A PR woman slipped a couple of client shout-outs past an unsuspecting features writer in Tuesday’s edition of The Kansas City Star.
Star scribe Monica Watrous tabbed Megan Neher, owner of Megan Neher Public Relations, as a source for a piece about the places that notable folks take their out-of-town guests. Neher said she takes visitors to Benton’s Steak & Chop House, atop the Westin Crown Center hotel, “because it gives an incredible sweeping view of everything from Liberty Memorial to Union Station to the convention center to the new Sprint Center.” Benton’s, Neher went on to explain, is “Kansas City’s best-kept secret.”
Westin Crown Center hotel, it just so happens, is also a Megan Neher client.
The shilling continued with Neher saying she takes out-of-towners on shopping trips to Zona Rosa, another Neher client.
Neher mentioned other attractions, including the Plaza and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, that don’t appear on her client list. But her press-release-like enumeration of Benton’s wonderful qualities suggests that she was in flack mode when she volunteered her opinions.
Watrous says she did not know that Westin Crown Center and Zona Rosa were Neher clients until after the story appeared. She admits she made a mistake by not asking Neher if any of the favorite spots she mentioned pay for her services. Watrous blamed her negligence, in part, on a tight deadline. “I had to turn it around in very little time because we had something fall through,” she says.
Watrous messed up. Still, she’s owed an apology from Neher, who should have volunteered her conflicts of interest as a professional courtesy.
Concludes Watrous: “Maybe it was a bad decision to interview a PR person for that kind of story.”
It was a bad decision to interview that PR person, anyway. – David Martin
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