This is America's best book on news media relations. Clarence Jones was one of the nation's most honored investigative reporters in both newspapers and TV before he wrote this book. Then he left reporting to teach people like you how to cope with reporters and editors, cameras and microphones. The new, 2001 Edition is the Seventh Printing, with 408 pages of easy-to-read and easy-to-find material. Everything you need to know to defend yourself or do a better job of selling your side of the story. Winning with the News Media is the ultimate reference for media strategy; crisis management;, interview, news conference and presentation skills; and inside information — told by an insider — on how the media operate.
Clarence Jones teaches people how to get their message across. In person, or through the news media. He knows what he's talking about. He was one of the most experienced and honored journalists in America before he became a news media consultant in 1984.
Clarence was a newspaper reporter for 16 years. He started working full-time as a reporter while he was earning his journalism degree at the University of Florida. He was named Capitol correspondent in Tallahassee for the Florida Times-Union one year after graduating from college. Six years later, as one of the nation's most promising young journalists, he was granted a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.
After Harvard, he was hired by the Miami Herald, where he was part of a year-long investigation that resulted in corruption charges against the sheriff and his top aides. The Herald stories led to a referendum that abolished the office of sheriff. Miami-Dade is the only county in Florida with an appointed public safety director. Clarence covered Martin Luther King's Civil Rights campaign all across the South for the Herald. His last newspaper position was Washington correspondent for the Herald.
He then moved to Louisville, Kentucky to work under deep cover for eight months, investigating political and law enforcement corruption for WHAS-TV. Posing as a gambler, he visited illegal bookie joints daily, carrying a hidden camera and microphone. His documentaries during a two-year stint in Louisville gained immediate national attention. He returned to Miami in 1972 as investigative reporter for WPLG-TV, the ABC affiliate owned by Post-Newsweek Corp.
Specializing in organized crime and law enforcement corruption, his work at WPLG earned four Emmys and three duPont-Columbia Awards (television's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize). Clarence is the only reporter for a local TV station to ever win three duPont-Columbias. He also won the Robert F. Kennedy Award for a series of stories that examined the causes of the riots that burned much of Liberty City and killed 18 people in 1980.
While he was reporting, he also taught broadcast journalism for five years as an adjunct professor at the University of Miami.
In 1984, he wrote Winning with the News Media: A Self-Defense Manual When You're the Story. Now in its 8th Edition, it is America's leading book on news media relations. When the book was published, Clarence ended his reporting career and formed Winning News Media, Inc.
The company provides on-camera training and consulting services to corporations and government agencies all over America. When he and his wife, Ellen, were married in 2003, she joined the corporation as vice president. She had also been an investigative reporter in television. As far as they know, they are the only married couple in America working together as news media consultants and trainers.
