Nearly three years ago, my interviews of local Oak Park notables for the village’s local cable access channel shifted gears. While I have continued the Q & A format that encompassed my smattering of segments dating back to 2009, the program’s alliterative hook has gone from “Oak Park’s Own” to “A Beer With Baron.” In […]
Last week, three fellow Advisory Board “sharks” and I returned to Oak Park and River Forest High School for three half-days to evaluate the 16 student teams from the Business INCubatoredu at OPRF as they made year-end pitches. There were many terrific ideas that stemmed from months of hard work, so it wasn’t a simple task. We […]
It’s an inspiring and humbling thing to be providing public relations and media relations support for the Guinness World Record Attempt: Living Donor Rally on Saturday, April 21st at Millennium Park in Chicago. Through contacts I have made in myriad media markets around the United States–all after gathering information from organ donors who are attending […]
About 20 years ago, I decided it would be fun to write a story on waiting in line—the psychology of it, the various ways people experience it, and whatever else flowed from looking into the common phenomenon. To conduct my reporting, I ventured to some of the “usual suspect” waiting spots: a bank, a grocery […]
They were born outside the United States, made their way to this country many years ago and found a home in Oak Park before dying recently at the age of 77. One is internationally renowned and beloved actor John Mahoney. He died while in hospice care on Sunday, February 4th. The other is Sergio Quiano, […]
A package in hand, the young woman makes her way into The Washington Post newsroom. She wanders a bit, looks around uncertainly, then fixes her attention on a man who is among the many staffers who are banging away at their typewriters. “Are you someone important?” she asks, interrupting him in the midst of his […]
Whether you’re a widget salesmen or a world-class motivational speaker, testimonials are central to your persuasive story-telling endeavors. Alas, some otherwise-credible individuals and organizations haven’t taken the time to gather such testimonials, which can go by other names–for Inside Edge PR, I call them Success Stories. Only slightly better are those instances when an organization […]
Unless you’ve been on the receiving end of a story pitch, you likely don’t appreciate the urgency of being succinct in those interactions. Having been on the receiving end of such pitches for about 20 years, I can assure you that the goal ought NEVER be selling the reporter, editor or producer on a story–that’s […]
“You’re only as strong as the weakest link in your chain.” That adage came about well before the arrival of social media, obviously. For many, when it comes to LinkedIn, for example, the formula is something like this: 1. Accumulate as many contacts as possible by sending an impersonal, automated request to Link-In. 2. Proceed to […]
In October 2012, On the heels of their first–and last–Vice Presidential debate, I typed “Joe Biden” and “Paul Ryan” into Google. After each name, Google offered up three words to pair with each individual politician who was on his respective party’s ticket in the U.S. Presidential race. See if you can guess which one had […]