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So it is that time of year, when we think back on all of our past successes and failures. Here are the most notable PR blunders that we've seen cross our desktops in the year. We have removed the actual names of the offending parties, just to make it a more sporting game. The hard part of this piece was limiting it to just the ten biggest.

75% of journalists find well-targeted, well-written news releases useful, according to a recent survey by Oriella PR Network, an alliance of 15 PR agencies from around the world.

As Jeremy Porter, author of Journalistics notes, this sort of information is pretty misleading. Do journalists prefer well-written, well-targeted press releases over poorly-written, off-topic ones? Well sure. Duh. But are press releases our preferred source for information? Do we really like getting them? Meh.

Media relations starts with understanding the basics and finding the right leads. Next, you want to craft a powerful enough message that will make the media want to cover you.

You're not newsworthy if only you think the story idea is awesome. As someone managing media relations, you're subject to the needs and wants of journalists, who in turn are subject to the needs and wants of their readers; by proxy you're subject to the readers who'll be seeing your story.

This is a follow up to my first post, Media Relations 101 for Your Startup. Knowing how to write up an awesome email pitch and how to smooth talk a journalist or reporter means nothing if you do not know how to get in contact with people in media. Getting in contact with reporters isn't your only problem though. Which reporters are you going to target? It's not sensible to pitch a story about your new Software as a Service startup to someone who writes about hardware.

As we reported yesterday, Facebook's high and mighty summoned unto them their employees, to talk about the savage beating they've been taking in the media, on blogs and among users, big and basic. The meeting, held at 4:00 pm PST has produced no audible results.

When we asked a Facebook spokesman about the meeting we got the same boilerplate as every other organization.

We have an open culture and it should come as no surprise that we're providing a forum for employees to ask questions on a topic that has received a lot of outside interest.

Thursday was a good PR day for the social buying site Blippy. They were featured in two New York Times articles. But Friday wasn't so great, as the major technology blogs reported that credit card information from its users were found on Google. An hour later, Blippy responded with a post on its blog, explaining that the leak was months old and affected only four beta users, not current Blippy users. Later, they amended the blog post to include an apology. News of more credit card leaks continued on Saturday. Of course, Blippy is by no means the only startups to suffer from potential public relations disasters, and it remains to be seen what, if any, impact this has on the site.

Blippy's response, including the need to re-edit its official announcement, demonstrates the importance in responding quickly and correctly to a crisis.

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter summarising the top stories of the week, we look at the latest social networking statistics showing that Facebook has overtaken MySpace, review a product that's had great success using OpenID, continue our series on recommendation engines, check out the new version of Amazon's Kindle e-book reader, review 4 innovative location-based apps, and more. Also check out the highlights from our Enterprise Channel and Jobwire, ReadWriteWeb's new product which tracks hires in tech and new media.

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Back in the days when you used to have to walk into a video store to rent a VHS tape, I would go through the same thing every week. After spending what seemed like hours wandering, I would set my tape down on the counter. This was the clerk's cue to sigh heavily and shake his head. Then he'd quietly pick up my tape, walk away, and return with three or four completely different films. Over and over, this happened, introducing me to an eclectic mix of cinema which, without those helpful clerks, would have remained hidden.

When movies came to the online world, I always had hopes of rekindling that magic virtually, but more often than not, I wound up checking out the wrong video. Now, a new service proposes to change that, by bringing the video clerks back into the mix. Meet Clerk Dogs.