“We’re all shifting to using AI answer-engines for information,” Natan Edelsburg said. And this is true “whether you use Google and it provides a summary, or now you’re asking all your questions to Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini.”

Edelsburg, chief partnerships officer at PR software company Muck Rack, said that when it comes to getting brand messages cited by AI chatbots, “Owned media is nowhere near as important as earned.”

In a September Muck Rack study, 99% of all web links cited by AI chatbots were from non-paid media.

“This is a huge testament to how important our industry is,” and “a renaissance moment for public relations and communications,” Edelsburg said during the Sept. 28 episode of Member Monday, PRSA’s livestream for members and non-members alike held the last Monday of every month.

According to Muck Rack’s research, 84% of AI citations come from earned media, “which is specifically what PR and communications professionals do,” Edelsburg told Heide Harrell, M.A., APR, PRSA’s 2026 chair and host of Member Mondays.

Earned media includes journalism, academic research, government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, encyclopedia sites, social media platforms and third-party corporate content — the latter referring to instances in which one company writes about another, possibly because of a partnership between the two organizations.

In the study, 27% of all AI citations are drawn from journalism, versus 13.7% from owned media such as company websites and social-media channels.

A user’s question also helps determine the sources an AI chatbot will cite. Questions about industry trends, for example, bring up journalism citations more than twice as often as how-to queries.

Some news organizations, even the largest ones, aren’t cited in AI responses as often as others, the research found. Perhaps because it presents news in easily digestible, bite-sized nuggets, Axios is among the three most-cited news domains on ChatGPT across 13 of the 17 industries in the study.

However, “That doesn’t mean that Axios is going to show up for every single prompt,” Edelsburg said.

The Associated Press appears among the top three for one industry, while The New York Times and the Reuters news service do not appear among the three most-cited sources for any industry.

Pitching up the wrong tree?

The journalists that AI relies on are not the ones that PR pros tend to pitch, Edelsburg said — a major issue when you’re trying to land press coverage for clients.

“On average, only 2% of the journalists we’re traditionally pitching are being cited by AI,” he said. One of the main reasons is that AI tools are looking for websites and news sources they can easily crawl and read, he said.

“A lot of the most popular publications out there, like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and any major outlet with a paywall, are often not going to be accessible to these [AI] tools,” he said.

Edelsburg recommended that communications professionals “treat AI as your biggest media outlet.” More specifically, “you need to treat each AI model as its own media outlet, and understand which journalists are being cited.”

ChatGPT “is obsessed with Google Maps,” he said. “When you ask things like, ‘What’s the best city to visit?’ it defaults to Google Maps. A strategy might be to make sure that the reviews on your Google page are really good, and to work with your team on that.”

Claude, on the other hand, “never cites YouTube at all,” he said. Similarly, “Wikipedia matters more for ChatGPT than it does for Claude.”

Studying these trends helps communicators focus their earned-media strategies, he said.

An audience member asked about sending AI-generated media pitches. When AI story pitches appear in reporters’ inboxes, “it’s very obvious,” Harrell said. “I promise you, journalists are hitting delete.”

Illustration credit: kiattisak

The post AI Citations Spark ‘Renaissance Moment for PR and Communications’ first appeared on PRsay.

Agentic AI that works autonomously on behalf of human users can “do more than respond to prompts like you’ll see with ChatGPT or Claude,” he said. “You give them a task, and they figure out how to get it done.”

McClennan was one of four panelists who joined host John Elsasser for the Sept. 24 edition of Strategies & Tactics Live, PRSA’s monthly livestream presentation on LinkedIn.

September is Ethics Month for PRSA. In July, its Board of Ethics and Professional Standards released an updated advisory about the use of AI agents in public relations.

“Agents pursue goals and complete tasks on behalf of the end-user, often using capabilities such as reasoning, planning, memory, tool-use, and adaptation,” McClennan said, quoting the advisory that he led. “The systems can monitor media, generate and distribute content, engage stakeholders, coordinate workflows, trigger responses, and supervise other agents across communications functions.”

