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I left journalism, launched my agency and prepared to pitch my first story. My client asked me to execute his pre-arranged deal: an exclusive section-front spread in the daily paper.
The morning’s first call was from the competing weekly business journal’s publisher — my story on his desk and his editors on speaker. His housewarming message to my new agency: “Your news and your clients’ news will never run in my paper.”
Would we set the record for the shortest life of an agency? Turns out, he frequently threatened, but rarely enforced that ban. Weeks later, we snuck three stories in.