Times Public Editor Byron Calame, the readers' representative for the paper, decided to examine where enterprise stories are born. He looked at the front pages of eight major sections of one edition of the Sunday Times and found 23 enterprise articles (which excluded breaking news and columns). He asked reporters to recount how the initial idea originated for each piece. Of the 23 stories, 16 came from ideas generated by reporters and five from editors. None "came down from on high" from the 13 top editors on the paper. Only two of the 23 started with ideas from PR practitioners, Calame reports.

Managing Editor Jill Abramson said, "By far, the greatest percentage of ideas comes from reporters. They bubble up." Calame added, "While public relations professionals can play a key role in the journalistic process, I was encouraged to find that the ideas for only two articles came from them."

"The findings at the Times illustrate the importance of consistent contact with reporters to offer information on trends and developments as groundwork for story ideas," advised Airfoil Vice President Tracey Parry. "Public relations professionals understand the value of establishing one-to-one relationships with editors and reporters to help populate the ideas the journalist develops with examples and insights from clients and to help shape the journalist's perceptions of an industry or marketplace. Simply sending out news releases is not sufficient. The PR practitioner must become a true resource for reporters to help them flesh out their ideas by offering new environments, new agendas and new trends from clients that may stimulate their thinking."

The automotive industry ignored women for years, until the emergence of the dual-income family meant two cars in every driveway. Then automakers began assembling teams of women to design their cars and SUVs. Technology gave women short shrift as well, until the rise of online shopping and the capability for social networking. Now women play a much more prominent role on the Web. More recently, women have made their marks among building-supply stores, freight carriers, highway crews and a host of other once-macho vocations and venues.

Women have tremendous spending power, and increasingly they are determined to maintain their economic status by managing full careers at the same time they balance their home life-financially, domestically and even structurally.

A much broader cross section of marketers now are targeting these active women, who balance work and family life, through traditional media and newer forms of communication. Airfoil recently conducted research with a select group of working moms to examine their media habits. Not surprisingly, we found their favorite types of publications were food and home-entertaining magazines, and their top priorities were spending time with family, along with children's health and safety. But local broadcast news and newspapers were very important as well. Two thirds of them set aside time each day for news and entertainment, despite their hard-charging schedules.

Perhaps most revealing to some marketers may be the fact that 80 percent of the working mothers in our study are on the Internet daily. They have incorporated it into their office and home life just as resolutely as the stereotypical male executive has.

Three out of four of the women responding said they are in charge of most household duties, and two thirds of them involve significant others when making major purchases. Clearly women have become a lead partner in the buying decisions of today's families, and every marketer should be communicating in ways that meet the needs and preferences of the women taking charge of their families and their careers.

Many newspapers have incorporated RSS feeds on their sites, but few are podcasting yet. It's a different story for conventional broadcast news and cable news networks, however. While the audience for their on-air programs are evaporating, broadcast-news organizations have taken the lead in offering podcasts and RSS text for a now seemingly endless range of topics and tastes, supplementing the video they make available on their home pages.

ABC News appears to be out front on the Web with the greatest variety of podcasts. It's one of the few organizations sending out video podcasts-half a dozen direct-to-your-computer videocasts titled World News Now; Good Morning, America; Extreme Video; Ahead of the Curve; Buzz Cut; and Fresh Trax. Its audio podcasts-some of them bilingual-number no fewer than 43, including 17 from ABC affiliates in New York, Houston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. They range from news to entertainment, from "Medical Minute" to "Desperate Housewives Minute," from money advice to movie reviews. They're joined by 16 different RSS feeds.

CBS runs a dozen podcats-from "60 Minutes" and "Face the Nation" to Frommer's Travel and Larry Magid's Tech Report-along with 18 various RSS news feeds and 30 more just devoted to sports. NBC and its MSNBC online site have come up with a total of 13 podcasts-newscasts, "Meet the Press," "Hardball" and the like, plus a podcast where its White House-beat correspondents answer listener mail. These are supplemented by ten RSS feeds.

CNN is deeply in the game as well, but with somewhat fewer RSS feeds and podcasts than the over-the-air nets, and the Fox News homepage offers links to RSS feeds but no podcasts.

The agency's growth also was a central element in the selection of Airfoil CEO Lisa Vallee-Smith as a finalist in the marketing/communications category of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition for the Detroit region. The annual event honors the contributions of entrepreneurs toward transforming organizations, creating new products, enriching lives and contributing to the economy.