Stories by Andrew Blum, AJB Communications

Throughout his long career playing baseball, Derek Jeter was thought to have the PR sense of a crafty politician. Little if anything stuck to him. In just a few months as CEO and co-owner of the Florida Marlins, though, he seemingly has torched his good name by unloading the team’s top talent and several other questionable moves. Here are suggestions designed to help him repair his public image.

With the firings of Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor, the face of crisis PR has been changed, for the moment at least. When your client is fired before he can even say, “I need crisis PR,” what’s left for crisis PR people to do? On the other hand, perhaps all these men still need crisis PR. Look at Charlie Rose, who was ambushed on the street and gave a very inappropriate response to a question.

The insidious nature of the Harvey Weinstein situation has become clear. Not only have the alleged inappropriate actions of Mr. Weinstein caused the apparent downfall of one of Hollywood’s top producers, the scandal also has touched the company he co-founded as well as NBC News, the Clinton Foundation and Amazon. James Corden, Woody Allen, Mayim Bialik and Al Michaels also were caught in the thicket. Can communicators do anything in situations like these when the boss and founder of a company is alleged to be a deviant?

If you’ve just started working in PR no doubt you’ve learned that the life of a PR pro means juggling a lot of tasks and skills. Perhaps you’re overwhelmed. Worry not. Veteran communicator Andrew Blum has tips and tactics to help as you get acclimated to professional life. And while it’s unlikely your first job in PR is glamorous, it can be a steppingstone to the rest of your career.

Getting your brand covered in the media is great. Unfortunately, from a brand awareness perspective, it’s merely the appetizer in a far larger PR meal. After that first story has bought you some media interest, it’s time to use every tool at your disposal to get even more coverage and name recognition for your brand. This can be done with both social and traditional media tools.

The client arrives with a high-profile crisis or a bet-the-company situation. The last thing you want to do is scramble to figure out how much to charge. Here are five tips to help you remain calm and cool…and get the fee you deserve.

What do you get when you put together a panel of two crisis PR executives and two high-profile reporters speaking to a group of law firm PR people? Answer: a wide-ranging discussion of PR/legal dynamics and how media and PR can work effectively on news relating to high-profile complex litigation.

The next time you think you are having a tough day in PR dealing with media in the U.S., count yourself on the lucky side. You could be dealing with media around the world. Time zones, language, culture and other factors make dealing with international media much more complex and difficult than strictly doing U.S. media outreach.

A large law firm can be a source of great PR potential, with exciting news and high-profile clients. Sometimes, getting the news out or commenting to reporters can be sticky. The problem can boil down to internal rules and policies and client conflicts that prohibit talking to the media on certain topics, or need multiple layers of approval to do so.

Authors, publishers and books have long been the PR clients in the book publicity business. And as the industry has changed, so has the media covering it along with the PR people promoting the books. In recent years, the book industry has changed with the rise of e-books, Kindle, Amazon.com, pressure on big publishers, and more self-published authors. Despite the changes, thousands of new books come out each year, so competition for readers and media coverage is tougher than ever.