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DOWNTOWN - Does Pittsburgh have a PR problem? The city's public relations community, already wracked by corporate cutbacks, saw a major change at the top of the ranks in 2003 that could reverberate down to the smallest shop.
Ketchum Pittsburgh had been the region's largest public relations practice since its beginning in 1922. It built an international network of offices and was considered the prize catch when New York City-based agency conglomerate Omnicom Group Inc. bought its parent, $1.05 billion Ketchum Communications, in 1996. At that time, PR accounted for more than half of Ketchum Communications' worldwide gross income and its clients included MCI, Federal Express, Delta Airlines and Reebok.
The flush times didn't last. Over the past two years, Omnicom has been merging Ketchum offices into geographic regions. In October, it announced that the Pittsburgh would be managed by the director of its Chicago office, Adaire Putnam, and the offices would be merged into a Midwest business unit.
A smaller Ketchum presence in Pittsburgh is significant on several levels. For years, due to its large size, Ketchum was a training ground for recent graduates and relative newcomers to the profession. Its alumni have founded their own firms, head operations at rival agencies and work for corporations including H.J. Heinz Co. Ketchum did a great deal of pro bono community service and also provided more than a dozen internships annually to college students.
The Pittsburgh office, which employed more than 80 people just two years ago, is down to 20. About 75 percent of its clients are...