"Over the July 4 weekend last summer, at cookouts up and down the East Coast and into the Midwest, guests arrived with packages of Al Fresco chicken sausage for their hosts to throw on the grill," writes Rob Walker. Unbeknownst to most of the other guests, the sausage-bearers were agents of a marketing firm called BzzAgent, which gives people rewards for plugging its clients' products.

"Stun-gun manufacturer Taser International has launched a media and client-relations campaign to counter mounting accusations that the company's weapons are dangerous and potentially deadly," reports PR Week.

"Many Americans consider television their most important source of news and information on health," but TV is also "one of the least trusted sources." A study of 840 TV news health segments by communications professor Gary Schwitzer revealed "10 troublesome trends," including extreme brevity, little or no data, exaggeration and commercialism. "Rather than reporting on a company's hopes for its product or the potential sales, journalists could better serve their audiences by reporting on the evidence for and against a product," Schwitzer writes.