McClennan said he uses AI himself, but cautioned that “Artificial intelligence is not an ethical actor. It has no moral judgment, no professional obligations, and no reputation to protect.”

Human beings must safeguard the ethical use of AI in communications, he said. Public relations professionals should disclose when they use an AI agent if that use materially affects communications. He urged communicators to continually monitor AI outputs for bias and fairness.

“Don’t use AI agents to impersonate individuals, simulate consensus, or conceal sponsorship,” McClennan said, quoting the advisory.

‘Understanding our own value’

Panelist Linda Staley, APR, Fellow PRSA, is chair of PRSA’s 11-member Board of Ethics and Professional Standards. With the emergence of AI tools in the communications field, the board has turned its attention to providing guidance on their ethical use, she said.

“It’s all based on the PRSA Code of Ethics, which is almost as old as the Society itself,” Staley said. “We are translating and interpreting the Code through the lens of contemporary issues and tools.”

Elsasser, editor-in-chief of PRSA’s Strategies & Tactics publication and host of S&T Live, asked how PR professionals should reconsider ethics in their everyday decisions, given the massive changes AI has brought to the industry.

“With our increasing use of AI, it’s challenging us not just to learn to use the tools responsibly and ethically, but also to understand our own value,” Staley said. “If we’re able to use AI to do many of the tasks that we used to do, then what is our value to our employers? It is our ethical judgment, our humanity, our ability to reason and our ability to create communications that inspire trust.”

Panelist Marlene Neill, Ph.D., APR, Fellow PRSA, is a professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and a member of the Board of Ethics and Professional Standards.

She described a “perfect storm” in which communicators are pressured to work efficiently but have not received proper training or ethical guidelines on how to use the AI tools that promise that efficiency.

“These are ingredients that could result in a serious crisis for an organization,” Neill said. “We need to have the guidelines and the training so that we use these tools responsibly.”

Elsasser asked about the critical thinking that communicators must exercise when using AI.

“The basic journalism skills that we began with, where you question information and are skeptical of what you’ve been provided with, and you make sure that what you’re looking at is accurate,” Neill said.

Panelist Lea-Ann Germinder, Ph.D., APR, Fellow PRSA, is also a member of the Board of Ethics and Professional Standards.

“We have been told for decades that we need to not only serve our organizations, but to serve the public,” she said. “In the age of AI, that responsibility extends to serving humanity.”

Her research has underscored the importance of learning ethical literacy while using today’s new AI tools.

“You can’t learn about the tools and not have ethical decision-making about using them,” Germinder said. “You need both of those together.”

Here, the panelists take part in the S&T Live Lightning Round. (Mark McClennan had to leave early for another PRSA event.)

The post Upholding Ethical Communications Standards in the Age of AI first appeared on PRsay.

• How transparent should we be about what went wrong?
• When does protecting confidential information conflict with the public’s need to know?
• What happens when legal counsel recommends saying as little as possible, but our responsibility is to communicate honestly?
• What should we do when leaders want us to make claims the evidence doesn’t fully support?

The post If We Care About Crisis and Reputation, We Need to Care About Ethics first appeared on PRsay.

That concern is understandable. AI is already part of the professional toolkit, and its capabilities will keep growing. But staying relevant will require more than learning to produce work faster. Employers will need communicators who can review an output, spot what is missing, and make a responsible recommendation when the right answer isn’t obvious.

 The ethical question belongs to you

Students and young professionals are already making choices that once seemed theoretical. Can you trust an AI-generated claim without verification? Should audiences know when content was created with AI assistance? How should a communicator respond when a system reproduces bias?

Say you are preparing a client pitch with an AI-generated competitor analysis. The summary includes a statistic that supports your recommendation, but you have not checked the source. Once you place that statistic in the presentation, the ethical question belongs to you. Will you verify it before putting it in front of the client?

If your name is on the work, you are accountable for the choices behind it. That accountability includes verifying claims, protecting confidential information, considering who could be affected and being able to explain why you made the recommendation.

