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Our weekly roundup of news, trends and personnel moves in PR and marketing. This week’s stories include an unsavory dish cooked by Chef Mario Batali, Tavis Smiley says he wasn’t involved in unsavory activities and will PR pros need to pay for the privilege of pitching?

Brian Kelley’s passion for PR and outside-the-box approach have contributed to a noteworthy year for him and Sage Communications. Just one of his special talents: taking clients from media obscurity to being featured on national broadcast and print coverage.

Starting today, Facebook will demote what it calls “engagement bait,” posts that lure users into interaction by explicitly asking for likes and shares without offering editorial value. The posts are one way that brands can take advantage of Facebook’s (ever more discriminating) News Feed algorithm by boosting engagement to gain more organic reach. But the platform is taking action in response to widespread complaints, likely forcing some brands to rethink their approach.

To get a broad sense of some common New Year’s hopes and dreams, we asked eight communicators—all of whom will be speaking at PR News’ DigiComm Summi in Huntington Beach, Calif.—to share their PR resolutions for the coming year. Their answers ranged from better time management and recruiting talent to building relationships and creating more personalized content.

In a nutshell, 2017 has been a year of scandals, viral posts and revelations. Several big brands grappled with major crises, fake news continued to dog the major social media platforms and brands braced themselves for the possibility of being tweeted at by President Trump. But it certainly wasn’t all doom and gloom. Here, we’ve rounded up seven of the most memorable PR stories that defined 2017.

The veteran PR pro Arthur Solomon begins his annual review of lessons for communicators pulled from the year’s headlines and news reports. In this initial installment, the lessons involve crisis communications, media relations and internal communications. There’s also advice about the best way to handle a difficult boss.

In 2017 PR pros realized that the plethora of breaking political news has put the earned back into earned media. What’s a PR pro to do? The answer is to learn how you can conquer some of the new forces in earned media. Our author provides a series of tips and tactics rooted in the basics that will get your brand back in the media spotlight.

Within a month of taking leadership, Jodi Brooks led what Harold Burson calls one of the most significant new business wins in the history of Burson-Marsteller. And at SAP, Atle Erlingsson drove an internal campaign on gender pay equality and a successful media campaign that garnered coverage in Forbes, Fox, CNBC and the Wall Street Journal, helping the company to be named for the first time to Fortune’s Top 100 workplaces.

During a morning session of last week’s PR News Media Relations Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, attendees were asked to discuss professional pain points. In a late-afternoon session, the attendees, working in groups, spent a few minutes thinking about solutions to the issues discussed during the morning session. Here’s a summary of the issues and the ideas proposed for solutions.

When it comes to holiday tweets, should brands play naughty or nice? Netflix’s snarky tweet, calling out fans of its program “A Christmas Prince,” begged the question. In a statement to PR News, Netflix wrote: “The privacy of our members’ viewing is important to us. This information represents overall viewing trends, not the personal viewing information of specific, identified individuals.”