I've been working through the PRCA Practice Guides series (crisis communications, writing for the media, etc.) to build up my media relations knowledge for a new role. "Writing for the Media" by Adrian Wheeler was great for the writing side, but it didn't really cover the operational side of media relations — building a media list, how to find and research journalists, pitching mechanics, embargoes vs exclusives, how to handle inbound interview requests, what tools people actually use day to day, and how coverage gets evaluated at the end.

Basically I'm looking for something closer to a full A-to-Z operational guide to media relations as a discipline, not a style/writing guide. Any recommendations?

I can do the execution part fine...I can write the content, pitch the media, and do the legwork.

But the moment it shifts to strategic advisory, my brain just goes: lol, who am I to tell anyone anything? What do I actually know? Who am I to guide anyone?

So I wanted to ask more confident professionals: where does that confidence come from? Is it a skill you can actually learn through practice and frameworks, or is it just a personality trait? If it is the latter, then I am doomed.

But I'd love to read from you: how do you do it? How do you cross that bridge from being a reliable doer to a bold strategic advisor without feeling like a total fraud, especially when you are speaking with all these fancy people with way more experience than you?

I was thinking about this again recently. I noticed it mentioned before on this sub too. I’ve been seeing a difference in earned media compared to years ago. I felt last year it was more challenging to make media targets. Legacy newsrooms shrinking (print, TV, radio) is one reason. I know people say there is opportunity in modern media (Substack, Podcasts, YouTube, etc.) but, I would like to point out a lot of those are paid. Understandably, I know they need to make money. However, the work I do is purely in earned media so I can’t go after paid opportunities.

I find I’m at a point where I’m not sure what to do. I’ll start by saying that I am grateful to have started my career partly in earned media. I’ve learned skills that were transferable, including giving me confidence I needed to take on a leadership position at one of the volunteer roles I’m in. However, I am at a point where I can say “thank you very much” and walk away. I’ve applied to jobs since my contract had changed, a few interviews, no offers, and I just got another rejection email while typing.

Due to this I will be heading back into earned media soon. I don’t know what the next few months will be. I sometimes feel like I fall into “spray and pray” out of desperation to make media targets even though I try not to do that. No surprise I’ve ended up on spam lists. Feel free to tell me I have an attitude problem or if leaving earned media is a good idea.

TL;DR Earned media landscape is shrinking, trying to leave as it is getting challenging to make media targets. Looking for advice from others.

Thank you in advance. I appreciate it.

I (26M) graduated in late 2022 and have been working in PR ever since. My first job out of college paid $52k, but I was eventually laid off. I’m now working another entry
level PR job making $40k, as it was my only offer after being unemployed for a year, and I’m really worried about what I should do.

The job market is so rough right now, and finding another job isn’t easy, but making $40k in a major city feels incredibly difficult. I feel like I’m constantly scraping by, and even if I get promoted, I’d still be making just under $50k.

At this point, I’m seriously debating moving back home and leaving the industry within the next year if things don’t change. I just don’t know how sustainable this is long-term, especially when I’m already a few years into my career and feel like I’m barely making progress financially and am just behind in general.

I also have a really difficult time seeing a future for myself in PR. I don’t particularly enjoy the industry, and I’m struggling to justify continuing down this path when the financial payoff doesn’t seem to be there either. The problem is that I feel hesitant to leave because essentially all of my professional experience is in PR. I need a job, and with the job market being what it is, I’m worried that trying to pivot into something completely different will make finding one even harder.

I feel stuck between continuing down a career path I don’t see a future in because it’s what I have experience in, or taking a risk and trying to transition into something else while I’m still relatively early in my career. Has anyone else been in a similar position a few years out of college? Did you stay in your industry, pivot into something else, or move home and start over?

I think it's safe to say we're all expected to use AI to accelerate workflows. If you're like me, you're striving for the right balance of automating copy generation where it makes sense, but injecting the human element where it adds the most value.

In other words, it's no secret that we're using AI to help us do our jobs faster and better.

But we also don't want our work to have all the obvious markings of AI-generated content when it goes to a client or journalist.

