Newsroom judgment. Not agency polish.
Media strategy and media training.
Tell your stories, Prepare your spokespeople, and build trust with your audience.
Newsroom judgment. Not agency polish.
Tell your stories, Prepare your spokespeople, and build trust with your audience.
What I do
Where the real story is, who would run it, and when. Built around what a newsroom will take, not what an organization wants to say.
Read more → 02Your spokespeople, put through real newsroom questions. Not media coaching. The questions a reporter actually asks when the answer matters.
Read more → 03Finding the argument worth making, writing it so an editor will run it, and getting it in front of the person who decides.
Read more → 04Twenty years of relationships in Canadian newsrooms, used carefully. I don't pitch a producer a story I wouldn't have taken myself.
Read more →Why me
For twenty years I worked in Canadian newsrooms. At Global News Toronto I led a team of more than thirty through Global News Morning and Global News at 5:30, first as Managing Editor and then as Executive Producer. Before that, CP24 and CTV. No two days were alike, and that's the part that shaped everything I do now. You learn to judge a story fast, with incomplete information, and live with the call.
That's what I bring to your team. Not what your story should say. Whether it will survive the room where someone decides what runs.
“Simon is one of those rare communications professionals who truly understands how newsrooms think.”
Kenzie Broddy, Director of Communications, Princess Margaret Cancer FoundationRead the full quote
“Simon is one of those rare communications professionals who truly understands how newsrooms think. His experience as a journalist, combined with his strategic approach to storytelling, helps us find the strongest angles and gets our message of impact and hope in front of the right audiences. I always value his perspective and enjoy working with him.”
Writing
I share regular notes on how organizations can earn — not buy — attention.
Questions
I read your release, pitch or statement the way an editor would at nine in the morning with forty others in the queue. Is it news? Is it credible? Where would a reporter push back, and where would they find a problem you didn't know you had? You find the weak points in private, before someone else finds them in public.
An agency builds and distributes. I judge. Most PR advice is written from the outside, hoping something lands. Mine comes from twenty years of being the person who decided whether it landed. If you already have an agency, I'm not a replacement for it. I'm the person who tells you whether the thing they built will survive contact with a newsroom.
It's where most of my clients are and where I'm most useful. Hospital foundations and health organizations are trying to earn attention rather than buy it, and that's a specific problem I know well. The work does translate. If your communications need to hold up under scrutiny, the newsroom standard is the same wherever you sit.
No, and be careful with anyone who does. What I can tell you is whether a story is likely to run before you spend three months building a campaign around it. That answer is worth more than a promise, and it's the thing almost nobody will give you honestly.
I'm in southwestern Ontario with deep roots in Canadian media, particularly Toronto and Edmonton. I work remotely with clients across Canada. Most engagements start with one conversation about something real you're facing, a release, a pitch, an interview, a decision you're not sure about.
Let's talk
Not a discovery call. Bring me the release you're about to send, the pitch that isn't landing, or the interview you're dreading. I'll tell you what a newsroom would do with it.
Start a conversationor email me