"Beijing’s Gehua New Century Hotel, site of the official non-accredited media center for the Beijing Olympics in August, has rescinded its offer to pay journalists as much as 1000 yuan ($145) for positive stories."

Peter Wilby on the commentariat influence report: "Since [Julia] Hobsbawm’s Editorial Intelligence makes money through briefing subscribers (mostly PRs) about columnists, it would be odd if it came to any other conclusion."

"Ronald Rudd … the founder of communications agency Finsbury, is the financial PR man most coveted by London’s business editors, according to research by CityA.M."

"Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times h

Blogs, including Engadget, are backtracking on the "Flat Earth News" padded lamppost story. But will the papers print corrections? Hmm…

PR guru Max Clifford’s come out unexpectedly fiercely in criticising what he regards as an ill-thought out publicity stunt. "It just comes across, the whole thing, as a very, very calculated public relations exercise," he claims

Interesting: The lingering effect of negative stories online is spawning a new reputation-management industry that compbines PR and SEO functions.

"The MoD warns that "more discipline" and "greater enforcement" of military conduct rules is necessary to tackle "the publishing of unauthorised content on unofficial channels . . ." [like YouTube and social networking sites]."

"Nick Davies launches a searing indictment of what he calls “churnalism” in this week’s Press Gazette. … Hasn’t journalism always included a degree of “churning it out” - or is Davies right, have matters considerably worsened in the last 20

"Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets," a public relations person wrote to ShapingYouth.

Ben Matthews: "The reason that I went for a career in public relations rather than journalism is that journalism seems more and more to be falling into the hands of public relations professionals."

Josh Quittner: "What’s harming Facebook - perhaps to a terminal degree - is enormously bad PR. For a social media company, these folks don’t understand the first thing about communication"

"Besides books, you can subscribe to newspapers (the [NY?] Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Le Monde) and magazines (The Atlantic). You can also subscribe to selected blogs, which cost either 99 cents or $1.99 a month per blog."