a huge retainer to Susan Blonde PR, as well as a cheque for expenses to send out a batch of expensive press kits to journalists through the town, you might have cause to feel a little sympathy.

Because Susan Blonde f-ed up real bad.

CONTINUED »

From Page Six: "HULK Hogan is said to be "devastated" his wife, Linda, filed for divorce, and friends are shocked at the bleached blonde's "erratic" behavior."

And frankly, we're surprised by their purported level of surprise. Especially considering we've known about the couple's separation for at least the past six months.

When you're a publicist and your client is a brand as innocuous as Airborne – the immune-boosting "fizzes in water" product that our significant other insists we take before boarding a plane – it might be a tough sell to attach The Celebrity Factor in your pitches.

You know what we're talking about: Embedding your product in celebrity culture and lifestyle so all the kids will read about it in Us Weekly and want to buy it. We've seen tough sells try to go this route before, with Stride Gum, to mostly embarrassing results. We've also given publicists tips on how to go about pitching blogs in the hopes that they'll learn a trick or two.

Guess what? It didn't work.

So what to do when you need to get Airborne plugged in the company of the semi-famous? You host a gifting suite at the Annual KIIS-FM Homecoming Concert!

CONTINUED »

As Fox News deals with its own PR department departures, CNN is facing a similar story. Out the door is Megan Mahoney, the heavyweight publicist who reigned over the network's Atlanta HQ. We're told it was her decision, not a firing, that brought an end to her dozen years there. Oh, that and a better offer from another Atlanta company.

We've been in this space before. It's the space where we take time out of our grueling 3.5 hour workday to school legions of publicists on how to approach us blog types. Especially the blog types far too cynical to open most emails sent from PR firm domains. (That'd be us.)

Tenured publicists understand how to traffic in standard gossip columns: Feed a semi-scandalous tidbit about a HBO celebrity you saw Cannes this week, and perhaps your luxury liquor client will score a mention next week.

We don't work that way. Mostly because we default to Kettle One even without a gossip item trade. But also because there's no real back-scratching here. Got a great item? We'll run it, even if we don't owe you a favor!

What we won't tolerate, however, is when flacks prepare an item in gift wrap and bows and then messenger it over with the expectation we'll copy and paste it onto the site.

CONTINUED »

Just who is this publicist named Susan Bass who's been the one feeding soundbites to the press about canine foe Michael Vick? We've inquired around town, and nobody seems to know much about her. She's not listed on WhoRepresents.com, and the barely respectable amount of research we performed online points to Glue Inc., an entertainment (and sports?) marketing agency. Somebody keep us from picking up the phone again.

Update: We'll be the first to admit, we're stupid. Susan is the Atlanta Falcons vice president of communications and talking out of her ass (a job she's held for about four years), relays someone with at least a grade schooler's understanding of how to use Google. But don't let this lesson go untaught: People in sports PR are stupid, too, if we rely on them to answer these type of questions and they respond with "???" emails. Stupids.

Joey Jalleo was easily among our favorite Nadine Johnson flacks. He's witty, sharp-tongued, and could put together an event for 500 during an ass wax. So why are we saying was? Because Joey just announced he's leaving Nadine's harem to "consult on a few very exciting projects while looking for new employment and enjoying this much deserved time off."

Whatever happens, he better keep updating J'adore Joey, dammit.

CONTINUED »

Public relations industry vet Bob Sommer (of consumer and services firm MWW Group) is now known as the president of the Kushner family's Observer Media Group, the corporate umbrella of the New York Observer and some other reddish-ink ventures.

But just because he's now on the news side of the media business doesn't mean he's going to let his passion for spin waste away. "Asked if the Observer is profitable," writes PR Week, "Sommer pauses for a moment and allows a brief smile before rotely reciting the paper's recent promising initiatives."

Sommer also has forthright observations about the new media playground the 26-year-old Jared Kushner bought for himself.

CONTINUED »

How does one gain entrée into the mystical world of public relations? It's a lesson we never quite learned, given that our best PR tool is this website: We write about people in the media, and people in the media write about us! It's brilliant, and we're gonna make a mint on it someday.

In the meantime, it might do the rest of you good to start brushing up on how to get reporters interested in whatever you're pitching. Enter Bill Stoller's Publicity Insider Update, an "eZine" (yes, seriously!) that started pumping its way into our inbox.

It bills itself as a mailer "about publicity, PR & promotions for businesses, entrepreneurs & PR/Marketing Folk," but is, essentially, a crack dealer; they give readers a free taste of what they can offer, but you've got to pay for the real thing. For us, however, it's a mailer about how it's indeed possible the make the PR industry look even more like a self-serving industry for sociopaths.

CONTINUED »

CNN welcomes its newest Senior VP of Public Relations! Meet Christa Robinson, a 7 year CNN veteran with "deep roots in the New York media community" and, presumably, tons of PR experience!

In fact, you may remember Christa well from her deft finessing of the Lou Dobbs/Jewhating incident earlier this week. Anyhow, Christa will be working very closely with Jon, Ken, Susan, Tony, Rick and Jim. And she's also in charge of keeping the office pantry stocked with Thin Mints!

The full office memo, after the jump.

CONTINUED »

Yesterday, a publicist sent out an email inviting us to NYC press day for Brooklyn Rules on May 10. And while the note was fairly standard, (it listed the time, location and expected cast members, including Freddie Prinze Jr., Mena Suvari and Alec Baldwin) one particular line did grab our attention.

Alec Baldwin's schedule is extremely tight and he will not be able to give one on one interviews. Access to Alec will be extremely limited at the event.

