Thank you for smoking (2005): The best movie to see for any PR student. Trust me!

I accidentally came across this amazing movie while reading through Women in PR: why they win blog.  All it took was 10 minutes for me to realize how intriguing this could be for all PR students.  I am not really good in writing reviews on the movies, so will just quickly introduce the context of the finest movie I have seen for the recent months.

Nick Naylor (Eckhart) is one man who talks for a living and does he talk! Nick is the Vice President of The Academy of Tobacco Studies, the official spokesperson for cigarette manufacturers and smooth talks his way when they are in a mess. Smoking kills, but Nick Naylor would beg to differ. Aditya's Movie Review Blog

Genre: Comedy/Drama
Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Cameron Bright, J.K. Simmons, Maria Bello, David Koechner, Katie Holmes, William Macy

Guys, seriously, it is worth to have a nice 2 hour break from  working on your assignments and watch this movie. Will give you a link where you can see it for free:

http://www.wewatchmoviesfree.net/2010/02/watch-thank-you-for-smoking-free-online.html

Would also like to know what you all thought about it. Especially would like Catherine (my tutor) to let us all know if this movie is any way close to how it works in the real live?!

Are local authority newspapers close to outpacing the local publications?

Competition is rising because the council newspapers have grown in numbers in the past few years, at the same time as local newspapers have suffered a severe rejection form the public.

The concern is due to the amount of council publications that were branching out into non council related topics. The council’s publications are usually free of charge and sometimes exceptionally engaging.  Not only that attracted the readers but it naturally resulted in increase in number of advertisements inside of the councils publications. Given the state of the economy the independent local newspapers and magazines publishers are obviously not happy to see the risk of being undercut on their vital business.

A CIPR pride award and excellence award gold winner 2010 Dacorum Digest is a Dacorum Borough council’s residents’ tabloid newspaper is a free local authority publication. Containing material that represents the interests of all diverse communities and age groups.

Imagine that, in the approximate population of 137,799 the Borough of Dacorum the 79’000 free exemplars of the councils newspaper are being send out to residents’ regularly + anyone who is not receiving it can apply for the copy at any time.

The larger percentage of content and new improved design for made the publication so popular amongst the local residents that 74% of Borough’s Citizens’ named Dacorum Digest as one of the most effective methods of finding out about borough news and life and many other things, more than local papers or local radio. What is more, Dacorum Digest achieved £7500 income from advertising so the council can offset some of the costs and further increase the publications quality.

Research has shown that “The vast majority of people in the UK rely on their local councils paper to keep them informed...” The Newspaper Society's Lynne Anderson

So my question would be, what is there left to do for the other non authority publications, who are struggling to be better, in order to get more readers, partnerships and at the end of the day earn more money. 

What are your thoughts on the topic? Would you call it “the unfair competition" posed by local authority publications to commercial newspapers?