Under the banner "a marketplace of ideas," major industry groups are blogging together, to "build influence and drive policy." The BizCentral blog includes the American Petroleum Institute, Business Roundtable, Nuclear Energy Institute and Personal Care Products Council. Pat Cleary, Fleishman-Hillard's senior vice president of digital public affairs, "pushed the idea from the start," reports Politico.com. Cleary "believes businesses ignore the Internet at great risk." He identified "congressional aides, lawmakers, reporters, policymakers and opinion leaders" as BizCentral's target audience. "Cleary got the idea for BizCentral three years ago while he was still an executive at the National Association of Manufacturers. When he moved to Fleishman, the firm gave him the resources to make it happen. The blog is free to participants and helps Fleishman build its brand as 'leaders in the digital space,' Cleary said." Previously, Cleary built NAM's blog as a tool "to fight taxes, promote innovation and shake manufacturing's reputation as an industry filled with dark and dangerous jobs." BizCentral has one rule ("post once a week") and one commandment ("we don't shoot at one another"), according to Cleary.

"I can't recall a time when PR has been as strong," Sir Martin Sorrell, the head of the UK-based marketing and public relations conglomerate WPP, told the Guardian. "Something has changed and the reason for the change is online activity, where personal recommendation and personal communication have become more important." Users of social networking sites like MySpace, YouTube and Facebook are averse to advertising, but often happy to pass along "seemingly 'independent'" reviews and opinions planted by PR pros. In Britain, the PR industry "employs some 48,000 people, and is second only to that of the U.S. in size," according to a 2005 study. Since then, industry growth has "been estimated at more than 10% a year, with predictions of more double-digit growth this year." The head of Britain's largest PR firm, Chime Communications, said, "Reputation management is now equally or more important than brand management and, as a result, there is a gradual shift of budget into public relations." More money for PR means more spin aimed at journalists, as UK-based watchdog groups like SpinWatch and Media Standards Trust know well. Media Standards Trust "is developing a tool to allow the public to compare a news article with a corresponding press release."

The Heartland Institute's "2008 International Conference on Climate Change" in New York was "a sort of global warming doppelganger conference, where everything was reversed," reports Juliet Eilperin. At the event, skeptics unveiled their response to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) report, edited by corporate-funded skeptic Fred Singer, argued that "recent climate change stems from natural causes." Eilperin notes that "while the IPCC enlisted several hundred scientists from more than 100 countries to work over five years to produce its series of reports, the NIPCC document is the work of 23 authors from 15 nations, some of them not scientists." The New York Times reports that while the Heartland conference "was largely framed around science ... when an organizer made an announcement asking all of the scientists in the large hall to move to the front for a group picture, 19 men did so." The conference invitation identified its goal as "to generate international media attention to the fact that many scientists believe forecasts of rapid warming and catastrophic events are not supported by sound science." The Heartland Institute offered "$1,000 to those willing to give a talk," and "a free weekend at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan, including travel costs, to all elected officials wanting to attend," according to the RealClimate blog.

R.J. Reynolds (RJR) may be funding a South Carolina anti-tax group to oppose a cigarette tax for health care. The Cover Carolina Collaborative, a group of health care organizations, is proposing that the state's tax be raised to $1.00 a pack, to help cover uninsured employees. South Carolina currently has the lowest cigarette tax in the nation, at seven cents a pack. The South Carolina Association of Taxpayers (SCAT) mailed out 10,000 postcards to Republican activists. The postcards call the measure a "$190 million unfunded taxpayer mandate" and urge recipients to "stop this HillaryCare styled welfare plan." South Carolina Senate staffers say a chart on the postcard is the same as one that RJR lobbyists previously showed state senators. RJR refused to say whether they are funding the SCAT anti-tax group. A member of the Cover Carolina Collaborative said, "If R.J. Reynolds wants to come out and oppose it, come out and oppose it, but don't hide behind the faces of taxpayers."

As part of the ongoing collective research project on Congresspedia to track the "superdelegates" who may decide the Democratic nominee for president, our partners at the Huffington Post have enlisted hundreds of citizens to research some of the more obscure party officials in the ranks of the superdelegates.

Now we need YOU to help move this information into Congresspedia so that the public can know just who these people are that may be picking our next president. It only takes a minute and no experience - technical or political - is necessary.

It should also be noted that, unlike the superdelegate counts from the major news organizations, the Superdelegate Transparency Project is the only fully transparent, fully sourced count of superdelegates anywhere, and it's all due to the work of citizens like you. You can join this effort by taking a minute to help out with our current task of moving the information from the Huffington Post. There's full instructions and support at the project's "help out" page.

"It's our job to keep coal at the table. It's not there now," said Bob Henrie, a principal in the Salt Lake-based advertising and public relations firm R&R Partners. In September last year, Henrie's firm won the contract with the National Mining Association and other mining industry lobby groups to develop a $35 million advertising campaign aimed at improving the coal mining industry's image. The ads are being run by Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), a front group which initially had its domain name registered by the coal industry trade organization, the Center for Energy and Economic Development. Late last year an analysis of ABEC's claims, published by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, accused the front group of having a "dirty agenda," running "dirty ads" and using "dirty political targeting" to promote "dirty lies." In his biographical note, Henrie boasts that he was once the chief of staff of the House Mines and Mining Subcommittee which involved him working "to protect vital mining legislation."