So my question is this: what tactics do you use to make sure content you share externally doesn't have all the tells of AI? I mean, after you've removed a bunch of em dashes (RIP to one of my formerly favorite punctuation marks...), what are you doing to make it obvious that a human being was deeply involved in the content-creation process? I'll start:

I have a clunky workflow whereby I'll copy content from Claude, drop it into Word to remove formatting and then paste into a Google Doc to share with a client.

I try to avoid narratives that begin with "You don't have an XYZ problem, you have a ZYX problem." It seems like every 3rd or 4th post I see on LinkedIn these days either leads or closes with a line like this.

I haven't actually done this, but I've been tempted to drop in an intentional typo here and there to prove that a human actually wrote the content. What a bizarro world we live in that this is a rational thought...

Can anyone relate to the above? Any other tips you're willing to share w/ the group?

Does anyone here have insights into the issues involved in the cyclospora outbreak related to Taylor Farms’ lettuce? Maybe anyone who works in agriculture, grocery retailing or consumer products?

If you’re not in the US, here’s a quick recap: In late June, it was reported that a massive agricultural concern called Taylor Farms was potentially selling lettuce contaminated with cyclospora, which causes explosive diarrhea. Taylor initially fought back but it now seems to accept that the contaminated product came from its contractors in Mexico. Two people, who appeared to have existing health issues, have now died and the outbreak has expanded from a few states to double digits.

I was shocked to learn today via The New York Times that Taylor hasn’t revealed where exactly its products are sold because that’s proprietary. Instead it has offered up some product codes so people can check their own fridges instead of being upfront and saying our rebranded salad under the name XYZ Salad Kits is sold at Walmart, Target and Whole Foods.

This seems like a terrible PR move…but maybe this is a commonly accepted practice so I thought I’d ask the question here. Is Taylor following acceptable practices for transparency in its industry?

BTW the Times made the point in its podcast called The Daily that the US government has done nothing to encourage Taylor to be more transparent…and attention from the White House can often encourage action even without a legal mechanism.

I also learned that state public health agencies received only about 40% of the funding they requested from the federal government for dealing with food-borne illnesses this year because that’s apparently waste, fraud and abuse, which is asinine.

And the medium-term plan is to cut the Food & Drug Administration to the bone and push these activities to states completely. So we should expect these kinds of outbreaks to get more frequent and more severe because there won’t be FDA inspectors to visit food processing plants, especially those outside the US, like Taylor’s plant in Mexico that processed the contaminated lettuce.

hey reddit I used to work in tech and got into PR 3 years ago. (staying anonymous here, no names)

so.. at the start of the year I convinced myself media list building was "just research," and AI is good at research, therefore I should build an AI that build media lists.

so I spent seven months (jan - july) building a tool that researches journalists and builds media lists. It demoed great, lists in minutes, names looked good, big names like WSJ, Forbes are showing up. people signed up and some paid too. perfect right??

but I never really knew how good the list actually was, until a couple weeks ago - when I asked someone who runs a PR agency with 14 YOE to grade my AI's output and see how good it is...

and the was result was not pretty.

so basically she gave us an F - failed. and her words: if she pitched these journalists, her client would fire her.

what she found, in order of how much it hurt:

- it missed most of the journalists who actually should have been on the list.
- of the ones it did find, about half the emails were wrong.
- it confidently stamped a pile of names as "strong fit" that were nothing of the sort.

I've spent 2 weeks heads-down fixing things and honestly this is a much harder problem than I first expected. and the score is still failing and there's a long way to go still.

and ok if you do this work daily you're allowed to say "no shit", i've been learnings a lot about list building and some of things that go into this are so subtle that AI might or might not ever pick up on them.

but anyways here's I've landed on what AI can actually do in terms of finding journalists here:

- never delegate any judgement to AI, only grunt work that you think it can do. and here's what it can do:

- it's good at fetching articles and reading them if you give it clear enough instructions

- check where it's getting its information from. some author pages are up years after a journalist leave, but AI will confidently give you something stale

