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“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
- Ludwig Wittgenstein |
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For more than 20 years, Debra Zimmerman Murphey has been an award-winning professional writer/editor and communicator. |
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With a broad array of experience in the newspaper, magazine and trade newsletter industries as well as with Web-based communications, Debra now specializes in projects that marry top-notch writing with strategic thinking and journalistic-based information to help associations, nonprofits and corporations build relationships with key audiences and decision-makers. Throughout her career, Debra has been the driving force in the launch or renaissance of unique public relations/marketing initiatives and print/electronic publications.
Several years ago, Debra was recruited by custom publishing giant McMurry Publishing, Inc. to help launch Publications Management, a trade newsletter whose focus is the custom publishing niche. She worked for several years as editor and publisher of Publications Management and helped the publication earn both a name and a following. While with McMurry, she also wrote print and e-mail newsletters for the Custom Publishing Council, an offshoot of the Magazine Publishers of America. For three years prior to joining McMurry, she was editor and senior editor at PR NEWS, the longest-thriving trade newsletter devoted to the practice of public relations. While with PR NEWS, Debra helped launch both its "Platinum PR Awards" program and its conference division.
Debra is known as a writer - and now also as a communications pro - who is accurate, fair and able to tap into what makes a topic unique and people tick. Debra's ethics, attention to detail, investigative skills and writing style add layers and nuances to her work and set her apart from the majority of communications professionals and writers.
Debra has been a key player in the branding of Tobin Communications, Inc., a leading Radio Media Tour company in the PR industry. She has also spoken at and moderated conferences in the PR realm, served as a consultant on political campaigns and for non-profits seeking to improve their communications and has been hired to provide editorial critiques of publications and suggest changes for improvement.
Early in her writing career, Debra won numerous awards - including a Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association "Best in Show" - and a Suburban Newspapers of America editorial honor for helping expose issues surrounding substandard housing in Maryland.
Her work and her ability to tell a story is unparalleled: During her 10 years as a reporter and then community editor at a twice-weekly newspaper, The Maryland Independent, she told the story of a survivor of three concentration camps, was invited by a family to witness and write about the short life of a child who was struggling with and died of cancer, investigated and uncovered a parole board mistake that had allowed a murderer to kill again, and broke a story about the use of apitherapy (bee stings) to battle Multiple Sclerosis that was later covered by top U.S. media outlets and internationally. Through all of this, she earned a reputation as a journalist who gets it right and puts her heart and soul into what she does.
Debra recently completed her master's degree in journalism and public affairs at The American University in Washington, D.C., and earned faculty distinction on her comprehensive examination. She earned her undergraduate degree in speech communication from George Mason University in 1985.
Today, in addition to her work with Tobin Communications and various freelance projects, she writes a regular e-newsletter for a lobbying coalition in Washington, D.C.
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