Tim Weber is Executive Director, head of our editorial team in our London office. He shares the history behind his past life as a journalist, his love of storytelling and what’s kept him working at Edelman for the last 10 years.
How long have you been working at Edelman?
Exactly 10 years ago, I made the ultimate switch: I left journalism behind and moved to the world of PR here at Edelman and I’ve never looked back.
Do you ever miss journalism?
I've been asked that quite a lot. My answer has always been a rather emphatic "no". I had worked as a journalist for more than 25 years before making the switch, so I'd "done" my time. I certainly haven't missed some of the turf wars that happen within the field and I’m not sorry that I missed reporting on the political chaos of the past few years, especially regarding Brexit.
Do I sometimes miss the thrill of reporting breaking news stories? Sure. I would have loved to cover Marissa Mayer leaving Google to run Yahoo, since I had spoken to her several times prior. But otherwise, I’m incredibly happy I made the move to PR.
What’s the difference between working in journalism vs. working in PR?
This is another question I've been asked a lot during the past decade. I always respond with the same joke: As a journalist, I try to find a good story and then think: 'how can I tell it?', while as a PR professional, I try to find a good story and then think: 'how can I tell it?'.
The intent, of course, is different, but all my life, in all my jobs, I have been and continue to be a storyteller.
And that's exactly what we—the team at Edelman Editorial—are doing: we take the outside-in approach and use our journalistic mindsets (nearly all of us are ex-journalists) to find good stories, and then tell them in a way that resonates, creates empathy, is authentic and earns trust for our clients.
I had never planned it like that, but with hindsight, it was probably inevitable that I created and grew an editorial team in our London office. We started out as five people, soon we will be 18 or thereabouts, with most of the growth happening during the past two-and-a-half years, when demand for our work soared as the pandemic disrupted all the traditional ways of comms work.
Why did you choose Edelman and what’s kept you here so long?
There's a reason why I stayed for a whole decade with Edelman. This is a family firm, and it shows—in the passion, in the compassion, and in the agility of this business. I don't quite "bleed blue" (as some long-timers at Edelman joke), but from all my conversations I know: it's rare to find a company that is so packed with outstanding, clever and fun-to-work-with individuals as this company.
I'd like to thank all of the fantastic Edelman colleagues I’ve had the pleasure to work with along the way—from across the company and around the world (I reckon that I've worked with people in most of our 60+ offices), from the leadership team to every single Assistant Account Executive who made things happen. As the company's founder Dan Edelman used to say: "Everybody is an account executive at Edelman."
I would especially like to thank my team: what an outstanding collection of storytellers and creatives!
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