Saw this in today’s MediaBistro morning newsfeed. It’s Gay Talese talking to Big Think about The New York Times newsroom of the 1960s. "Mad Men" was nothing compared to how journalists drank and smoked on the job in the ‘60s, Talese said.

Further reading: Talese’s landmark Esquire article, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” You have read this story, right?

I noticed something fishy yesterday.

At 1:19 p.m., EST, Gawker published a post about a bizarre ad that once ran in The Wall Street Journal. The author of this Gawker post, Hamilton Nolan, said he found the ad on another blog, Animal NY.

And then, 18 minutes later, The Business Insider blog network also published a post about The Wall Street Journal ad. The author of this post, John Carney, also said he found the ad on the Animal NY blog.

OK, could be a coincidence, the ad is part of the Zeitgeist, you know. Or maybe the same tipster wrote to both bloggers pointing out the ad. Or perhaps Nolan and Carney are friends. Who knows? No big deal, until …

At 3:17 p.m., EST, Nolan publishes another post. This one is about a 1,400 pound bull that rampaged through the streets of Paterson, N.J. He tied the strange occurrence to the stock market, which The Wall Street Journal said experienced a “leap,” according to Nolan. So a bull rampages through the streets of New Jersey, while the stock market rampages, like a bull. Alright, sir, that’s all fine and good.

But then, at 4:04 p.m., EST, less than one hour after the Gawker post, The Business Insider’s Joe Weisenthal published — you guessed it — a post about the rampaging New Jersey bull and — yep, right again — the stock market’s figurative rampage.

Hmmm …

Sure this is minor, considering both blog posts were adapted from somewhere else on the Web. But, if The Business Insider did discover those posts on Gawker, should it be noting that? Should it have given Gawker the ol’ “hat tip” you see so many people in the blogosphere and on Twitter give to someone who discovered an interesting post?

Hmmm ...

Here’s something you don’t see every day. Tucked inside a large envelope from Oxford University Press was a press release that announces:

“FOR IMMEDIATE F*&#ING RELEASE”

The symbols are not mine; they were in place of the “U,” “C,” and—well, you get the picture.

Why the dirty language from, of all groups, the Oxford University Press? The press release is for a newly updated book, The F Word, by Jesse Sheidlower, which details the history of the word and then lists and defines its many, many uses.

“Now in a thoroughly updated edition of The F-Word, Jesse Sheidlower,[Oxford English Dictionary] editor-at-large, offers a rich, revealing look at the f-bomb and its illimitable uses,” according to the press releases.

The press release includes six quotes not about the book exactly, but about the word—and in these cases the "U," "C" and "K" are not replaced by symbols. The quotes come from a variety of famous people including J.D. Salinger, Lenny Bruce, Joan Crawford and Amy Winehouse, who’s attributed with saying, “What kind of f***ery is this?” (The definition of that word is in the book, in case you’re curious.)

I'm definitely reading this book. I'll keep you updated.

Matt Latimer’s book about working as a speechwriter in the Bush administration comes out today. I read an excerpt of the book, Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor, in GQ magazine, and it looks good.

That has several former Bush staffers worried. According to several accounts, the book includes embarrassing anecdotes about the administration. The excerpt I read in GQ actually portrays the President in a sympathetic, if not flattering light.

But that hasn’t stopped former Bush staffers — the ones Latimer describes in his book as fiercely loyal — from launching a PR counter-attack on behalf of their former boss. In a story that ran on Politico last week, several former Bush communicators posed the snarky question, “Who is Matt Latimer?”

"A lot of people just didn't know who Matt Latimer is. A lot of us are going 'who is this guy again? Who is this writing a book?'" Ed Gillespie, a former counselor to the president and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, told Politico’s Andy Barr. Gillespie later added, “Matt Latimer did not spend a lot of time with [the] president when there was anything of substance going on. He was there for speechwriting meetings, but in those meetings we weren't talking over policy decisions.”

Nothing of substance going on? Ouch. Doesn’t say much about speechwriters.

Turns out, as Barr puts it, Latimer “wasn’t exactly a nobody.” His tenure at the Bush White House lasted from May 2007 to October 2008, where he was promoted to deputy director of speechwriting. Prior to writing speeches for Bush, Latimer served as chief speechwriter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Tony Fratto, former deputy press secretary for President Bush, maintains that Latimer was nothing more than a junior- or mid-level staffer. What do former White House speechwriters think about Fratto’s assertion? I asked a few of them.

