Credentials: Alan Caruba

Public Relations Counselor & Editorial Consultant

Alan Caruba has been a professional writer and public relations counselor for more than five decades. His expertise on a range of public affairs issues has made him a popular guest on talk radio and on television.

Prior to establishing The Caruba Organization, Mr. Caruba was a professional journalist; a reporter and editor with two weekly newspapers in New Jersey and a columnist and feature writer for a New Jersey daily. In addition, he was a freelance contributor to the New Jersey Sunday section of The New York Times.

During this period and thereafter, as a freelance writer he contributed to many newspapers and magazines, consistently winning awards for his work. These days, his writings are widely published on leading news and opinion Internet sites, as well as in a variety of publications. His opinion editorials have appeared regularly in The Washington Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Providence Journal, and other print media outlets.

After graduating from the University of Miami (FL) and serving in the U.S. Army, and following his career as a journalist, Mr. Caruba joined the New York State Department of Housing and Community Affairs as its Communications Director, transferring to the New York State Housing Finance Agency. His work included award-winning annual reports for both of these state agencies. Returning to his home State, Mr. Caruba became the Director of Publications for the New Jersey Institute of Technology, responsible for a wide range of work including recruiting publications and annual catalogs of course offerings.

In the mid-1970s, he established The Caruba Organization and has enjoyed a wide variety of clients. Over the years, he has worked with leading corporations, trade associations, think tanks, and entrepreneurs of every description. He provides editorial services to public relations and public affairs agencies. Since the late 1980s, he has been the public relations counselor for the New Jersey Pest Management Association. For ten years until 2004, he served as the Director of Communications for the American Policy Center. In recent years, his expertise on policy issues that include energy, immigration, education, Islamic fundamentalism, environmentalism, and other topics have earned him wide recognition. He no longer conducts business as The Caruba Organization.

In his book, "Guerrilla PR", Michael Levine wrote "he’s one of the most in-demand public relations counselors, and counts major associations, corporations, and celebrities among his clients. Alan Caruba possesses the soul of a Guerrilla PR master."

Founder. Mr. Caruba has received extensive national and international media recognition, first as the founder in 1984 of the famed media spoof and clearinghouse of information, The Boring Institute©. He was profiled in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and many other publications as the nation’s expert on boredom and its impact on individuals and society. Over the course of its twenty years, Mr. Caruba averaged a thousand radio interviews annually until putting the Institute on hiatus in 2004.

In 1990, Mr. Caruba founded The National Anxiety Center as a clearinghouse for information about "scare campaigns designed to influence public policy and opinion" on a wide variety of issues. The Center's website is now an archive for the weekly commentaries he wrote for many years, but his daily commentaries, posted on his popular blog, "Warning Signs", now command a vast national and international audience of readers and are frequently published as opinion editorials in leading daily newspapers and other publications. He is a daily contributor to CanadaFreePress.com, an influential news and opinion website, and his commentaries appear in dozens of comparable websites and blogs. Environmental and energy issues are regularly examined, along with others involving national security, politics, education, immigration, and popular culture. Mr. Caruba is a frequent guest on talk radio.

Radio-TV Guest. A reflection of his activities as the founder of both the Institute and Center, Mr. Caruba has been a popular guest on radio shows throughout the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. He does many radio shows every year in addition to the occasional guest appearance on television. He has been on programs aired by Fox News Channel, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, and other networks. He has appeared with Paula Zahn, Chris Matthews, Joan Rivers, Regis Philbin, and other leading TV personalities. Talkers Magazine has called him "one of the great guests of talk radio."

Book Reviewer. For four decades, beginning in his days as a journalist, Mr. Caruba has been a book reviewer. He is a founding member of the National Book Critics Circle. Bookviews has evolved from being syndicated to weekly newspapers, a monthly newsletter, and is now a monthly report on the Internet that has been visited by more than 155,000 ardent book lovers. In addition, for many years Mr. Caruba was a judge for the Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards.

Author. Mr. Caruba's most recent book is Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy, a collection of his weekly columns, and a sequel to his 2003 collection, "Warning Signs", both published by Merrill Press. In the 1970s he was published as a poet by Pocket Books and a novelist by Dell. Over the years, he has been a contributor to many books including "The Complete Guide to Writing Non-Fiction", "Favorite Words of Famous People", "The Cat Catalog", "Managing Service for Success", "The Travel Atlas of Scenic America", and "Urban Terrorism." From 1989 to 1997, he was the editor of "Power Media Selects", a media directory identifying the most influential print and broadcast media contacts.

Memberships. In the course of his long career, Mr. Caruba has maintained memberships in the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Society of Professional Journalists, and he is a founding member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Listed. Mr. Caruba’s professional standing is recognized by listing in directories that include the Yearbook of Experts; Working Press of the Nation; Literary Marketplace; Bacon’s media directories; O’Dwyer’s Directory of PR Firms and O’Dwyer’s Directory of PR Executives.