New National Media Office Inspires Increasing Media Coverage

Members of the national media team. From left to right:Joseph Boxerman, Steve Yellin, Gerry Geer, Ken Chawkin, director Robert Roth, Mario Orsatti, Jim Karpen, and Cynthia Arenander

In just the past few months, media coverage of Institute programs has exploded, with featured television reports and front-page, extensive, positive press stories in hundreds of newspapers around the world. NBC’s Today Show. Larry King Live! CBS and ABC national affiliates. Fox-TV international news. Time and People magazines. The International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Detroit Free Press, the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Constitution, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Sacramento Bee. What’s the source of this unprecedented media attention?

In June 2002, His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of Maharishi International University and the world’s foremost scientist of consciousness, began personally addressing the global community and the international press during weekly two-hour news conferences, broadcast live via satellite, webcast, and teleconference call. For a full year now, the world has been enjoying this extraordinary gift of knowledge and insight from Maharishi, and the response from both the national media and the public has been remarkable.

Institute administrative directors Kingsley and Leslie Brooks, director of communications Gerry Geer, and director of publicity Mario Orsatti have been helping coordinate these press conferences for the past year and have also been organizing concurrent local press conferences in cities around the world in order to maximize media exposure. (To set up a press conference in your city, please email Mario Orsatti at mario@orsatti.net or call 1-641-470-1344.) Last April, largely as a result of the media response to Maharishi’s news conferences (for a comprehensive list of excerpts, see www. mou.org/media/articles), a new national media office was created at the Institute to coordinate and fulfill the rapidly expanding media interest in Maharishi’s programs.

Robert Roth, author of the bestselling books Transcendental Meditation and The Natural Law Party: A Reason to Vote and long-time media director for Maharishi’s international organizations, has joined the Institute as director of the national media office. The expanded national media team also includes expert media consultants Cynthia Arenander, Dr. Carla Brown, Joseph Boxerman, Ken Chawkin, Jim Garrett, Jim Karpen, Lindsay Oliver, Mario Orsatti, Linda Stallone, Steve Yellin, and Norman Zierold, each of whom has worked in public and media relations for more than 20 years.

In conjunction with coverage of Maharishi’s press conferences, which has appeared in hundreds of major newspapers nationwide and in 70 countries worldwide, the media are now increasingly cover--–ing many other areas of Maharishi’s international organizations, including Maharishi International University, Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment, Maharishi Vedic City, The Raj Health Center, Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health, and Maharishi Sthapatya-Veda architecture. The Institute’s national media office is working with the national press to continue building this momentum for comprehensive and positive media coverage. Stay tuned!