The Talk of the Town News and Awards, a division of CMUS, honors businesses and professionals excelling in customer service using a rating system that’s based on countless hours of research and feedback from almost one million consumer-review websites, blogs, social networks and business rating services. These reviews and other award information are used to determine the top companies across the country, and only businesses with a four- or five-star rating receive the awards.

Along with the regular features and articles, upcoming issues of Customer Care News Magazine will include profiles and case studies of recipients of the Talk of the Town Award for Excellence in Customer Satisfaction, as well as increased coverage of trends and issues that impact online reputation management and customer service.

Dale Jaslove, Publisher at Customer Care News Magazine said “The addition of the CMUS Talk of the Town Awards as a sponsor is important to our magazine because it will give us the inside track to learn from small, medium and large companies that are leading the way in customer care as well as identifying trends from their extensive data and research they have collected.”

The contributions from the Talk of the Town Awards will begin with the summer edition.

Past issues of the publication have included content from contributors such as Bruce Jones, programming director of the Disney Institute, the professional development and external training arm of The Walt Disney Company; Richard Levick, Esq., crisis communications expert and President and CEO of Levick Strategic Communications; the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement, a Naperville-Illinois-based research center affiliated with Northwestern University; and question and answer sessions with the leadership of the United Auto Workers, (UAW).

For more information, advance articles or to see the recently released spring issue, please visit www.customercarenews.com .

About Celebration Media U.S. and Talk of the Town News and Awards:
Celebration Media U.S. (CMUS) provides companies with valuable information on improving customer care through its publishing division, which produces Customer Care News Magazine, and its research department, which provides businesses with information on customer service best practices.

News Source: Celebration Media U.S. :: This press release was issued on behalf of the news source by Send2Press® Newswire, a service of Neotrope®. View all current news at: http://Send2PressNewswire.com .

The lead story of the newsletter is “Building Customer Loyalty through Higher Emotional Intelligence,” which is defined as the ability to build and maintain positive relationships through managing emotions, empathetically connecting with people, trusting “gut” feelings, being aware of and attending to nonverbal communication, and its critical role in customer service.

The article explores the science of emotional intelligence as it relates to the restaurant industry and how people skills play a large role in customer loyalty, client retention and market share. The featured article is written by Dr. Keith Levick, Associate Publisher of Customer Care News, a subsidiary of Celebration Media U.S. and its sister company, Talk of the Town Awards.

The highly informative newsletter, designed to help businesses improve customer care and generate higher customer satisfaction ratings on outcome studies and customer loyalty, will also include articles on the latest trends and issues in customer care and views from leading industry experts.

For more information about Talk of the Awards Newsletter, please visit Customer Care News Magazine at www.customercarenews.com, Talk of the Town News at www.talkofthetownnews.com, e-mail us at customercare@talkofthetownnews.com or contact Talk of the Town News at 877-498-6405.

About Celebration Media U.S. and CMUS Talk of the Town Awards:
Celebration Media U.S. provides companies with valuable information on improving customer care, through its publishing division, which produces Customer Care News, and its research department, which provides businesses with information on customer service best practices. This commitment has led to the creation of Talk of the Town Awards and the CMUS Power Ratings™ award program, which are dedicated to identifying companies that are excelling in high-rated customer service feedback and offering them valuable marketing opportunities to leverage their award.

News Source: Celebration Media U.S. :: This press release was issued on behalf of the news source by Send2Press® Newswire, a service of Neotrope®. View all current news at: http://Send2PressNewswire.com .

Software Developer Wins Second Annual HumorFeed Satire News Competition

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Jan. 31 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — You’ve seen the news recaps of 2006, the most important stories that gripped the nation’s attention. But here’s one you may have missed: “TIME Magazine Names Air ‘Gas of the Year.’” This exclusive from the New Jersey-based humor website Confusion Road (www.confusionroad.com) was crowned the top satire news story of 2006 by an expert panel of journalists and humor writers in the second annual HumorFeed Satire News Awards (www.humorfeed.com).

“This year’s winner represents satire at its finest,” said National Public Radio correspondent Eric Weiner. “The ‘report’ pokes good-natured fun at the media itself, deflating Time magazine’s much ballyhooed Person of the Year. It’s timely, clever — and just plain hilarious.”

Confusion Road is the brainchild of Chris Patterson, a software developer from Edison, N.J. Patterson is a veteran HumorFeed member who has been publishing satire online in Confusion Road since 2002. He came in second in last year’s Satire News Awards for his story “Terry Schiavo Dies; Congress Orders Feeding Tube Reinserted.”

“I’m proud that my work was chosen by a lot of very funny people out of a field of great material,” said Patterson. “I hope this award encourages more people to look beyond The Onion and The Daily Show, and discover these little-known gems of funny, smart, even thought-provoking satire.”

“The ‘TIME’ piece had a good original theme and some insightful reactions,” commented panelist Robert Zelnick, Chair of the Journalism Department at Boston University and an Emmy-award winning journalist. “But there were several strong articles this year.”

Second place was awarded to G. Xavier Robillard of All Day Coffee for his story “Iraq Study Group Caught Cheating.” Third place went to Brian Briggs of BBspot, for “Teen Using MySpace to Lure Bands to Los Angeles.” The finalists included a variety of other strong entries, including stories from Cracked Magazine and last year’s competition winner, BSNews.org.

“HumorFeed is fortunate to have so many talented writers contributing their work and their expertise to the community,” said site administrator E.F. Watley. “As far as we’re concerned, they’re all winners.”

The judging panel also included bestselling humor writer Andrew Marlatt, BBC comedy writer and creator of the legendary SatireWire.com humor site, and nationally syndicated columnist Madeline Kane of MadKane.com.

“Satirical news has become one of the primary ways a large segment of the population learns about current events,” said Marlatt. “Nowhere is this more true than on the web, where satire news has become a cornerstone of the Internet experience. Stories like “Gas of the Year” are important because they shed light on the media’s obsession with the superfluous.”

“The ‘TIME’ article was an excellent idea, beautifully executed,” added Kane. “It’s a fine example of smart social commentary combined with laugh-out-loud humor.”

About HumorFeed
HumorFeed, the internet’s premier humor news aggregator, is a group of approximately sixty carefully selected websites from the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Sweden. It lists daily news satire headlines submitted by its members. Admission is based on talent and involves a rigorous peer review process.

Each January, HumorFeed hosts the annual awards to select the best from over 3,500 headlines run during the previous year. Member sites voted the top ten stories for consideration by the external review panel.

The winning entries can be found at the following URLs:

humorfeed.com/out/go.php?lid=14821.

“Iraq Study Group Caught Cheating”
humorfeed.com/out/go.php?lid=14778

“Teen Using MySpace to Lure Bands to Los Angeles”
humorfeed.com/out/go.php?lid=14381

Chris Patterson is available for radio or print interviews. For more information about the competition, visit www.humorfeed.com or call (951) 660-5164.

Text provided by the news source.

News Source: HumorFeed :: This press release was issued by Send2Press® and is Copyright © 2007 Neotrope® News Network – all rights reserved.