 The PRSA Code of Ethics still works

Although AI feels new, the underlying ethical challenges are familiar. The PRSA Code of Ethics provides a practical framework for addressing them. Advocacy means representing clients responsibly while still serving the public interest. Honesty requires accuracy and appropriate transparency. Expertise calls us to understand the capabilities and limits of the tools we use. Loyalty reminds us to protect confidential and proprietary information. Fairness asks us to identify bias and consider who may be harmed or excluded.

Independence deserves particular attention in the AI era. The Code calls professionals to provide objective counsel and accept responsibility for their actions. An AI tool may help you identify patterns or test ideas, but you still have to decide which recommendation you are willing to stand behind.

The technology changes. The principles do not.

 Use AI to prepare for the moment

Early in your career, AI may help you sound polished in emails and Teams messages. But you will still need to answer questions and respond when a conversation moves in an unexpected direction. That is where preparation matters.

Use AI before a meeting to anticipate questions, identify weaknesses in your argument, generate questions different stakeholders might raise and rehearse a difficult conversation. AI may help produce the outputs, but its greatest value may come from helping you enter the room with a clearer understanding of the context, the stakes and the people involved.

Build the habits now

You don’t need a senior title to start developing professional judgment. Verify AI-generated information before sharing it. Protect confidential and proprietary data. Look for bias and missing perspectives. Disclose AI use when a client, employer, professor or platform requires it, and whenever failing to disclose it could mislead someone about how the work was produced.

Ultimately, practice explaining your reasoning. Do not stop with what the tool suggested. Be ready to say why you accepted, changed or rejected its recommendation. That habit will prepare you to counsel a manager or client who needs more than a polished draft.

As you work, ask more than whether AI can complete a task. Consider whether you should use it, who could be affected and what evidence supports its output. Answering those questions may take additional time, but sometimes responsible judgment requires us to slow down.

PRSSA members will help shape the profession’s use of AI through choices like these. The communicators who earn greater responsibility will be those who use the tools well, explain their decisions and can be trusted when the situation is uncertain. The habits you build now are part of becoming that kind of professional.

You don’t have to navigate these challenges alone. PRSA and PRSA’s Board of Ethics and Professional Standards (BEPS) are committed to supporting the next generation of communicators through resources such as “Promises & Pitfalls,” ethics case studies, current research, and practical guidance designed to strengthen your ethical decision-making.

We hope you’ll join us throughout Ethics Month by exploring BEPS resources, participating in the conversation, and investing in the ethical foundation that will serve you throughout your career.

Holly Kathleen Hall, J.D., APR, and Devin T. Knighton, Ph.D., APR, are members of PRSA’s Board of Ethics and Professional Standards.

Illustration credit: Krittamet

The post Your Most Valuable AI Skill May Be Ethical Judgment first appeared on PRsay.

Rarely does it ask the harder professional question — whether our own function is actually built to produce the kind of communication culture keeps proving works, or whether we’re just watching it happen from the outside.

This year, that question deserves a professional read, not a sentimental one. Because the most instructive communications story of the year didn’t come out of an agency. It came from a stage.

When culture out-strategizes us

 In February, Bad Bunny became the first artist to win Album of the Year at the Grammys for a Spanish-language record, then headlined the Super Bowl halftime show almost entirely in Spanish — another first for that stage.

Neither moment leaned on a slogan, and neither hedged who the message was for. Trade press saw the strategic stakes coming before he ever took the stage: PRWeek’s Nichimyo Rich flagged the booking, back in October 2025, as a marker for how brands approach multicultural representation. Once the show aired, Forbes contributor Esther Choy broke it down as a case study in aligning business strategy with cultural authenticity.

What made it work wasn’t “audience research” in the generic sense every PR plan claims to do.

It was something harder to teach: knowing exactly which cultural reference reads as pride instead of provocation, and having the standing to make that call with confidence.

Take the “El Apagón” segment, staged on replicas of the electrical poles tied to the island’s ongoing blackouts under Luma Energy — infrastructure criticism blunt enough to read as protest in less careful hands. Framed inside a set built around a casita porch, dominoes, and a real wedding performed live on stage, it read as home instead.

