There is a small heresy at the center of High10 Media. A public-relations firm is hired by clients, paid by clients and judged by clients. Yet its president, Evan Strome, says the agency starts by prioritizing somebody else: the reporter. The logic is almost impolite. A journalist does not wake up hoping to advance a brand's quarterly objective. Give the journalist something useful - a real development, a credible person, a well-timed idea - and the client's objective has a chance to hitch a ride.
This is how High10, an independent New York communications agency founded in 2010 by Lisa Dallos, explains its edge. Dallos came through magazines, cable news and television production: Rolling Stone, GQ, Us Weekly, George, CNN's Washington bureau, MSNBC and The Daily Show are all on her résumé. Strome came from production and branded content. Their agency now sells the familiar communications cupboard - media relations, brand development, messaging, social media, crisis counsel, executive positioning, content and training - but organizes it around an editorial question: what is the story here?
“Conventional wisdom says clients always come first, but we invert that by prioritizing the needs of reporters.”Evan Strome, president of High10 Media
The first story is usually wrong
Consider three assignments. For the Ford Foundation, the asset was a white paper about disability inclusion in media and entertainment. Important, certainly. But “important” is not a distribution plan, and a report can disappear into the internet with exquisite dignity. High10 interviewed disability-rights pioneer Judith Heumann at length, mapped the conversation already happening in the press, built tailored media lists and secured an exclusive launch with HuffPost. The campaign then moved through interviews, CNN, Bloomberg TV and an opinion piece in The Hollywood Reporter. The paper acquired a protagonist.
Creo Ingredients presented the opposite problem: not too little excitement, but too much. CBD had been poured into tinctures, creams, pet products and a great deal of breathless copy. Another cannabinoid pitch risked becoming background noise. High10 helped widen the frame. Creo's fermentation platform was not merely producing one more compound; it offered a way to make rare cannabinoids without the plant. The story changed from “our ingredient” to “a category science is only beginning to explore.” Coverage followed in outlets including The Hill, OZY and Digiday.
For Telemundo Center, the problem was timing. Publicity before the grand opening could build interest, but too much could spend the headline before opening day. High10 arranged advance attention around the broader business story, including interviews and coverage in CNBC, The Wall Street Journal and Axios, while preserving the facility itself as the main event. The agency was not just placing stories. It was rationing novelty.
Paper → person
Make a policy argument travel through lived experience.
Product → category
Escape a crowded craze by enlarging the question.
Buzz → sequence
Build anticipation without using up the news.
A newsroom hiding inside an agency
Dallos says she leads High10 as a newsroom. That phrase can sound decorative until you inspect the staffing: former reporters, editors, producers and media executives sit alongside career communications people. Senior vice president Kaitlyn Kurosky began in local journalism. Account executive Jake Stansell spent nearly six years in local television. Strome built television, film and digital content. The agency's institutional memory contains both sides of the pitch.
That expertise matters most with media companies, which are awkward clients for a PR firm. Publishers already make stories; they can smell imitation editorial from across the room. High10's public roster includes or has included Bloomberg Media, Hearst, The Ankler, Adweek, Billboard, The Economist, Grist, HuffPost, The New Republic, Yahoo!, Telemundo and The Hollywood Reporter. For the latter, High10 managed announcements, product rollouts, editor profiles and signature events as the old trade daily remade itself into a broader entertainment publication.
Yet the roster is wider than publishing. Technology companies, nonprofits, law firms, consumer brands, authors and advocacy organizations hire the agency because the underlying job is the same: make an institution intelligible to people who are under no obligation to care. High10 can then extend the narrative through owned content, social campaigns, influencer work, speaking opportunities and executive profiles. Media relations is the spine, not the whole skeleton.
The business is judgment by the month
High10 is privately held. It has disclosed no outside funding, valuation or revenue, and it publishes no menu of package prices. Prospective clients are invited into a conversation, which is typical of a business assembled from custom retainers and projects rather than units of software. The bill pays for senior judgment, research, writing, relationships, coordination and the unglamorous persistence between a strategy deck and an answered email.
The closest alternatives range from large agencies such as DKC and Prosek to independent reputation firms, specialist public-affairs shops and an internal communications hire. High10's argument for the boutique model is attention plus range: senior counsel without forcing media relations, content and social into separate buildings. Its recognition by Observer, including a 2025 specialty-firm listing, is useful validation. More revealing is client fit. A publisher that needs its reinvention explained, a founder who must become a credible category voice, or a nonprofit with consequential research but no narrative engine all present the sort of editorial puzzle High10 appears built to solve.
The admission price is candor
The method is copyable. Before drafting a press release, map the conversation that already exists. Interview the person closest to the problem until language appears that no committee would invent. Separate the announcement from the larger change it represents. Decide which fact belongs to which moment. Give one outlet a genuine reason to go first. Then build the second wave before the first one lands.
- Bring evidence. Editorial framing cannot rescue an empty claim.
- Offer access. The best spokesperson is usually a person with direct knowledge, not the safest title.
- Move at news speed. A perfect approval that arrives after the conversation is over has no practical value.
- Accept an edit. The strongest story may begin with the problem, the category or the customer - not the company.
Those conditions also reveal where the approach is a poor fit. If leaders will not be interviewed, legal review takes weeks, the evidence cannot survive a reporter's second question, or success means controlling every word, newsroom logic becomes mostly theater. It also does less for a commodity offer with no change, tension or credible expertise behind it. High10 can locate and sequence a story. It cannot manufacture stakes forever.
The charming part of the reporter-first rule is that it is not altruism. It is enlightened self-interest with a deadline. The agency serves the client by respecting the reader, which means respecting the person who must decide whether the pitch deserves the reader's next minute. In a communications market crowded with distribution tools, High10 keeps selling the older and harder thing: knowing what is worth distributing.