RedSnow Ltd. is a website dedicated to the art and craft of writing, my love from writing, and my belief in writing and reporting, storytelling, truth-telling and eye-open, brain awakening telling. I started young, at the kitchen table with my Mother’s help, and have been happiest when words flow.
My first writing came in elementary school, on a limited run play based on the life of the Aztec Indians. My short story writing started in eighth grade English class and in high school, I was a founder and contributor to an underground newspaper (which, in the spirit of the times, had no name but only “Pencil in Title of Your Choice”). In college, he penned a regular column in the school newspaper called “Squirrel’s Cage.”
My first newspaper job was right out of high school, at my hometown newspaper, the Valley News Dispatch. Thanks to those amazing journalists, I knew how to report. Then, my English professors at Washington & Jefferson College taught me how to write. The two crafts — reporting and writing, not always harmonious — have lived together happily ever after.
My passion to use communication, writing and training to give structure and voice to the important work and thoughts comes from being a superb policy writer with an uncanny knack for rendering complex ideas into simple compelling text; those skills have resulted in three Overseas Press Club Awards and three White House Correspondent Association awards as a journalist and, in the public relations arena, a winner of a 2007 Communicator Award of Distinction and finalists for a 2015 Gold SABRE North America reward.
I write in ways to engage, stimulate and connect with all kinds of people. As a journalist, I worked all over the world and brought the stories of people to readers; they read, they cared and they acted because of his reporting. My delight and ability to embrace other cultures, to connect and immerse myself with people in every location, result from the skill of listening and getting people to trust. I bring a special emphasis on working to create focused and intelligent strategies and messages that support successful media campaigns, from simple announcements to super-charged issues. In addition to media counsel, my writing skills help clients communicate with maximum credibility and impact.
In academics, I was invited to create and then teach a unique college course at Washington and Jefferson College that combines journalism, public affairs, ethics, philosophy, current affairs and war zone survival skills into a practical application to broaden thinking and day-to-day success. That course guides students on how to ask questions that cannot be dodged, provide answers that are detailed and on-point, and unleash the ability to think on one’s feet and use all of one’s senses. It also teaches the merits of when to be silent and how to write creatively and clearly.
I also was an adjunct professor at American University, teaching courses on “The Media and Foreign Policy” and “Writing for Communication.” Tom also created classes and taught speech writing and presentation as part of a communication skills program developed for the group Ladies America, a national organization that connects, educates, and mentors professional women across the nation. I spoke on writing and publishing at their annual event and the class was an outgrowth from those appearances. (One woman credited him with helping her finish her book, which has since been published.) In addition, for three years I spoke on the role of the media in political campaigns at the Graduate School of Political Management at GWU, with the class on Political Communications Strategy.
Now I write (and get published)poems, freelance for radio, digital and print entities, and report for Talk Media News out of the Pentagon. Decades of daily journalism – from an underground newspaper in western Pennsylvania to USA TODAY — have produced deep and wide reporting and writing experience in coverage of national politics, defense, crime, breaking news, Congress and the White House, and international conflicts.
To help others. my business, TS Navigations LLC, focuses on writing across the spectrum of client needs and issues, media and communications strategy, and crisis communication.
I am member and former officer of the Overseas Press Club and the National Press Club. I have been on all seven continents – and in dozens of places to be kept secret.