Media Relations

Earned-media strategy, pitching, spokesperson preparation, and the kind of reporter relationships that make journalists call you back. Coverage, not just placements.

The difference between coverage and placements

Most media relations work measures itself by placements: how many outlets ran a story. That number can be true and not especially useful. The metric that matters is whether the right reporters covered the right stories — the ones whose work moves your audience to act, donate, enroll, vote, or change their mind.

Coverage is what happens when a campaign is built around the reporter's needs as much as the organization's. It is slower than blast pitching and more reliable than relying on a press release going viral on its own.

What I deliver

• Earned-media strategy. The 3–5 stories worth telling this year, ranked by which reporters are likely to care, and the architecture for getting the right ones into the right inboxes.
• Press release writing. Releases that respect a reporter's time — concrete leads, named partners, ready-to-use quotes, real visuals.
• Spokesperson preparation. Messaging frameworks, on-camera coaching, and the kind of one-to-one drilling that gets a CEO through a hostile interview without losing the thread.
• Reporter relationship-building. The work nobody pays for explicitly: knowing which beat reporters cover what, what they're working on, and what they need that nobody is offering.
• Bilingual (EN/ES) media relations. Spanish-language outlets are not a translation step. They are an audience with their own beat reporters, expectations, and timelines.

Sectors I work in

Nonprofits, NGOs, education, public health. The kinds of organizations whose work is real but doesn't pitch itself. My career has been across the American Red Cross (national crisis communications), SOS Children's Villages (international NGO), FIU's Robert Stempel College (higher education research), and now a PreK–12 dual-language charter network.

That range matters because reporters who cover one of those sectors well usually cover them all poorly. Knowing which reporter is the exception is most of the job.

"Coverage is what happens when a campaign is built around the reporter's needs as much as the organization's. It is slower than blast pitching and more reliable than relying on a press release going viral on its own."

What this isn't

Not a media list rental. Not a wire service. Not "we'll get you in [outlet]." Real media relations is judgment under deadline pressure: knowing which story is ready, which reporter is right, and what to do when the reporter you wanted is unavailable.