We’ll arrange the feature articles and news mentions in the appropriate newspapers and magazines of your territory, plus TV. Maybe national, too – you’re a fine subject for “Forbes” or “The New York Times.”

GOALS

In our first year together, we’ll pledge to accomplish the following at a minimum:

1. At least six major feature articles about (XXX) and you. More, quite likely.

2.   Plus at least one significant press release monthly across the spectrum of markets you and we choose. Samples of our journalistic news releases are attached.

If we fail to meet either of these targets, we’ll then work for free until the target is fulfilled.

FEE AND EXPENSES

To accomplish these results, we’ll need a service fee of ($XXX) monthly, plus $100 for each regional press release, or $395 if we send a press release nationally-internationally, to around 10,000 contacts, via PR Newswire.

This is not the highest fee we receive or could propose, but we understand you may wish to have an economical trial to see how the idea works.

You already have considerable experience with publicity, and thus you know the truth of this statement: We’ll achieve monthly coverage of you, and sometimes weekly, and if you could buy such coverage, it would cost $50-100,000.

SARASOTA FL — Ronald T. Smith, a lifelong journalist whose career culminated as  a senior editor at United Press International in New York, leads JournalistPR LLC. Among ancillary activities, he worked on copy desks at The New York Times and Newark Star-Ledger. He has also freelanced for several prominent magazines.

Mr. Smith also served for a number of years as a Vice President of J. Walter Thompson Company, New York (then the world’s largest agency), managing $50 million in public relations and advertising.

He left JWT to launch  Madison Fielding Corp., a public relations firm specializing in media coverage for clients, with offices in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

He’s now the Managing Member of JournalistPR LLC www.journalistpr.com, the only public relations company in the Southeastern United States staffed totally by journalists. The agency adheres to strict journalistic standards, and makes certain its clients have journalists talking to the journalists who are its targets.

One result:  It is believed that the agency arranges more major feature articles than anyone else in the Southeast.

JournalistPR LLC , the only all-journalist agency, offers:

1. Rent-a-Writer for individual tasks, all quoted in advance. Cost for many projects is two or three hundred dollars, always approved in advance by client.

2. Reporter and press releases – An experienced, newsroom-trained reporter covers the client like a reporter covering a beat, and produces two or more press releases monthly, all rigidly journalistic in style. Usually $640 monthly plus a bonus of $1165 when we arrange a major feature article or interview (we obtain client approval in advance for this “pitch” to an editor).

3. Major feature articles and press releases, with the quantity guaranteed. Insures media appearances monthly or weekly. Costs $15-30,000 a year, and gets space in the media which would cost $100,000 or more if it could be bought – which it can’t, in the quality media.

FACTS ABOUT JOURNALISTPR LLC

We are the only all-journalist public relations service in our area, and maybe in the U.S.

Our staff includes half-a-dozen experienced news people from the New York Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and The Herald Tribune in Sarasota. Our leader was a senior editor for United Press International in New York in that organization’s heyday.

We believe we achieve greater results because we are journalists talking to journalists. In the past year, we’ve arranged 19 cover stories – which must be a record. Following are examples (these are mostly local, but we have also arranged articles in Forbes, USA Today, Business Week, and the like).

SARASOTA FL – To expand social networking for clients, a new service aimed at such specialized media has been launched by the all-journalist public relations agency.
JournalistPR LLC (www.journalistpr.com) is announcing its new Social Networking Division. The service assigns a reporter to cover a client company and turn out materials for such networking as:
Facebook
Blog
Reddit
Digg
Technorati
Squidoo
Wiki
You Tube
Linked In
Twitter
The new service is staffed initially by George C. Scheibel, a social networking expert and journalist who has contributed to The Sarasota Herald Tribune and the Englewood Review.
“It’s badly needed, this service,” said Managing Member Ronald T. Smith of JournalistPR. “Social networking can build a business – and the sensible way to feed the effort is to have journalists digging for information, ideas and stories that will ‘crack’ the big social sites. To yearn for Facebook is one thing, but it’s another to send material that will win attention there. It seems certain to us that journalists can best find significant stories and features – and even short Tweets – that will succeed on sites ranging from Facebook to Twitter.”
Among the journalists associated with JournalistPR are men and women from The New York Times, the San Francisco Examiner, the Tampa Tribune, the St. Petersburg Times, and the Sarasota Herald Tribune. Mr. Smith was a news editor with United Press International in New York when that news agency was a giant.
JournalistPR is headquartered in Sarasota and serves clients throughout the nation. Telephone 888-730-6630. Email journalistpr@gmail.com. Web site is www.journalistpr.com.

SARASOTA, FL – Veteran international journalist Steve Newman is joining JournalistPR as a freelance reporter and writer.

Mr. Newman has returned to Sarasota after a 30-year career in which he wrote for the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle. His syndicated feature, Earthweek – A Diary of the Planet, has appeared in more than 100 newspapers worldwide over the past 23 years. That feature was also an Internet pioneer, first appearing online in 1996 as the World Wide Web was just beginning to emerge.

Steve is also an AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist. He worked as a television weathercaster and science reporter for major market stations in Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco after starting his career in Sarasota at what is now known as ABC 7.

ABC’s Good Morning America and the Discovery Channel’s Discovery News program have also employed Mr. Newman to report on environmental and science issues. He regularly anchors newscasts and reports on regional stories for Sirius-XM Satellite Radio from a home studio on Sarasota Bay.