“I would disagree with that,” Ken Askew, a former speechwriter for the first President Bush, said in an e-mail. “In my experience, the deputy chief of speechwriting (Dan McGroarty, when I was there) certainly was not, in my view, ‘a junior-level staffer.’ I guess it's all in your perspective, though. As I recall, Dan traveled on Air Force One, attended meetings that included the President, etc.”

Hal Gordon, a former speechwriter in the Reagan administration, wrote, “First of all, I think we need to ask how important was speechwriting generally to the George W. Bush White House?” According to Gordon, speechwriters were very important in the Reagan administration. “They had White House mess privileges,” he said, “among other marks of high status.”

A former White House speechwriter, who did not work in the Bush administration, had a different take. (This speechwriter requested anonymity.)

“Deputy directors can be the people who make the trains run on time,” the speechwriter said. In that case, they determine who writes what speech and if that speechwriter is meeting his or her deadline. “So it's probably true that he didn't get much face time.”

However, this speechwriter also noted that it might not matter how much face time Latimer had with the President. “People who get the face time love to come back and recount every detail of a meeting to show how important they are,” the speechwriter wrote. “So it's perfectly plausible that he heard stuff from others right afterwards and wrote it down.”

Either way, only an excerpt from the book has been published, so the final verdict on Latimer’s portrayal of the administration will come once the book is read. On that note, Mike Long, a member of the White House Writers Group and former speechwriter to then Sen. Fred Thompson, defended Latimer, who he counts as an acquaintance.

“My guess, and it's only a guess, is that people who were around Bush are so accustomed to having their man blasted that they defend him instinctively — as they should,” Long said. “But Matt's on their side. … At least I know Matt, and I know he's honest and he's loyal. If the book portrays Bush in a flattering light (and I imagine it will to a great extent), those who today venomously say ‘Matt Who?’ will tomorrow be saying ‘My ol' buddy Matt!’”

And even though people will criticize Latimer for talking out of school and throwing former co-workers under the bus, as one speechwriter I spoke to suggested: Why not write a book about working in the White House?

If you have a window seat on history, who can resist telling people about it?

If you haven't seen this video yet, take 2 minutes and 20 seconds from your day and watch it. The video features Will Ferrell, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde, Thomas Lennon and other actors in an important PSA about America's growing need to protect health insurance executives.

"As the health care debate heats up, we need to remember who the real victims are ... health insurance executives. People are saying a lot of mean things about health insurance companies and their executives, and it's got to stop."

A relative of mine works at one of the nation's big insurers. Wonder what he thinks of this ...

A couple Christmases ago I gave my brother’s 7-year-old nephew the entire collection of "Schoolhouse Rock!" episodes. The kid looked at me like I gave him socks. Meanwhile, his dad snatched the DVDs from him like he was 7, and it was Christmas Eve 1977.

After the kids went to bed, we spent the evening with hot totties and "Schoolhouse Rock!" Here's one of the episodes, The Tale of Mr. Morton, which was produced for the show's encore run in 1993. It's for all the writers, editors and romantics out there.

The story follows Mr. Morton, a portly writer with crippling social anxiety, as he courts Pearl, the woman he spies on from his window. It’s a love story and a lesson on how to identify the subject and predicate of a sentence — all in three minutes. "Schoolhouse Rock!" was made for YouTube.

Best line: “Hello, cat. You look good.”

I am engaged.

I have been for about nine months and when I read an article like this one (“Tap into the ‘Power of Pull’ to get your brand out there”) from Steve Rubel, which promises, “Three tips for tweaking your marketing messages so people will choose to engage with you,” I think: “I don’t want anyone else to engage with me. I’m already engaged.”

I’m kidding, of course. I’m always accepting offers.

Kidding, again.

Engagement is a word that to most of the world refers to the time between when boy and girl promise to marry each other and when they actually say “I do.”

To corporate communicators, it means something else; it means … well … I’m not exactly sure.

The Conference Board defines it as “a heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization, that influences him or her to exert greater discretionary effort to his or her work.”

So, it’s cocaine for your employees—in a good way.

