PR Newser had a fine piece about veteran PR industry newsletter O'Dwyer's Public Relations News seeking to gain some fees from large PR agencies, or risk being dropped from its rankings of PR firms.
It seems that O'Dwyer wants $2,000 for agencies with $2M in fees, $3,000 for those with $5M-$10M in fees, and $5,000 for those with $10M and more. Founder Jack O'Dwyer himself goes on in PR Newswer's comments about his rationale - some of it makes sense, and some of it sounds like sour grapes. Here's part of what he wrote below - Click over to PR Newser for the full rant.
"Wagged (Waggener Edstrom) likes being No. 2 on our list but only wants to have one $295 subscription for their 840 employees. No wonder media are going out of business right and left. Despite attempts to smear us as "charging for ads," what I'm charging for is website access for firms with scores and even hundreds of employees who want to get by with one subscription. I'm not going to rank them if they treat us in this unfair manner. PR firms are cooperative and even-handed with the press. They don't play favorites. Firms who act like the penny-pinching ones we're going to toss from our rankings are not PR firms and don't belong on our rankings."
This might be too inside baseball, major-city PR stuff for any readers of this blog, but having been there before earlier in my life, I can see the shitstorm that's being kicked up. On one hand, O'Dwyer's is a PR industry publisher, surely PO'd about the major players buying one lousy subscription to pass around the office. On the other hand, perhaps O' Dwyer's industry insights and rankings don't play as large a role in clients and companies choosing PR firms as they used to. And the agencies are themselves getting less in fees than they used to, so they cut corners where they can. Ah PR times, they are a-changing.
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