Two former business editors have been promoted at a communications consultancy run by a team of professional journalists in southern England.
Andrew Diprose and Ron Wain are now joint managing directors at expanding Deep South Media (DSM). They were previously operations and commercial directors respectively.
Gareth Weekes, the founder of the nine-strong media relations specialist, becomes executive chairman, having been managing director since inception in 1998.
DSM works for companies and organisations in a diverse range of sectors.
Services include PR news content, press office services, stakeholder engagement, media interview training and publications design.
Andrew set up the PR arm of DSM from scratch in Dorset in 2005; Ron did the same in Hampshire the following year. The PR division now has 35 retained clients.
Gareth said: “DSM has grown organically thanks to Andrew and Ron’s business acumen and hard graft, delivering trusted and affordable support to clients with exacting standards across the country.
“What they have achieved to date is even more impressive, given that for six years DSM operated resiliently during the severest UK recession since the 1930s.”
He added: “With a strong pipeline of work, we are about to embark on another recruitment drive and the aim is to at least double staff numbers over the next few years, positioning DSM as the go-to experts for multi-media content in southern England.
“Interestingly, we are also seeing an increasing number of marketing companies utilising our services under ‘white label’ agreements because they don’t have in-house expertise to do what our team does.”
Andrew, 52, was previously the Southampton-based corporate affairs spokesman for regional newspaper group Newsquest and business editor at the Bournemouth Daily Echo.
He also ran a successful news agency in Buckinghamshire and was Head of News at Chiltern Radio in the home counties.
Ron, 46, was business editor and deputy news editor at the Southern Daily Echo in Southampton and a reporter at the Evening Post in Nottingham and Bournemouth Daily Echo.
The appointments are the latest development at DSM, which is based in Bournemouth and has local, regional and national reach.
James Tourgout, 42, the former deputy news editor and business editor at the Dorset Echo, joined recently.
His appointment brings the number of professional journalists to six. Other members of the PR team are Scott Sinclair, Ed Baker and Rachel Read.
