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NYT’s David Pogue pops question to PR exec via fake movie trailer

By Michael Sebastian | Posted: August 22, 2012
A high-profile newspaper columnist and PR exec are getting hitched.

In dramatic fashion last Wednesday, David Pogue, the personal technology columnist for The New York Times, proposed to Nicki Dugan, vice president at Silicon Valley PR firm The OutCast Agency.

With their family in tow, the pair gathered at a summer resort's movie theater for some entertainment. What Dugan didn’t know is that Pogue had persuaded the theater to show a movie trailer depicting the couple’s courtship, right up to the proposal. At that moment, Pogue fell to a knee in front of the theater and pops the question.

Pogue posted the trailer—along with Dugan’s reaction, which he caught on a hidden camera—to Vimeo and shared it with his nearly 1.5 million Twitter followers. The video is seven-minutes long, but worth your time.


After the big event, Pogue tweeted: “Tonight, I proposed to the most selfless, sweet, beautiful, wise, funny woman in the world. And she said YES!!”

Last year, The Daily Beast’s Dan Lyons questioned Pogue’s relationship with Dugan, because the The OutCast Agency represents she works with tech companies that Pogue often covers in his columns. However, Pogue's editor Damon Darlin told Lyons that Pogue “hasn't written about any companies [Dugan] is representing."

“Romantic involvement with a news source would create the appearance and probably the reality of partiality,” Lyons wrote.

Despite the relationship, it seems PR antics still frustrate Pogue.

Recently, he took a moment to tweet a column from one of his New York Times colleagues bemoaning the practices of PR departments. Pogue said in the tweet: “NY Times ‘Haggler’ columnist experiences the same kind of surreal tech-PR bafflement that I encounter so often …”

In a PR Daily story last year, Pogue highlighted some of his favorite PR pitches.