Every weekday, PR Daily associate editor Alan Pearcy highlights the day’s most compelling stories and amusing marginalia on the Web in this, #TheDailySpin.

There’s no question the Founding Fathers were brilliant men, but they could’ve used a copy editor, according to several grammar experts interviewed by the Tribune Newspapers’ Heidi Stevens. The men who drafted the nation’s most important documents capitalized words that didn’t require it, misused punctuation, and made famous the questionable term “more perfect union.” Stevens acknowledges that criticizing the Founding Fathers amounts to fighting words, but that didn’t stop Martha Brockenbrough, founder of National Grammar Day and the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, from saying, “I'm pretty sure James Madison was drunk when he wrote the second amendment.”

Mitt Romney, who hopes to follow in the footsteps of the Founding Fathers, is taking heat from an unlikely source—The Wall Street Journal editorial page. The Journal’s editorial board says the presumptive GOP nominee is wasting an opportunity to defeat an incumbent president because of the campaign’s poor messaging.

At fault, says the Journal, is the Romney camp’s decision to avoid hammering Obama on the “tax” that health care reform will levy upon Americans who don’t buy health insurance. However, in an interview on July 4, Romney reversed course and, in fact, referred to it as a tax. Such inconsistency will no doubt give Obama another chance to label Romney a flip-flopper—or an Etch A Sketch artist.

And while we’re on the topic of Romney, BuzzFeed set his recent campaign stop to Carly Rae Jepsen’s hit, “Call Me Maybe.” Or, as BuzzFeed refers to it, Call Mitt Maybe.



Katie Holmes’s divorce attorney will undoubtedly be calling Tom Cruise’s legal team now that the pair have split. Not only has Holmes hired legal counsel, but also started working with a new/old PR firm, BWR Public Relations, which she had formerly worked with but dropped after marrying Cruise in 2006, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Chick-Fil-A’s PR handlers will be handling the fallout from a report in The Advocate that says the restaurant chain in 2009 and 2010 donated millions to anti-gay groups, despite it spokespeople having previously denied that the company supports an anti-gay agenda.

There’s been no comment yet from Anthony Viceroy, global president and chief financial officer at PR firm Porter Novelli, about an Advertising Age report that he’s leaving the company. The departure would mark another high-profile exit for Omnicom PR firm.

Meanwhile, an Omnicom ad agency is celebrating after scoring the Southwest Airlines account. TBWA\Chiat\Day will join a roster of other agencies working with Southwest, and it will establish a “new strategic positioning for the airlines following its $1 billion acquisition of AirTran,” reports Adweek.

An intern at an unidentified newsroom could use some new strategic positioning after media blogger Jim Romenesko highlighted one of the budding journalist’s tweets badmouthing one of her colleagues.

And finally, many people are vacationing this week, although I suspect very few packed their own photographer. Not to worry. Some hotels and resorts are offering vacationers the services of a photographer to help capture the action. Read about this odd new trend in The Wall Street Journal.

Alan Pearcy is off this week. Michael Sebastian, the managing editor of PR Daily, is filling in. Email Michael here with any suggestions for #TheDailySpin this week.

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