Biz journalist, Hampton dean to join PR firm

Brett Pulley

Business journalist Brett Pulley, who has been dean of the Hampton University Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Mass Communication for the past four years, is leaving the university for a job at public relations firm Weber Shandwick.

Pulley will be executive vice president, director of corporate content and senior media strategist. His last day at Hampton is Dec. 31.

Richard Prince of the Maynard Institute writes, “He will be succeeded on an interim basis by B. DaVida Plummer, assistant vice president of marketing and media for all of Hampton University assets. She began as an assistant professor in the Scripps Howard school, which opened in 2002 on the historically black campus.

“Pulley brought ‘a sense of the global spectrum that is the world of media now,’ Plummer told Journal-isms by telephone, noting that she was Pulley’s first hire.

“He brought that sense ‘by building bridges between the schools and newsrooms and editorial boards and industry disrupters of what the landscape is going to be like’ for the students, who number nearly 400, she said.”

Read more here.

Before joining Hampton, Pulley was a reporter at Bloomberg News. He also worked at Forbes and The Wall Street Journal.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.