Public Relations Firm Claims to Have Ghost Written Thousands of Op-Eds in Major U.S. Newspapers

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Laura Bentz of Keybridge Communications describes her company as “a boutique PR firm — founded by a former writer for the Wall Street Journal — that specializes in writing and placing op-eds. With some of the country’s most influential trade groups and global corporations as clients, we run many of the major op-ed campaigns in the U.S. We place roughly 3,000 op-eds per year.”

On its website, Keybridge openly claims to be able to “brand a CEO” by putting op-eds into newspapers in “virtually every major city.”

Less openly, Keybridge carefully markets its services with a PDF that names people for whom it claims to have written and placed op-eds.

For a mere $5000, Keybridge offers this service in the PDF: “First, we write a 500-800 word op-ed. Then we place it in one or more newspapers around the country. If we’re pitching to a national audience, we guarantee that we’ll reach at least 50,000 readers. Includes media monitoring.”

The PDF claims credit for and includes full images of op-eds in the following newspapers by these individuals:

* Wall Street Journal, an op-ed by Bill Ingram, vice president of Adobe Analytics and Adobe Social.

* Washington Post, an op-ed by Doc Woods, a member of Virginians for Quality Healthcare.

* Los Angeles Daily News, an op-ed by James G. Nondorf, vice president for enrollment and student advancement at the University of Chicago, and Jarrid J. Whitney, executive director of admissions and financial aid at Cal Tech.

*…

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