About Us

Matt Baron, founder of Inside Edge: PR + Media, has crafted stories professionally since 1984.

For the first 22 years, Matt reported for small-town weeklies, big-city dailies, and national magazines.

Along the way, he helped expose local government corruption, wrote a series of investigative stories that culminated in a wrongly convicted man’s freedom from prison, and chronicled a small-town newspaper’s cringe-inducing and unblinking belief in a tale that would rival anything found in The Onion.

Matt’s work has appeared in scores of publications, including Time, USA Today and the Chicago Tribune. For a six-year period, he was one of the most prolific reporters for the Tribune. In 2004, while covering three communities (Oak Brook, Elmhurst & Cicero), he wrote 365 stories that encompassed local government, business features, breaking news, profiles and more.

His myriad media roles include serving as senior editor of a monthly trade magazine. In addition, along with his associates, Matt is on a mission to provide the inside edge that connects clients with not only their target audiences, but also media decision-makers who can amplify their stories. The Inside Edge advantage comes through Matt’s cultivation of robust media connections, as well as firsthand knowledge of the challenges faced by reporters, editors, producers and other media decision-makers. 

Since 2001, through workshops, webinars and columns, Matt has journeyed across the United States to train thousands of reporters, editors, publicists and other business leaders on various elements of the story-telling process. Topics include interviewing techniques, numerical literacy (aka Go Figure: Making Numbers Count), and working effectively with reporters under deadline pressure.

A variety of PR firms, including renowned agencies such as Golin & Edelman, have retained Matt’s counsel for all-day training sessions on media crisis management and nurturing effective relations with the media that generate results for clients.

A graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Matt has been a guest lecturer at a variety of universities, including Medill graduate- and undergraduate-level classes, for over 20 years.

Matt has actively been involved with Chicago West Bible Church, in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, since its 2016 inception. Matt’s public service has included a two-year stint as president of the Oak Park Public Library and, starting in May 2017, a four-year term as a member of the District 200 Oak Park and River Forest High School Board.

Matt and his wife, Bridgett, have two adult children. They are amused by Matt’s ambidextrous free-throw shooting zeal, which has propelled him to make over 84% of the 183,000-plus free throw attempts he has tabulated since 2007. He is currently working on a project chronicling the experiences of some of the greatest free-throw practitioners in basketball history.

Read the latest from Matt on Substack, at The Inside Edge.