That’s not a talking point. It’s fluency, earned through lived experience — precisely the kind of judgment our profession says it wants more of at the strategy table.

The room where it should happen

Here’s the uncomfortable question: If a campaign like that had to be built inside a typical agency or in-house comms team, how many Hispanic or Latino professionals would actually be in the room shaping it?

According to the “2024 Race and Ethnicity in Communication Benchmark Report” (Report No. 5), published in March 2026 by the Diversity Action Alliance with data collection managed by the Institute for Public Relations, Hispanic and Latino employees make

up just 8% of the communications workforce among reporting organizations, and only 5% of executives and top leadership — a fraction of what our share of the U.S. population would suggest.

We applaud the outcome. We rarely fund the pipeline capable of producing it from inside our own function.

And the industry is choosing quiet.

That gap doesn’t sit still on its own — it compounds, because the same industry underrepresenting Hispanic and Latino talent at the top is also the one pulling back from the investments that could close it. It’s tempting to assume the profession will close that gap on its own, over time.

The data argues otherwise.“A Quiet Shift,” the 2026 Global Communication Report published this past March by the USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations with IABC and Meltwater, found that 41% of PR professionals now consider silence a legitimate defensive strategy, and that diversity, equity and inclusion is the single investment area most expected to shrink further over the next five years.

At the exact moment culture is proving, publicly and profitably, that specific and confident voices win, our own industry is finding itself pulled toward greater caution and vagueness.

Hispanic Heritage Month is often a moment to celebrate our voices. But visibility alone is not the same as influence. Being heard should also mean having a place in the rooms where decisions are made and strategies are shaped.

That starts with showing up somewhere concrete. Join PRSA’s Hispanic-Latino Affinity Group. Connect with the Hispanic Public Relations Association. Ask your own organization whether it reports its numbers to the Diversity Action Alliance — and if it doesn’t, ask why not.

And ask for something with teeth: a public commitment from your agency or in-house leadership to a three-year target for Hispanic and Latino representation in senior strategist and leadership roles — not just entry-level hiring — tracked and reported the same way DAA already tracks the industry.

Latino voices have always been worth hearing. Now they must also be present in the rooms where decisions are made.

Florencia Braña, a native of Argentina, is leader-elect of PRSA’s Hispanic-Latino Affinity Group and serves on its DEI Committee. She is committee administrator for PRSA New Pros and researches for nonprofits and health clients. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Photo credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images Entertainment

The post Latino Voices: Don’t Just Get Loud — Get In first appeared on PRsay.

“Some of the best innovations in the communications and PR industry have historically come from the campaign trail,” said Ray Day, APR. “When you’re operating at the speed of politics, you fail fast and succeed faster.”

Day, vice chair of Stagwell, executive chair of Allison Worldwide, and PRSA’s 2026 immediate past chair, hosts “AI Pulse,” PRSA’s monthly livestream that helps members stay informed about how artificial intelligence is changing the PR profession.

For the Sept. 14 episode, Day was joined by two communications veterans with extensive experience on political campaigns, Amy Brundage and Matt Gorman.

The American Association of Political Consultants found that AI use is soaring in the field even as governance of the technology tries to keep pace, said Gorman, chief communications officer at Targeted Victory, a Washington, D.C.-based public affairs and marketing firm.

This year, 57% of political consultants report using AI daily, while 83% say they use AI tools weekly.

“AI is very ordinary, but frequency is not necessarily sophistication” with the technology, said Gorman, who was previously communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, rapid-response director and national spokesman for Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign, and an aide to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.

Much of the political-consulting industry is “using AI like they would a really good intern,” Gorman said. “Summarize this, organize these notes, sift through this large stack of data and give me 10 headlines.”

But just as a political campaign wouldn’t take something that an intern creates and put it straight into a television ad without verifying the content first, creative materials that AI generates must also be carefully vetted, he said.