The Wikipedia entry for “employee engagement” says this:

Engagement at work was conceptualized by Kahn, (1990) as the ‘harnessing of organizational members’ selves to their work roles. In engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances. The second related construct to engagement in organizational behavior is the notion of flow advanced by Csikszentmihalyi (1975, 1990). [Mihaly] Csikzentmihalyi (1975) defines flow as the ‘holistic sensation’ that, people feel when they act with total involvement. Flow is the state in which there is little distinction between the self and environment. When individuals are in Flow State little conscious control is necessary for their actions Employee Engagement as the extent to which workforce commitment, both emotional and intellectual, exists relative to accomplishing the work, mission, and vision of the organization. I see engagement as a heightened level of ownership where each employee wants to do whatever they can for the benefit of their internal and external customers, and for the success of the organization as a whole.

I don’t even know where to begin, so I will start at the beginning.

Since they don’t identify Kahn, I’ll assume they mean James, and that it’s spelled wrong. (I loved him in Mickey Blue Eyes.) It seems he wants companies to harness employees to their chairs, like Mike Meyers’ Phillip “the hyper hypo” character on Saturday Night Live.

Count me out, Jimmy Caan.

The second definition sounds like another drug reference. “Acting with total involvement … little distinction between the self and environment”—I think Csikszenktmikhalyi was a Dead Head.

However, this description—“I see engagement as a heightened level of ownership where each employee wants to do whatever they can for the benefit of their internal and external customers, and for the success of the organization as a whole”—begins to make sense.

As a man engaged to be married, I feel a heightened level of ownership in my relationship with my fiancé. Not in the, “I own you, woman,” kind of way, but in the, “We’re really doing this. I'm excited!” kind of way.

On that note, I will do whatever I can for the benefit of my fiancé and the success of our relationship as a whole.

So, it seems engagement in the traditional sense and the corporate sense are similar. Someone who is “engaged” in the corporate sense is much like a man or woman engaged to be married, which means they are committed—to a point. But they aren't committed to the fullest extent, which is marriage.

And that brings me to “employee marriagement,” a new term (I think), which means someone who is fully committed to the company in a lifelong “for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer” kind of way.

How many of your employees are married to your company? Is it time you launched an employee marriagement program?

Propheta Communications President Kevin Mercuri is threatening to file a lawsuit against the parent company of Help A Reporter Out (HARO), Two Cats and a Cup of Coffee LLC, which is owned by Peter Shankman, if it does not honor a six-month contract it signed with Propheta.

HARO is a service that matches journalists with sources.

This summer, HARO tapped Propheta to handle public relations. They parted ways more than four weeks ago. Mercuri told PR Junkie that he reached a “gentleman’s agreement” with HARO to end their contract. He said the agreement included the possibility of working together down the road.

Last week, PR Junkie reported that HARO had named RLM PR its agency of record about three weeks ago.

Mercuri feels HARO’s chief operating officer, Thom Brodeur, has breached the gentleman’s agreement because of comments he has made about Propheta.

“I’m not quite sure why he’s doing what he’s doing, but this is really the only way to make it stop,” Mercuri said. He plans to file a breach of contract lawsuit if HARO does not compensate him for the full six-month contract.

HARO has denied any wrongdoing. Brodeur said HARO has no further comment on the matter.

Today, HARO founder Peter Shankman offered PRNewser this statement: "HARO engaged Propheta Communications to handle public relations duties during the summer of 2009. After working with Propheta for several weeks, we decided to shift the direction of our communications strategy." Shankman added, "[W]e believe Propheta's allegations are without merit and don't believe this to be an issue."

PRNewser’s Joe Ciarallo suggested that there’s bad blood between RLM and Propheta. Mercuri worked at RLM before leaving the firm to become a vice president at 5WPR.

“I have no battle with” RLM President Richard Laermer, Mercuri told PR Junkie. “I don’t think I ever had a battle with Richard.”

Laermer was unavailable for comment.

UPDATE #2: Some really good comments from both side of the argument, so good that my resolve started to fade. And then I found this nugget from MTV.com, which was published on July 14. The headline: "Taylor Swift Promises 'Theatrics' For 2009 VMA Performance."

While that headline may refer to her actual performance, I choose to interpret it broadly, to mean her involvement in the entire show. Here's an excerpt from the article:

"I'm so excited that MTV and the VMAs have invited me to perform, because I think this year's show will be unlike anything they've ever done!" she said of her debut on the VMA stage with an updated version of her new single, "You Belong With Me."

Although Swift lost her [award] last year to Tokio Hotel, she'll be pulling out all the stops to dazzle the audience this year. "I love incorporating theatrics into my performances, and the VMAs have always allowed artists to run with that," she said. "MTV has been so good to me. And I could not be more excited about this year's VMAs."

