About the Author

Clarence Jones is an on-camera coach who teaches media survival skills and marketing magic. He knows what he's talking about. After 30 years of reporting in both newspapers and television, he wrote "Winning with the News Media - A Self-Defense Manual When You're the Story." It is now in its 9th Edition. Many call it "the bible" of news media relations. Then he left reporting and formed his own media relations firm - Winning News Media, Inc. He now has six books in print. The latest is "Filming Family History -- How to Save Great Stories for Future Generations." At WPLG-TV in Miami, he was one of the nation's most-honored reporters. He won four Emmys and was the first reporter for a local station to ever win three duPont-Columbia Awards - TV's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. He builds his own computers and invents clever devices to make for his sailboat. His books are all available in Amazon's Kindle bookstore. He started at the Florida Times-Union. Then, as one of the nation's most promising young journalists, he was granted a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. After Harvard, he was hired by the Miami Herald, where he was part of a year-long investigation of law enforcement corruption. That led to a referendum that abolished the office of sheriff and created an appointed Public Safety Director. Miami-Dade is the only county in Florida with no elected sheriff. Clarence covered Martin Luther King's Civil Rights campaigns across the South. His last newspaper position was Washington correspondent for the Herald. He then moved to Louisville, Kentucky to work under deep cover for eight months, investigating political and law enforcement corruption for WHAS-TV. Posing as a gambler, he visited illegal bookie joints daily, carrying a hidden camera and microphone. His documentaries during a two-year stint in Louisville gained immediate national attention. He returned to Miami in 1972 to become investigative reporter for WPLG-TV, the ABC affiliate owned by Post-Newsweek Corp. While he was reporting, he also taught broadcast journalism for five years as an adjunct professor at the University of Miami. He lives near the mouth of Tampa Bay, where he sails a 28-foot Catalina. Two of his books are collections of magazine stories he has published showing how to build or modify equipment for a sailboat.