An avid fan of Sarasota’s vibrant arts scene, Mr. Newman is a lifelong bachelor and as well as an instrument-rated pilot.

SARASOTA, FL – Mary Ellen Mancini, former advertising and marketing copywriter, has joined JournalistPR (www.journalistpr.com) as a freelance journalist.

After earning a B.S. degree in the field of journalism at the University of Central Florida, Ms. Mancini went on to pursue many different forms of journalism. She began her career at Clarke Advertising in Sarasota and soon moved on to write print, radio and television advertisements for the Golf Channel located in Central Florida.

After becoming the mother of two, she reentered the business world as a marketing copywriter for Signature GMAC Real Estate while also pursuing freelance writing projects for various small companies.

When she’s not writing, Ms. Mancini enjoys going to the beach, golfing and spending time with family and friends.

SARASOTA — Scott Spear, longtime area resident and award winning art director, has assumed the role of Art Director for JournalistPR LLC, the journalist-to-journalist public relations agency. 

A graduate of Ringling College of Art & Design, Scott has been working in the design field in Southwest Florida for more than 20 years, in both agency and in-house departments. He has won numerous design awards and has served on the Board of the Suncoast Advertising Federation. His profile piece for the Economic Development Corporation was used in classes by the Ringling College to show the proper way for a large complex job to evolve and become reality. 

In his years in the business, Scott has designed everything from ads to trade show booths, even product prototypes. His methodology allows for any projects to be tackled in the same manner with a certainty of success. 

Scott lives in the South Gate neighborhood of Sarasota with his wife and daughter. There he is president of the largest community association in Sarasota, and is presently overseeing restoration of a historically designated modern structure.

Longtime New York newspaperman Ron Smith thought he had the makings of a unique public relations company when he moved to Sarasota five years ago.

Smith’s theory was that a firm made up of journalists talking to journalists would ease small business owners’
biggest headache when it came to public relations: Getting newspaper and magazine reporters to write about their company.

The idea has been more successful than even Smith thought it would be. The firm, Sarasota-based JournalistPR,has picked up a stream of clients in Sarasota and Bradenton the past six months and Smith expects its base of 15 full-service clients to double in the next few years. The company, with six freelanced-based employees, had just under $1 million in annual revenues in 2009.

“I’ve been simply flabbergasted that I have been able to build a successful agency in this economy,” Smith says.
“But I think it’s the right idea at the right time.”

Adds Smith: “I didn’t realize the massive strength of having nothing but journalists. But I do now.”

The company, staffed locally with former newspaper and magazine reporters from Sarasota, Detroit and New York,offers some branding and marketing services for clients,such as writing and designing brochures and pamphlets.But its niche has been in getting its clients into local,regional, national and industry trade publications.

Smith provides a money-back guarantee for all clients who sign on to the company’s full package for a year,which could cost up to $25,000. The guarantee is that JournalistPR promises to write at least one press release a month for the client and that the company will have at least six stories written on it in a year.

Most JournalistPR clients seem to be satisfied with the service. For example, Darrell Turner, founder of Bradenton based Turner Tree & Landscaping, says Smith’s firm has helped get his company into several regional construction trade publications.

“It was one of the best investments I’ve ever made for my company,” says Turner, who interviewed at least six other local PR firms before he chose JournalistPR. “I consider marketing like this a necessity right now the way the economy has been.”

Smith has one client in Washington D.C., but the rest of the work is in either Tampa or the Sarasota-Bradenton market. In addition to contacts with the local press, the company uses a database of 5,000 publications to find places to pitch stories.

JournalistPR’s recent success surprises Smith in more ways than beating back the economic downturn. It’s also a surprise because he never pegged himself as a PR guy, going back to his fascination with printing presses when he was a young child in the 1950s in Boise, Idaho.

That fascination led to several jobs in newspapers. He was a reporter for the Boise bureau of the Salt Lake Tribune and later worked on the copydesks of the New York Times and the Newark Star-Ledger in New Jersey. He also supervised reporters and editors in the New York office of United Press International, a global news agency that dates
back to 1907.

Smith took a job with an advertising firm in New York City in the 1980s and never returned to newspapers. He moved to Sarasota with his wife about five years ago, when he decided to launch JournalistPR.

SARASOTA(Fla.) – Mark Zaloudek, a full-time journalist in Sarasota for more than three decades, has joined JournalistPR (www.journalistpr.com) as a freelance reporter-writer. 

During his 30 years as a features writer and reporter at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, he developed a broad knowledge of the issues and the people who have helped shape Sarasota and its surrounding communities. His beats have included education, health care, the environment and  transportation, as well as some niche areas of specialty: news-feature obituaries on extraordinary Southwest Florida residents, and hurricane preparedness. 

He also has edited two book manuscripts written by aspiring local authors. 

JournalistPR LLC applies journalistic standards to press releases and public relations. 

Before moving to Sarasota, Mr. Zaloudek grew up outside of Chicago and received a journalism degree from the University of Illinois.

During his career he also held leadership roles in a regional press club and a local chapter of Toastmasters International, and has been a member of MENSA. 

When he’s not writing, Mark enjoys tennis, gardening and “The Simpsons.”

SARASOTA, FL- Jim DeLa is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years of experience as a writer, editor, broadcaster, photographer and videographer in locations including Washington, D.C, Maryland, Colorado, Hawaii, and Florida. He has covered a diverse range of topics including religion, baseball, NASA and natural disasters.

DeLa graduated from the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. He relocated to Sarasota, FL in 1996. Together, he and his wife have three children.