Following is a roundup of 10 interesting PR- and media-related stories found online last week:

USA Today’s ‘Ohno’ Moment With Subway: Journalism can’t survive without advertising, but something USA Today did last week went too far in blurring the line between the two realms. An interview with eight-time Olympic medal-winning speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno was featured on the front page of USA Today’s sports section. However, the story was placed in between two prominent ads, one right in the header next to the paper’s logo. “So to recap: An exclusive interview is completely sandwiched (pardon the pun) between two Subway ads, both of which feature the subject of USA Today's exclusive interview. Is this okay?” According to this former USA Today reporter, no – it’s a dubious step. (International Business Times)

Six Ways Journalists Can Effectively and Ethically Use Press Releases: A lawsuit against the Kansas City Star spotlights how journalists should be using press releases. The consensus suggests that newsrooms would benefit from talking about how to properly use press releases. Among the six tips offered by this editor are to think of press releases as a good starting point for finding out about information you didn’t know; reporters should talk with their editors about how to paraphrase/quote from press releases; and read press releases with a skeptical eye. (Poynter)

Chick-fil-A Lays a Rotten PR Egg: Chick-fil-A got itself in a public relations mess after its president and COO made comments related to the company’s stance on same-sex marriage. The fallout included a harsh letter from Boston’s mayor and the end of the Jim Henson Company’s relationship with the fast-food company. To make things worse, Chick-fil-A appeared to have created fake Facebook accounts to defend itself, though the company denies it did so. The lesson is obvious: Social media is a place where you can engage with your customers, but when you try to alienate people and lie to defend your position, you won’t get away with it. (Spin Sucks)

The Media’s Race to Be Worst: “The only thing missing from the mega-coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act last month was proper credit to the journalist who first broke the story,” writes columnist Gene Weingarten. “That journalist was me.” Weingarten shares how he tweeted “SCOTUS AFFIRMS ACA” at 10 a.m. on June 28, seven minutes and 35 seconds before anyone else reported the decision. He accomplished this feat by guessing. The old newspaper byword “Late But Great” seems to be replaced by “Worst But First,” according to Weingarten. Alexis Ohanian, co-creator of Reddit, also laments the media’s race to be first, saying though the Internet and other tools will always win on speed, journalism is meant to give us what’s accurate. (National Post, CBS News)

How to Write Eye-Catching News Release Subject Lines: “You can't judge a book by its cover, but you can certainly judge the effectiveness of an e-mailed news release by its subject line.” Here are six tips to help you write attention-grabbing subject lines for news releases: 1) get inspiration from journalists, 2) emphasize the benefits, 3) don’t manipulate the recipient, 4) be concise, 5) don’t exaggerate and 6) don’t use spammy words. (PR News)

Advice for the Next Generation of PR Pros: Dear college students or recent college graduates: PR is not glamorous. In fact, PR is often thankless and stressful. Luck can’t be counted on, so the job demands coming up with plans of attack, ones that focus on the brand and the consumers. The next generation of PR pros should heed six pieces of advice, including: be prepared to work your butt off with little pay, be prepared to receive little respect from journalists and clients (until you’ve earned it), and be prepared to feel proud when you see the positive impact you make for a company. (PR Daily)

Forty-Four Percent of Americans Learned About the Colorado Shootings From TV: According to CJ&N, a media industry research and analysis company, 56 percent of Americans said they heard about the shootings in the Aurora, Colo., theater from a source other than TV news. While this means 44 percent of Americans heard about it from TV news, 14 percent said they heard about the news from websites and 13 percent from radio. “Some of the ‘new’ digital channels many think would be prominent as the first to inform were not. Facebook, text alerts, email, and Twitter were all named by 5% or less of the total sample.” Younger age groups were almost as likely to have heard about the news via word-of-mouth and Facebook as by TV. (CJ&N Blog)

‘Crowdsourced’ Journalism Is Flawed, too: Citizen journalism was on full display in the aftermath of the Aurora, Colo., move theater shooting. The crowdsourced news that resulted received praise, and its potential to bring benefits that mainstream journalism can’t provide was hailed. But here’s the thing: Citizen journalism is pretty much doing the same exact thing that traditional journalism has always done. “Crowdsourced journalism doesn’t seem to do long-term investigative journalism well, nor does it do well at identifying and tracing large-scale societal problems, or high-level analyses of medical, scientific or financial news, the kind of things that require expertise. Instead, it’s really good at breaking news about shootings and war, the same ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ coverage that the media is frequently criticized for overemphasizing.” Citizen journalism is nice and all, but it has its share of major flaws, and praising it for being something superior to what the mainstream media gives us is mistaken. (Salon.com)

Can PR Save the Penn State Brand?: While it remains to be seen whether or not the Penn State brand can be saved, one thing’s already clear: PR has already played a key role in diverting attention away from the university’s child-abuse scandal and to the larger issue of big football programs. Nevertheless, business partners don’t appear to be offering their full support just yet. Penn State could have been more proactive by implementing self-imposed sanctions before the NCAA took action. Going forward, the university should focus on telling the stories of students and alumni doing great things. (AdAge.com)

BuzzFeed Wants to Reinvent Wire Stories for Social Media: “The wire story is an atomic element of news: It’s the basic material upon which more journalism can be built. But wire stories, as a compact unit for getting out the basics of an updating story, are also a commodity.” When major news breaks, readers are often inundated with the same story, thanks to the speed and excess number of channels we use to access news. This is also a point of frustration for editors like BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith, who wants to experiment with a new model for wire stories in the era of social media. (Nieman Journalism Lab)

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