Swift, with the help of Kanye and Beyonce, certainly delivered on the theatrics.

UPDATE: Thirty-six hours have passed since the Kanye West outburst and thus far it seems I’m among the minority of people who believe the whole episode was scripted.

A TVGuide.com poll found that 84 percent of respondents believe Kanye acted on his own volition.

Still, several media outlets have suggested the event was staged. They include The Los Angeles Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Gawker and the blog Guest of a Guest.

In the latter blog, the author asked Brian Stelter, The New York Times reporter who covered the MTV event, for his thoughts. Here was Stelter’s answer:

“The story arc couldn’t have been written more perfectly. The conflict teed off the show, created tension for two hours, then concluded when Beyonce invited Taylor Swift back on stage for a proper acceptance speech. Staged or not, there must be a good bit of back-patting at MTV’s headquarters today.”

Anyone else skeptical of a live event with a perfect story arc?

You’ve probably heard about rapper Kanye West jumping on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards and grabbing the microphone from 19-year-old country music star Taylor Swift to announce that singer Beyonce Knowles actually deserved the award that Swift had just won.

A stunned Swift didn’t seem to know how to react. MTV cut away after West was done speaking.

People in the media, bloggers and commenters on Twitter are shocked shocked that West upstaged this poor little country singer. Oh come on. It was all staged—and it’s masterful media manipulation.

By some accounts, the awards shows – even the Michael Jackson tribute – was a bust. However, MTV guaranteed that the event will live on in the press and online thanks to this stunt. The story of West stealing the mic from Swift was even on the homepage of The New York Times this morning. The video of the incident has racked up more than 1 million views on the MTV Web site.

Kanye West has a reputation to uphold. He’s a self-obsessed a**hole. The man has embraced it; he sells records based on it. Remember, this is the guy who said during a televised Hurricane Katrina benefit that George Bush hates black people.

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift is the purity pop queen. She’s an aw shucks kind of girl who had her heartbroken by a Jonas Brother. And the way the rest of the awards show played out was perfect for her. Just minutes after the incident occurred, Swift performed one of her singles on a subway car beneath Radio City Music Hall as fans followed her en masse from the car to the street, ala The Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night.

She was triumphant – the young starlet had overcome the evil Kanye West.

Later in the show, Beyonce Knowles invited Swift on stage to let her take her bow. The crowd cheered.

Kanye, meanwhile, was booed throughout the night and later told to leave the event.

It was a win for everyone, especially MTV.

Here are a few more things to consider:

•Why didn’t MTV cut Kanye West’s mic when he jumped on stage?

•Why was this controversial and combustible star seated so close to the stage?

•Why did the host, British comedian Russell Brand, say during his opening monologue that Kanye West was “in the house” (or something) as the camera made a point of showing where he was – next to the stage?

•Convenient, wasn’t it, that Swift would perform almost immediately after Kanye stole her spotlight—and that the performance would take place outside the theater so she wouldn’t feel the need to say something to the audience about what had just happened.

Here's the video:

Meanwhile, Mashable has picked up a YouTube video showing Kanye interrupting President Obama. Funny stuff.

When Forbes.com published a story this week about Help A Reporter Out (HARO), the service started by Peter Shankman to connect journalists with sources, several Twitter members asked whether this coverage was the work of Propheta Communications.

It wasn’t.

Instead, it was the work of RLM PR, the firm that HARO quietly named its agency of record three weeks ago after parting ways with its previous firm, Propheta. Thom Brodeur, chief operating officer of HARO, confirmed the news with PR Junkie.

According to Brodeur, HARO will work with RLM to move beyond its image as a competitor to Profnet or similar reporter/source matching service or source databases.

“The objectives are really to position with business media the success story of a social media company, because frankly I’m tired of hearing that social media companies can’t be successful—that they aren’t successful models—because there are [successful models], and we’re proof of that,” he said.

HARO, which started as a Facebook group, became profitable six to eight weeks after it began monetizing, Brodeur noted.

Brodeur said RLM is HARO’s first “agency of record,” although not the first PR firm it has worked with. In late July, it was reported that HARO was working with Propheta Communications.

“Ultimately, our goals and objectives were different,” Brodeur said of HARO’s split from Propheta. He said it became clear during his first 45 days as COO that Propheta’s media and outreach objectives did not match HARO’s vision.