While AI provides efficiency, political campaigns might mistakenly think its widespread use is “strategically transforming” and can replace political consultants, Gorman said.

AI for research

Brundage is managing director and economic policy practice co-lead at SKDK, a Washington, D.C.-based public affairs firm.

“In my conversations and my research with Democratic campaigns,” she said, “it’s very clear that AI is used most broadly in the aggregation of data,” so communicators can quickly consume large amounts of information and create campaign messages or manage issues.

Many political consultants are undecided about whether to use artificial intelligence to conduct surveys, said Brundage, who was President Barack Obama’s deputy assistant and his deputy communications director at the White House after working on his presidential campaign.

Gorman agreed that research is the most common way AI is being used on the political campaign trail. People are “deputizing AI to go and find that needle in a haystack,” he said. “But a human determines if it’s a needle, or an aluminum can.”

Artificial intelligence chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude give campaigns with small staffs “a way to get through a large amount of data very quickly,” he said.

AI becomes a campaign issue

In political campaigns and communications, artificial intelligence is being used to create television and digital advertisements “in controlled circumstances,” said Gorman.

“If a candidate has very damaging or politically vulnerable quotes, but there’s no audio or video of them saying it,” their opponent’s campaign might use AI to make it appear that the candidate is saying those things in an ad, “from their own mouth or in their own voice,” he said.

Such deceptive use of AI in political campaign ads “will only get more likely as we go on,” Gorman said.

As Brundage noted, “We talk about AI as a tactic or a campaign tool, but the use of AI and whether it’s right or wrong has turned into a campaign issue this time around.”

Image courtesy of Google Gemini 3.1 using the prompt “a campaign field office with a communicator reviewing AI-generated research.”

The post AI on the Political Campaign Trail: Lessons for Communicators first appeared on PRsay.

When he was 13, Jon Zaghloul started the podcast “Sports Talk Chicago” from his bedroom in Aurora, Ill., near Chicago. Later, as an economics major and aspiring sportscaster at the University of Chicago, he produced the podcast from his dorm room and covered college sporting events for the campus radio station.

Now 26, Zaghloul is director of communications for the city of Aurora.

Those formative experiences “taught me so much about the communications landscape,” Zaghloul said during the Aug. 26 episode of Strategies & Tactics Live, PRSA’s monthly livestream series on LinkedIn.

Producing the podcast — and booking baseball legends such as Roger Clemens, Fergie Jenkins and Ozzie Smith — taught Zaghloul “how to write a press release and get coverage in legitimate news outlets about something that a guest of mine would say on the program.”

That early communications experience prepared Zaghloul to write press releases for the city and “get the coverage that we get here all the time.”

Writing came naturally for him, but “public speaking took a lot for me to learn,” he said. “At 13 or 14 years old, my first podcasts were awful.”

Zaghloul worked to improve his speaking skills, and the podcast eventually expanded to radio, TV and YouTube.

John Elsasser, editor-in-chief of PRSA’s Strategies & Tactics publication and host of S&T Live, asked Zaghloul about his quick rise from communications coordinator to director of communications for the city of Aurora.

The city was overhauling its municipal website, “and I was tasked with finishing the job,” Zaghloul said. “Initially, the expectations were rather low.”

Along the way, however, people started to notice his speaking and writing skills, his knack for hooking readers and his ability to generate media coverage.

“Fortunately, two of my superiors at that time believed in me and continued to give me more and more opportunities,” Zaghloul said.

Listening to residents in government communications

To overhaul the city’s website and make it useful to the public, “We solicited feedback from the residents,” Zaghloul said. People in the community were shown a mock website design and asked how they would like its navigation features to work.

“The residents were involved the entire time,” he said.

A survey asked residents questions about how they preferred to receive information, including: “How do you feel about [the city’s] communications today? What could we improve upon? Which outlets do you want to see us use? Which outlets do you not want to see us use?”

The communications team used that feedback to guide the redesign.

