Publicizing a Whistleblower
In February 2022, corporate attorney Ashley Yablon worked with The Media Whisperer to generate pre-release publicity for his memoir Standing Up to China: How a Whistleblower Risked Everything for His Country.
We were able to arrange profiles of Yablon and place book excerpts in The Dallas Morning News, D Magazine, The Wire, and four major telecom and corporate news publications.
Scroll down to see how we did it.
First, we read Yablon’s book, which tells the thrilling and bizarre story of how he became an FBI informant after learning that his employer, the Chinese telcom giant ZTE, was illegally selling spy technology to Iran and trying to cover it up.
We realized Yablon’s story, in particular his bosses’ shameless subterfuge, would grab journalists’ attention.
Consqeuently, we kept our email pitch simple: a few of the book’s most entertaining paragraphs, along with an advance copy of the manuscript.
Alexandra Skores from The Dallas Morning News responded to our pitch with a request to interview Ashley.
Three weeks later, an excerpt from the book appeared in the paper’s Sunday edition (read the article here).
The next week, Skores’ profile of Yablon appeared on the front page of the Sunday business section (read the article here).
David Barboza, who won a Pulitzer Prize while covering China for The New York Times, also responded to our pitch.
Barboza chose an excerpt of Yablon’s book as the “Cover Story” of his online publication The Wire China (read it here).
An editor from the popular Dallas-area glossy D Magazine also requested permission to publish an excerpt from Yablon’s book.
The article featured stunning original photos of Yablon and dramatic illustrations. Read it here.
We also arranged articles about Yablon’s book in the widely read industry publications Light Reading, The Register, Capacity Media, and Corporate Compliance Insights.