If you think chambers of commerce are just for cheerleaders, meet Jim Pumarlo.
Pumarlo is director of communications for the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, the state’s largest business association. In 2005, he wrote a book, Bad News and Good Judgment: A Guide to Reporting on Sensitive Issues in a Small-Town Newspaper, that became a hit on the journalism circuit.
Over Pumarlo’s 21-year tenure as the editor of the Red Wing Republican Eagle, the newspaper won many honors. Now he’s tapping into his wealth of experiences at the paper to advise businesses in their dealings with the media.
One of Pumarlo’s top tenets: Report bad news as well as good news. Company officials should be the first to call the media with news about a strike, plant closing, or the dismissal of a key executive—just as they would call to announce a major expansion or a significant addition to the company’s work force. “There’s no better way to gain credibility with media than to keep them apprised of bad news as well as good news,” he notes.
Coping with media accounts of “bad news” requires “an understanding of the distinction between the message and the messenger,” Pumarlo adds. “Retailers may be upset with a newspaper that their names were published for selling tobacco to underage youths as part of a citywide sting operation. But they must remember that the newspaper is simply reporting the proceedings of an action taken by the local city council. The newspaper did not create the news, but is only reporting it.”
Born and raised in Brooklyn Center, Pumarlo graduated in 1976 from the University of Minnesota’s journalism school. He moved into the editor’s post at the Republican Eagle in 1982. In nine of the years from 1991 to 2001, the Minnesota Newspaper Association gave his column its top award for explaining news operations and ethics. In 1998, the National Newspaper Association named the Republican Eagle the best under-10,000-circulation daily in the country.
In 2003, two years after Republican Eagle Publisher Arlin Albrecht sold the paper to Fargo-based Forum Communications, Pumarlo left. Eventually, he wound up at the Minnesota Chamber, where he had been a board member while at the paper.
His book has gotten him more than a dozen speaking engagements across the nation, from some of journalism’s most prominent professional organizations. Now, he’s busy writing a second book, on the elements of outstanding election coverage.