Many people in Aurora were using the neighborhood-based social media platform Nextdoor, “so we made an agency account on Nextdoor, which led to significant viewership and a whole new audience that we didn’t have before,” Zaghloul said. “We try to find different ways to engage our residents and to be creative in our approach.”

Residents also rely on the city’s Facebook page and a weekly digital newsletter that is emailed and texted directly to them.

“The goal is to meet residents where they are,” Zaghloul said.

Reflecting on his start as a teenage podcaster, Zaghloul said, “All those years of prepping, all those years of working to refine my skill set, put me in the position that I’m in today.”

Here, Zaghloul takes part in the S&T Live Lightning Round…

The post How Early Experience Shapes Communications Careers first appeared on PRsay.

For those of us in public relations and communications, the day carries particular significance. Women have helped build, lead and transform our profession, shaping the stories organizations tell, counseling leaders through moments of change and increasingly taking their place at the highest levels of our profession.

There is much to celebrate, and there is still work ahead. Women continue to navigate disparities in pay, advancement, access to leadership and the ability to build sustainable careers at every stage of life. Those experiences can also vary significantly across race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age and other dimensions of identity.

This Women’s Equality Day, the PRSA Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee invited women from across our community to share what equality means for women in PR and communications today and where they see the greatest opportunity for continued progress.

We heard from the following dynamic women leaders:

• Patrice Tanaka, Founder & Chief Joy Officer, Joyful Planet LLC and Joyful Planet Foundation, and PRSA-NY Chapter Member
• Cheryl Overton, Founder and Chief Experience Officer, Cheryl Overton Communications
• Jocelyn Arellano, Senior Account Supervisor, Zeno Group
• Nicole Simpson, People & Transformation Executive
• Monica Earle, Global Head of Communications, Tinder and PRSA-NY Chapter Member
• Sade Teel, MA, PRSA Orlando Diversity & Inclusion Chair, and Senior Manager, Communications & PR, Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts 
• Christina Withey, SVP, Director of Talent Acquisition, Rubenstein Communications and PRSA-NY Chapter Member
• Adriana Maestas, CEO & Owner, A Call To Action, Inc. and OCPRSA DEI Board Member

Together, their perspectives offer a candid look at the progress women have made and the opportunities before us.

Building on Decades of Progress

Patrice Tanaka has witnessed significant change during more than three decades in the industry. When she cofounded PT&Co. in 1990, women held far fewer agency and senior corporate communications leadership positions than they do today. She credits that progress to sustained advocacy and employers willing to invest in policies that enabled women to build lasting careers.

“What made this progress possible was the ongoing push for gender equity, and employers who understood the value of investing in women and supporting working families. One of my proudest accomplishments at PT&Co. was implementing the PR industry’s FIRST ‘Paid Maternity Benefits’ program in 1991.”

Christina Withey sees the evolution of women’s leadership through her work connecting talent with opportunities across the PR industry. She has watched women grow from entry-level positions into influential roles across agencies and in-house communications teams.

“Women aren’t just present in the room — they’re setting agendas, crafting narratives, devising and executing strategy, and mentoring the next generation of leaders along the way.”

Their experiences show how sustained investment, workplace policies and access to career opportunities can change the trajectory of women across an entire profession. The opportunity today is to continue that momentum while ensuring women can translate their growing representation into lasting influence and leadership.

Creating Clearer Pathways to Leadership

For Jocelyn Arellano, progress means creating career pathways that reach women with different identities, backgrounds and lived experiences.

“It means ensuring they have equitable opportunities to lead, advance and shape the conversations and decisions that matter. Our greatest opportunity for continued progress is making sure those doors are open to all women, particularly those whose identities and experiences have historically been underrepresented.”

As a first-generation Latina and member of the first-generation LGBTQ+ community, Arellano has seen how mentorship, community, and intentional advocacy can help women navigate barriers and grow into leadership.

Sade Teel shares that focus on creating opportunities and sees women themselves as an important part of building what comes next.

“To me, women in PR and communications means more than having a seat at the table — it means having the confidence and opportunity to help build the table, shape the strategy and lead the conversation.”