“They are very good at what they do; it just happened to be a different skill set from what we required at the time.”

Propheta’s founder, Kevin A. Mercuri, told PR Junkie that he started working with HARO prior to Brodeur’s joining the company in June.

"Once [Brodeur] started, we worked together for several weeks and we could see that things were difficult in terms of planning strategy and executing tactics," Mercuri said in an e-mail. "We wanted to move forward aggressively and [Brodeur] wanted to take things slow and steady."

Eventually, HARO offered Propheta a way out of the contract it had signed.

RLM founder and CEO Richard Laermer expressed excitement about working with Shankman, a man he’s known for many years.

“I believe a lot of what’s been written about HARO has been good to help understand it, but I don’t think a lot of people know what’s really going on with the business,” Laermer said. “That’s really part of our job right now.”

And that's exactly what the Forbes.com piece covered.

Politico, the must-read for all political junkies, launched an addition to its site, called Click, which is all about Beltway gossip. Click bills itself as “the premiere destination for news and gossip on D.C.’s social scene.”

The site includes stories like “Justice [Sonia Sotomayor] hits Chinatown Dive Bar,” “Secrets to Michelle’s arms revealed,” “The Weekend’s Nuptials” and my favorite, “Top 50 Party Animals Part 1 and 2.”

Sharing the page this morning with the “Top 50 Party Animals, Part 2” story was an advertisement for Ogilvy PR.

And some people don’t take the public relations profession seriously …

UPDATE #3 (5 p.m.): Blowing the whistle on this one. A full day of potential news coverage and it never burbled to the surface. I'm calling it: PR problem averted.

UPDATE #2 (1:11 p.m.): UPI picked up the story. It's now a breath away from the AP wire. The UPI story, unlike The Consumerist, notes that Southwest offered to refund the man's tickets.

UPDATE #1 (12:20 p.m.): The Consumerist blog has picked up the story. Not good for Southwest. The Consumerist is often a launching point to the national media.

Southwest Airlines is no stranger to PR dust ups. Remember the skirt incident two years ago? A flight attendant asked a female passenger, dressed in a short-short skirt, to wear a blanket during a Southwest flight, presumably so she wouldn’t flash other passengers.

The scantily-clad passenger took her Southwest-bashing all the way to the "Today Show."

Over the weekend, a similar PR headache popped up in the Chicago press. A 65-year-old overweight man was told by a Southwest gate agent—while he was walking down the jet way for a flight from Las Vegas to Chicago—that he needed to buy an extra seat on the flight (at half price), due to his size, according to published reports.

The man, who weighs 350-pounds and stands 6 feet tall, denied that Southwest offered him the second ticket. Instead, he claims an employee told him he wouldn't be flying to Chicago on Southwest that day. He had already flown the airline from Chicago to Vegas.

Another Southwest employee reportedly escorted the man to a United Airlines counter, where he bought two tickets to Chicago at $400 a pop.

As of Tuesday morning, the story hadn’t spread across the wire. But it is simmering in the Chicago media. As one writer for the NBC-affiliate’s Web site noted, “Southwest Airlines is taking a sumo-sized media flogging from a man who says he was refused a seat on one of their flights because he was told he's too fat.”

Well, that’s cute and all, but we’ll have to wait and see what—if any—kind of media flogging Southwest gets—and how the company will react.

I think this video is hilarious, but I can’t tell if the creators intended it that way.

It’s a 30 second PSA from Children’s Miracle Network about free nasal flu spray offered to children. It’s straightforward, informative—and totally bizarre, in a good way.

Maybe I'm groggy this morning, but I can't tell if it's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. What about you?

Either way, the video has only 260 views. I think it could easily go viral.

Politico reporter Daniel Libit tweeted about the ad Wednesday morning, with the comment “highly retweetable.” Indeed.

Only 13 percent of contributors to Wikipedia are women, according to a November survey by the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind the site, and United Nations University’s tech-research program MERIT.

The Wall Street Journal’s Andrew LaVallee, who reported on the study Monday, said, “Of the 53,888 respondents who said they contribute to Wikipedia, only 6,814 were women. The male/female ratio is closer among those who read entries but don’t write or edit them: 69% men to 31% women.”

The study also indicated that the average age of male contributors is 26, while the average female contributor is 24.

Wonder what the ratio of men to women—and their average ages—is at Encyclopedia Britannica or World Book. Seems this might be a good time for the encyclopedias to launch a playful marketing campaign around this topic.