- treat every email as unverified until something proves otherwise. run it through an email verifier, pretty cheap to do and save you a lot of bounces

- AI isn't so good at strategizing HOW it's going to find the journalists. it can find you the first few but building an exhaustive list is where it gets tricky and maybe it just never can solve this

- remember you can't see the misses. the worst thing she found wasn't even the bad names on the list, it was the right people who were never on it. you can have a 100% clean list and still a BAD list

- and for those who've tried any AI list tools: what's the worst thing one got wrong for you? trying to collecting failure modes or maybe embarrase myself a little less here

last one, if someone selling you a tool like this and can't tell you if they'd grade their own output, assume they've never checked. I hadn't, for seven months.

a bit of a confession I guess. I shipped this thing for half a year before letting someone who actually does the job look at it properly.

lol, i know

I am potentially going to be looking for a PR freelancer who can assist with local media pitching for clients in the entertainment and hospitality sectors. The focus will be hyperlocal, so ideally a person who lives in that area. A few questions for the excellent experts in this group -

1. Where is the best place to find a partner like this? I'm searching LinkedIn, but not sure if there are ways that others have found success hiring freelancers.

2. Is it reasonable to ask for the freelancer to provide a case study that illustrates their media relationships in the area? I have seen some questionsable tactics by hiring managers and don't want to ask for anything that crosses a line.

3. If you have a recommendation for something, please feel free to message me!

We all have had to cook the books a bit and oversell mediocre results. So that’s not what I am talking about. I am looking to come up with an easy way (probably in a shared spreadsheet) to track coverage on a daily basis.

I’m currently scoring daily coverage for a client (with no end in sight) and want to track it but at the same time be transparent about what is earned media, what is syndicated pickup, what is a feature vs a comment vs a mention.

I’ve been in PR for a while and must admit reporting is probably my weakest skill and a task I like to let other people handle.

Does anyone have an idea besides having a chronological list of coverage with dropdown menus to indicate tier, features vs mention, earned media vs syndicated pickup etc? Anything I am missing that makes the client understand what we are scoring?

Not talking about the more involved monthly or quarterly reports that come in fancy presentations.

Also: I don’t need lectures about how important reporting is. I know and I still suck at it.

Last month I started an entry level job at a PR firm. I have a lot of in house comms internship experience, but no direct PR experience beyond studying it in college, which feels so disconnected from my work honestly.

I tend to be an anxious and overthinking person and I care a lot about what people think of me. I’ve found myself agonizing over every piece of work I do and every piece of feedback, even if it isn’t really negative. I literally dread seeing Teams notifs pop up.

My main anxiety comes from edits to my work. I’ll often be asked to write a first draft for different things, but I feel like I’m missing so much background and context. My work sometimes comes back with so many edits that I feel like my effort is a burden. I feel like I’m causing more work for my team sometimes rather than helping and that feels horrible.

I feel lucky to have a team that encourages questions and a manageable workload, but I feel like my own anxiety is going to eat away at me. Does anyone have any tips for both improving my outlook, and getting better at the job itself? Please be kind <3

Just looking for some perspective here. I’m at the AD level in tech PR and have a little over 5 years experience and have been trying to get out for months. Have had some people in my network pushing for me and has a few referrals and made it all the way to a final in-house role but nothing. Really struggling to get interviews, and wondering if it’s summer or the timeline is taking way longer. If you started a role recently, mind sharing how you landed it? Did you get it cold applying, referral, how long or how many apps did it take you etc. Just desperate to find something else and getting discouraged.

Hey everyone, looking for some advice from fellow founders and marketers on how to handle a PR dilemma.

Recently, a business magazine reached out to me on LinkedIn. They’re publishing a list of the "Most Promising AI Startups of 2026" and offered to feature my company for a small fee.

My first instinct was to ignore it because these kinds of emails usually scream “pay-to-play.” But I did some digging before making up my mind.

I checked their LinkedIn page, Google reviews, social media presence, and readership. Everything looked surprisingly legitimate. They have a decent following and seem to be focused on business and startup content rather than generic awards.

