business

Want an early tip about the size of this year's corn harvest? Or a handy chart about which nations consume the most corn? Of course you do, and that's why you're hoping to snag a copy of the 2008 Dutch Farmer's Almanac, packed with historical data, tips, cartoons by the New Yorker's Bill Lee and agricultural forecasts.

Author Alan Kluis, a broker at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange and a market commentator who owns a farm in Chandler, Minn., said he wrote the book after perusing competing almanacs while at the supermarket. "Here's my version," he writes in the book's introduction. "For farmers who actually want to make money."

The book is flush with Al-isms ("Always bullish, sometimes broke"). It also features a few dozen cartoons from a nationally known cartoonist, which Kluis said cost as much as the actual publishing of the book, available at www.kluispublishing.com.

The price is listed as "$15 or 5 bushels of corn, whichever is more." Given the latest market numbers, you'll need to bring corn to get the book.

A month from now the jury will be in for Carmichael Lynch Spong when trade journal PRWeek announces its agencies of the year honors.

Carmichael Lynch Spong is one of five finalists in the category of midsize agencies. The Minneapolis public relations shop won the award from PRWeek in 2005 and from another trade journal, the Holmes Report, in 2004.

The award is based on revenue growth, client satisfaction and competitive performance. The midsize category is for agencies with annual fees between $10 million and $65 million. Carmichael Lynch generated $13 million in fee revenue last year. The agency has 70 professionals working in Minneapolis' Warehouse District.

Bill Mellon became lead spokesman for Northwest Airlines a few months before the 2001 terrorist attacks. He then proceeded to shape the carrier's public messages during the 2005 mechanics strike and the airline's 21-month bankruptcy that ended in May.

Mellon won't be affected by a potential Northwest merger with Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines. He recently joined a Virginia-based health care company called Amerigroup Corp. Mellon is the public company's new senior vice president of corporate communications.

MATT MCKinney, David Phelps, Liz Fedor