In other words, "Alec Baldwin will only answer boring, irrelevant questions pertaining toThe Brooklyn Rules, and will not respond to inquiries containing any permutations of the phrase "rude little pig," nor will he offer any new justification for naming his daughter "Ireland."

UPDATE: We've just received word from the Brooklyn Rules publicist, who assures us that Alec Baldwin's limited availability was set way before the Press Day email went out, and therefore has absolutely nothing to do with all this recent tabloid unpleasantness.

So, just to be clear: Alec will not be conducting one on one interviews at the press day for Brooklyn Rules, however this has nothing whatsoever to do with the ugly phone incident, and everything to do with his being incredibly busy and important. That is all.

Three days after the Virginia Tech massacre, fifteen hours since NBC's controversial decision to air the campus shooter's multimedia manifesto, and in the wake of the Supreme Court's stunning 5-4 decision to uphold the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the following email missive was received in our inbox:

Slow news day?

Here’s a chance to let your readers know about an amazing contest! Fans can get creative with their favorite midnight fantasy and send a photo entry that best conveys the experience to a panel of experts. Judges will select the top photos, which will be featured on the Britney Spears Beauty website. The ten winners will receive a 30-gigabyte video iPod autographed by Britney Spears.

Note to the publicist for the Tick-Tock Photo Diary Contest:

1) Today is, most certainly, not a "slow news day."
2) There will never be a news day slow enough for us to advocate a contest wherein readers send in their "favorite midnight fantasy" in the hopes of winning an iPod autographed by Britney Spears.
3) That is all.

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."

• A sneak peak at the upcoming Spy book reminds us that all the clever FOB pieces of Radar and New York have been done before. [Very Short List]

• Rubenstein PR resorts to the dirty tricks of newspaper journos. [Daily Intelligence]

• DeBeers and the diamond industry are doing all the promotion for Leo DiCaprio's upcoming flick Blood Diamond. A scandal is forever. [The Envelope]

• Esquire doubles its fiction offerings. Though that's literary fiction, not "The best sex comes after 50!" fiction. [NYP]

• Jon Friedman almost feels guilty for loving New Yorker editor David Remnick so much — interesting because of all the people Friedman fawns over, Remnick is perhaps the only one we're willing to give him a pass on. [Marketwatch]

• Leave it to Time Warner to take the "Court" out of CourtTV. Whatever it takes to attract those young viewers defecting to MySpace. And XTube. [WSJ]

• CBS shall not utter Devil speak. And by Devil speak we mean the word "gay." [Good As You]

Oh dear. When is Leslie Sloane Zelnik going to start encouraging her clients to shut up and stop making total asses of themselves? First, Lindsay Lohan told Vanity Fair she was a bulimic drug addict. Then she allows Britney Spears to do a Matt Lauer interview with nappy hair extension, chewing gum, and her bra hanging out.

Now, Sienna Miller does an interview with Rolling Stone, in which she refers to the city of Pittsburgh as "shitsburgh." Lovely, Sienna. And great job, Zelnik! Well, at least she had the foresight (or the PR machine wheel greaser) to send out a letter of apology (full of fun Brit spelling) out before too many people hear about the comments in the first place.

From: Sloane, Leslie [mailto:]

Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 1:39 PM

Subject: Statement from Sienna Miller

I want to apologise for my comments which seem to have been misconstrued and taken out of context. I was referring to the fact that we are shooting almost all night shoots on this film and none of us have had an opportunity to fully explore the city. What I have seen of it is beautiful. I came once before to visit the Andy Warhol museum whilst researching a film and found both the city and it's inhabitants warm and gracious. My father is from Meadville and is in town to show me round this weekend. I sincerely apologise and hope people realise that conversations can be easily manipulated in print.

Yeah, we can see how saying "we haven't seen this beautiful city during the day" could be construed into "this is a piece of shit city." However, we do far prefer the honestly of the latter.

New York magazine's party goer and PR team member extraordinaire Betsy Burton (left) is leaving the exclusive halls of New York for more corporate pastures.

Jossip has learned that Burton is unlatching from Serena Torrey's (right) side (where she held the title of communications manager) to join the PR team at Time magazine.

After a little more than two years working with Adam Moss, and sending countless emails to bloggers on behalf of New York, Burton will join the expanding PR machine at Time.

We are also told that other top-notch mag pimpers are fleeing to the new on-the-rise press team at Time, under Ali Zelenko. In addition to Burton's exodus, Nora Haynes has been snatched from Rolling Stone, and Daniel Kile is leaving the New Yorker.

While we might speculate that more and mags are working to build strong in-house PR teams, as far as we know, Maxim, Blender, and Radar will continue to be repped from the outside by e-mail blasting Four Corners publicist Noa Rabinowitz.

If you have watched the Today show once time in the past four months, you definitely have that "It's Your Wedding Day!" song in your head, and are likely sick to death of this stupid Today Throws a Wedding segment. We know we are. Well, they've are now at the phase where the audience votes for the bride's dress, the groom's suit, and even the wedding ring.

And what are audience votes great for? PR stunts of course! From the lovely folks at Tiffany's who are candidates in the ring running.

Good morning,

The Today Show is currently throwing a wedding for a couple who won the opportunity through various contests. The audience gets to vote on all matters of the wedding and today the viewers are choosing the wedding band. Tiffany showcased a diamond and sapphire ring in 18k yellow gold, playing up the celebration ring angle, coupled with a Lucida Band in 18k yellow gold. Please vote for the Tiffany & Co. ring; it is labeled "Traditional with a Twist".

We're just trying to give the heads up to Tacori, David Yurman, and Cartier. Better start mass emailing all your cousins.

Vote For Your Favorite Ring [MSNBC]