JGPR was founded in Massachusetts, and most of our 500 police and fire department clients are right here in New England. But as of March 2026, JGPR has active clients in 19 states: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Nevada, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont.
Our work means we travel! JGPR will be speaking and teaching in person in more than two-dozen states this year at conferences and trade shows. We’ve learned over the past 12 years that while public information officers nationwide have a lot in common, there are varied priorities and skills that need to be put to work in each region at differing times.
From Beacon Hill to the Wasatch Front: What Three States Taught Us About Public Safety Communications
Public Information Officers all share the same mission: deliver clear, accurate, timely information when it matters most.
But spend a week in Massachusetts, Utah, and Pennsylvania and you see. Just as we did over the past four weeks, with JGPR staffers attending the Fire Chiefs Association of Massachusetts Professional Development Conference, the Utah Chiefs of Police Association Conference, and this week the Pennsylvania Law Enforcement Accreditation Annual Training Conference, where JGPR was a top sponsor and/or featured training partner at all three.
The PIO job may be the same, but the environment is not.
At John Guilfoil Public Relations, we’ve had the opportunity to support police, fire, and emergency management agencies across all three states—and what we’ve learned is this:
Great PIO work isn’t one-size-fits-all. It’s adaptive.
Massachusetts is one of the most demanding environments in the country for public safety communications.
Here, the public is engaged. The media is active (DMA #9 — a top 10 media market nationwide with 5 amazing TV news operations in Boston, plus strong daily newspapers including — but not only — The Boston Globe and a surging independent online local news industry). And the residents are smart, civically engaged (ask about our time in Lexington) and hungry for info.
PIOs aren’t just issuing alerts. We’re explaining complex incidents in real time, translating infrastructure challenges and public safety risks into plain English, predicting and working to meet community expectations during evolving situations and operating under consistent public and media scrutiny. We’ve become experts in fire response, police investigations, and PFAS removal from public water supplies — and a million other things.
This is where credibility is built one day at a time and one news story at a time.
With more than 100 clients across Massachusetts, JGPR has been shaped by this environment. It has forced us to:
- Write better
- Think faster
- Communicate more clearly
- And stand behind every word, every graphic, every social media post, every reel and every talking point we provide to our clients.
The result? Well, we believe we’ve created a public communications standard that holds up anywhere.
The State of Utah presents a completely different challenge.
The geography is vast. Hazards move fast. And reaching the public often means communicating across wide, diverse communities. Massachusetts has plenty of small towns, but Utah has vast rural areas, with 80% of its population living in a 110-mile by 30-mile stretch. Massachusetts is one of the most densely populated states, while Utah is one of the least dense.
What we’ve learned in Utah is that PIOs here must deliver messaging that is immediate, actionable, and crystal clear. Utah has challenges from water supply to earthquake preparedness. There’s no room for ambiguity when you’re telling people whether to evacuate, shelter, or prepare.
In Massachusetts, most of the daily intergovernmental communication happens from municipality (city/town) to county (district attorney) or state. In Utah, messaging often has to align across municipal (or regional/unified) agencies, to counties, to the state or federal government, and this can be quite different depending on where you are in the state. One Chief we met at the recent conference oversees a dispatch center that covers parts of Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California, but most Utah residents live in the Wasatch Front, hours from other state borders, but closer to states like Idaho and Wyoming (that’s six states we’ve just listed…)
In Utah, JGPR adapts to provide not just content but operational support, workflows, and preparedness messaging.
Pennsylvania: Where Consistency Creates Confidence
Pennsylvania brings a different kind of complexity. It’s a state defined by many independent municipalities (more similar to Massachusetts) but also with much more land mass and large-scale regional incidents that cross jurisdictions (similar to Utah).
Here, as JGPR has begun to build a clientele in Pennsylvania, the challenge isn’t just what to say—it’s how to keep messaging consistent across multiple voices. Without coordination, communication can quickly become fragmented and confusion for residents.
That’s where strong PIO support makes the difference, aligning messages, communicating clearly, and giving residents confidence that their public agencies will communicate early, often and along consistent channels.
Even with a growing footprint in Pennsylvania, for JGPR the need is clear:
Consistency isn’t just nice to have—it builds public trust.
JGPR Works. In these three states, in 16 more today, and — we believe — potentially in the other 34 too.
Most communications firms are built for one environment.
We’re not.
At JGPR, we’ve developed a model that adapts to the needs of each agency and each state but that still draws on national and industry best practices. We start with a strong core and build our approach to meet the needs of the state, the region, the city/township and the chief/department heads themselves.
Built in Massachusetts
We’ve been tested in one of the most demanding communication environments in the country. That means:
- High-quality work is the baseline
- Crisis communication is standard and expected
- Accountability is built into everything we do (that’s why we publish virtually all our client work on news.jgpr.net — we don’t sell ads on it! It’s a measure of transparency and a reflection of the fact that our company works for public agencies and should not hide.)
Proven in States Like Utah
We’ve shown we can scale across geography and hazard types with fast, actionable messaging, strong interagency coordination and support during critical incidents unfolding in real-time.
Growing in Pennsylvania
We bring structure where it’s needed most: Reliable systems that reduce confusion, standardized, professional communication, and consistent messaging across agencies.
Public agencies, police, fire, schools, public works, etc — they don’t just need content. (though we provide plenty of it!)
They need:
- A process for handling incidents
- A partner who understands public operations
- A team that can step in immediately when something happens, acting as a force multiplier (we can be the only PIO on scene or one of a dozen working in a JIC environment.)
This is what JGPR provides. When a chief, emergency manager, or municipal leader calls us, they’re not starting from scratch.
They’re plugging into a system that works.
If your agency is looking to strengthen its communications — whether you’re navigating complex incidents, growing your outreach, looking for a new website, or training to better handle communications during the next emergency—we’re ready to help.
ChatGPT was used to create the map graphic.