An academic study of "outsourced" radio news -- when "big-city radio stations produce and package local news stories for sister stations in distant markets" -- concluded that the practice has drastically changed the news landscape. University of Colorado journalism professor Lee Hood found that more than 40% of radio stations now do news for stations outside their own market. "The 'hub and spoke' system enables large radio conglomerates to employ fewer people and cut costs, but authenticity, regional nuances and topical public affairs reporting are lost in the process," according to a UC press release. Denver's KOA Radio used to outsource news to Omaha, NE, and Cleveland, OH, used to provide news to Milwaukee stations. Cleveland stations still outsource news to Pittsburgh. "To have somebody who may not even have been in your community ostensibly deciding what's news in your community, well, I think that's alarming," stated Hood.

BP advertisement from 2004"Energy giants ConocoPhillips and BP have brought their 'green' environmental campaigns to central New Jersey," reports Ryan Tracy, "funding research ... and, most recently, sponsoring a 'Conversation on Energy' forum." Conoco's corporate communications director explained, "We hope to reach out to the American public. ... Opinion polls ranked [oil and gas corporations] dead last in industry credibility, even below tobacco." Princeton University's Environmental Institute has a "Carbon Mitigation Initiative" that has received $15 million from BP and $5 million from Ford Motor Co. Other companies have funded other research programs. ExxonMobil gave $100 million to Stanford University's Global Climate and Energy Program, and ConocoPhillips gave $22.5 million to Iowa State University for biomass fuel research. Environmentalists called the Conoco forum in Trenton "greenwashing," but the director of Rutgers University's Energy Institute, which co-sponsored the forum, called it a "good first step" for the oil company.

A new public relations firm, After50 Marketing, was launched "with the expressed purpose of targeting baby boomers and senior consumers," writes PR Week. The firm will specialize in healthcare, adult living, legal and financial areas. By 2015, 45 percent of the U.S. population will be 50 or older, according to After50. The firm also estimates that the household net worth controlled by baby boomers is $19 trillion. After50 president and founder Kelly Kroll says that, due to her target demographic's "experience making decisions about their valuable resources," her firm will provide "more honest content and feedback." After50 is a sister firm to Marketing Renovations, which has offices in New York, Washington and Detroit.