Teed Off at Augusta

Crisis management PR pro Jim McCarthy says his clients have run afoul of "the media/ activist industrial complex." Case in point: Augusta National hired McCarthy when Martha Burk challenged the golf club's policy of not admitting women members. But McCarthy's prime target wasn't Burk: "Stopping The New York Times dead in its tracks was critical... because the Times sets the agenda for the broader media world." He fed information to conservative bloggers so that news stories would be read "with the lens that you created." His efforts paid off as the Times' Augusta coverage was increasingly questioned: "The story is no longer sex discrimination but journalistic integrity. That is how you turn down the heat on a crisis, by changing the subject."