If they handed out awards for individuals and businesses who excel at grabbing free publicity for themselves, who would win?

That is exactly what Newsroom Confidential host Dean Rotbart and veteran TV journalist Jeff Crilley are out to discover. The two award-winning journalists have teamed to launch the "Crilley Awards" -- an ongoing appreciation of those who've used creativity, pluck and skilled research to garner a bonanza of no-cost media coverage.

Nominations for the Crilleys are now being accepted at http://www.newsroomconfidential.com/, the homepage for the weekly one-hour live radio program that provides an insiders' guide to journalists and public relations.

To be considered, nominees must have achieved their public relations windfalls within the past 90 days. The competition is open to both professional public relations executives and agencies or individuals who take a do-it-yourself approach to publicity.

Honorees will be featured on Newsroom Confidential, which airs live in Los Angeles each Sunday night on NewsTalk 870 KRLA and is simulcast around the world on the Internet. Profiles of the winners will also be posted at the http://www.newsroomconfidential.com/ site as well as at NewsBios.com, which provides in-depth dossiers on more than 6,000 influential journalists. NewsBios.com is a sponsor of Newsroom Confidential.

In addition, each Crilleys honoree will receive a copy of Jeff Crilley's landmark book: FREE PUBLICITY: A TV Reporter Shares the Secrets of Getting Covered on the News. The book provides a cornucopia of practical, easy-to-follow recommendations for generating profitable media coverage. Those wishing to order the book can do so at http://www.jeffcrilley.com/. Individual copies are only $12.95.

On this week's Newsroom Confidential, Rotbart and Crilley discuss some great examples from FREE PUBLICITY of those who've hit PR homeruns. They include a Texas turkey farmer who got national coverage when he spared a Thanksgiving gobbler because the bird reminded him of Elvis Presley and a PR agency that hosted a celebrity garage sale as a fundraiser, turning the discards of stars such as David Letterman and Michael Bolton into cash and media coverage galore.

The complete show can be heard anytime as a digital rebroadcast at http://www.newsroomconfidential.com/

Rotbart is a Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist and former columnist and reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Crilley is a two-time Emmy Award winning reporter who has more than 20 years of on-air experience. He currently works as an evening news correspondent for KDFW-Fox 4 in Dallas.

Newsroom Confidential is made possible through the support of well-respected sponsors, including PR Newswire, the global leader in news and information distribution services for professional communicators.

For more information or to get information on how to become a sponsor, contact Dean Rotbart, Newsroom Confidential executive producer, at 1-866-NEWS-070 or email him at dean@newsroomconfidential.com.

SOURCE: Newsroom Confidential