Brady Media Group

OK. Alright. Time to fess up.

Yes, the two Jeffs are actually working together.

Many of you may already know about my good friend Jeff Crilley, who stepped away from KDFW Fox 4 last May to launch Real News PR. His agency has already realized extraordinary success and he has broadened the RNPR brand to include the services of several other ‘expatriot’ journalists who have their own – and separate – publicity or consulting agencies. These affiliates include Robert Riggs, Rebecca Rodriguez, Cliff Caldwell, and now…me.

Here’s how it works:
Each of us has a unique, prioprietary consulting company, with a distinct expertise and clients of our own. Rebecca focuses on latin or hispanic clients. Robert has developed a crisis communications service. I am concentrating on new and emerging media content for clients’ online or digital footprints. But together, we often marshall our talents to pitch a larger client who may need the services of more than one small agency. And we are building a much more potent PR, advocacy and content development agency than any of us could offer alone.

In fact, my gut tells me this agency will grow quickly to become something larger than a standard PR or consulting agency. I think we are building a powerful new hybrid group that will be able to offer some advertising expertise, some graphic design talent, some media coaching and a tremendous amount of publicity know-how because we all have roots as journalists. We know the language of newsrooms. We know the cycle, the pace and the barriers to overcome when soliciting coverage or pitching a story. We are all professional story-tellers.

And quite honestly, journalists have never needed this kind of supplementary help more than now. Every newsroom in the country is being squeezed for personnel, time and resources. Budgets are tighter. And deadlines are shorter. We offer a lifeline to time-starved reporters who are being pulled four directions at once. We’ve already researched the story. We’ve already vetted the source. We’ve already done the research. Yes, some of our pitches represent paying clients. But in the end, a story is a story. And if it has journalistic merit, it should be reported. If not, it should be ignored, right?

We won’t pitch story ideas that don’t stand on their own and we won’t suggest interview subjects who don’t know their topic. In a way, we’re doing a lot of the legwork – so that the working journalist can ‘hit the ground running’ and provide quality content to the paper, website or newscast at the end of the day.

I know, I know. It sounds like a lot of self-inflated hooey.

But if you ask our clients… Or if you ask the working journalists who have used our story ’suggestions’, you might think twice.

Or you might think about calling the Two Jeffs yourself. We have a few more openings for clients who need media help.

Anyone?