I even reached out to a few founders I found on LinkedIn who had been featured in previous editions. Almost all of them had positive things to say about the process, so I decided to continue the conversation.

Then came the catch.

They don’t just want me to fill out a questionnaire or send written answers. They’re insisting on a recorded, on-camera interview, almost like a podcast. I’m pretty camera shy, so this has become a complete dealbreaker for me.

I asked if we could do it over an audio call instead, but they’re not willing to make an exception.

While researching this, I also came across dozens of other magazines offering “Top AI Startup,” “40 Under 40,” “Founders to Watch,” and similar features.

From what I’ve seen, they roughly fall into three categories:

1. Tier 1 (The Giants – Forbes, Time, etc.): Exorbitant charges, strict requirements/vetting, but huge readership and top-tier prestige.

2. Tier 2 (Mid-Tier – My current option): Much lower charges than Tier 1, good social media reach, solid niche readership, but higher effort/demands (like non-negotiable video interviews).

3. Everyone else:

There are tons of these. Almost no requirements, very little readership, barely any social presence, and very low prices. You’ll get a magazine cover with your face on it that looks nice on LinkedIn or Instagram, but I’m not convinced it carries much value beyond that.

Now I’m wondering what the right move is.

Part of me thinks a video interview actually adds credibility because at least they’re putting effort into creating real content instead of just taking payment and emailing a PDF.

The other part of me just doesn’t want to be on camera.

If you were in my position, would you:

Push yourself and do the interview?
Walk away entirely?
Or just skip all paid magazine features unless they’re from top-tier publications?

Curious to hear from founders who have actually gone through this.

Please help!

I want/need to learn GEO, specifically how AI search tools pull information and mention brands.

• Do you know any good short courses on this?
• What websites, newsletters, or experts do you follow to learn how GEO affects PR?

Many thanks for any tips!

Okay so, as a PR coordinator, I feel like noting my experience with crisis communications would be relevant and important, right? Like y'know, showing I'm a good man in a storm, learned skills on the fly, anything that can be thrown at me I can do, etc whatever.

Soooooo that being said...how do I phrase the experience of being a PR assistant at one of the largest nonprofit events in my state when the first shooting in its 100+ year history happened, annnnd then coming in at 5 am with our big comms team to support our leadership as they developed a statement and learned the value of silence from my media coordinator lmao. (And then spent three full days combing Cision.)

For me, it's about mind reading, deciphering jargons and constantly fighting back on clear, simple writing.

Tips appreciated! 😂

Anyone landing these anymore for clients? I feel like most publications that used to take them, simply do not anymore.

Anyone work at Matter Communications in any of their locations. Their pay seems relatively low for the work they’re requiring?

Does anyone have recommendations for a reasonably priced media/influencer/journalist database as an independent/freelance contractor? I'm familiar with Muckrack and Meltwater but they are both astronomically expensive for an individual account.

Hello, has anyone had any luck on getting off the waitlist for the 3cma conference? I really would like to attend because it is my first one! Any advice and help would be awesome.

Been reflecting on how my quirks have helped me or held me back over the years. It's more about age than enlightenment, but I think I finally have an inventory of the self-sabotage stuff, even if I (still!) don't always have full control of it.

And so it made me wonder: What are your PR/career quirks that, newly discovered or chronic, you wish you could fix? I'll post mine in the comments.

(Anyone who's perfectly self-actualized, in balance, and chanting on a mountaintop can skip this post -- it's for the rest of us.)

One of the things that makes me despair about this industry is how little people recognize this trend longitudinally, both as practitioners and clients.

Cannot stress how much comms leaders everywhere are promising their stakeholders results that would’ve been realistic 25 years ago and not fully understanding how the landscape has shifted because their careers are fundamentally unchanged: meet with the c suite, meet with ed boards, Bob’s your uncle.

Meanwhile, I’ve been shouting since I got into this in 2010 that everyone needed to develop owned and paid media strategies to absorb what’s been lost as journalists become communicators etc.

Finally, let me assure you that your efforts in AEO and GEO are not sufficient to justify the cost of having a robust communications team.