Teel also points to the responsibility women have to bring others forward as they advance.

“When we create opportunities for ourselves while opening doors for the women coming behind us, we don’t just advance individually — we move our entire profession forward.”

Both perspectives speak to the value of mentorship, sponsorship and intentional advocacy. The progress of one woman can create momentum for many others when access, knowledge and opportunity are shared.

Advancing Pay Equity and Advocacy

Compensation remains an essential part of the equality conversation. Adriana Maestas has experienced the frustration of working alongside women to execute sophisticated communications programs while questioning whether gender continued to influence how their work was valued.

“To me, equality for women in PR and communications means women receive the same consideration for opportunities to execute PR campaigns and communications plans and they receive the same pay as their male counterparts.”

Transparency can be a powerful tool in addressing those disparities. Monica Earle recalls how another woman’s candor about negotiating additional compensation gave her a frame of reference when she later found herself carrying expanded responsibilities.

“We need more of that transparency between women, and we also need men to be active allies who advocate for women, open doors, and help ensure pay and opportunity are equitable.”

Earle’s experience demonstrates the impact colleagues can have when they share information and advocate for one another. Conversations about compensation, promotions and professional opportunities can give women greater context to understand their value and negotiate accordingly.

Using Our Influence for One Another

Networking has long played an important role in women’s advancement, particularly during periods of career transition. Nicole Simpson credits her own network with helping her navigate moments of significant transformation.

“Our greatest opportunity now is to turn that kind of community into action: advocate for one another, make the introduction, extend the opportunity, sponsor someone when she isn’t in the room and use our influence to open doors for others. Equality is using our collective power to ensure more women can lead and thrive.”

Cheryl Overton brings another dimension to that conversation: giving women the freedom to lead without diminishing themselves to accommodate the expectations of others. Earlier in her career, she was told she had “smart girl syndrome” because she asked too many questions, pushed too hard and sometimes made people uncomfortable.

“Translation: I was being asked to perform differently, to make my brand of excellence easier for other people to live with. Age, experience and entrepreneurship have changed my relationship with discomfort. Today, I think we need more of it.”

Overton has carried that conviction into GRWN, her company’s practice focused on challenging how brands see and value people over 50, particularly women. Her perspective adds age and career longevity to a conversation that can too often focus primarily on women entering or ascending through the profession.

“The greatest opportunity for progress is to make equality something people have to practice, not just profess.”

Continuing the Work Together

The experiences shared by these eight women reflect how equality shows up throughout a career. It can begin with access to an opportunity and continue through compensation, advancement, workplace policies, mentorship, sponsorship and the ability to exercise genuine influence as a leader.

This Women’s Equality Day, the PRSA DEI Committee encourages our community to consider how each of us can contribute and keep the conversation going beyond Aug. 26. When women have equitable opportunities to contribute, advance, and thrive throughout their careers, we strengthen our workplaces, our communities and the PR profession itself.

Let us celebrate the progress we have made and continue working together toward the progress still to come.

Illustration: your-content

The post Beyond a Seat at the Table: Women in PR Define the Next Chapter of Equality first appeared on PRsay.

For communications leaders navigating rapid change and the rise of artificial intelligence, being a good leader may no longer be enough.

Exceptional leaders distinguish themselves through distinctly human qualities such as empathy, listening and gratitude, David Grossman, APR, Fellow PRSA, said during PRSA’s Aug. 24 Member Mondays livestream.

“Good isn’t good enough anymore,” said Grossman, founder and CEO of The Grossman Group and author of the new book “The Heart Work of Modern Leadership: 6 Differentiators of Exceptional Leaders.”

For the book, Grossman worked with The Harris Poll to ask employees about their leaders — “the good, the bad and the ugly,” he said.

The employees surveyed “divided their leaders into three buckets,” Grossman said. “They said about 16% of leaders are outdated, running from an old playbook. At the other end, about 30% are exceptional, the best of the best. In the middle, we have 54% of leaders who employees say are good. That’s where I am, and maybe you are, too.”

But being considered a good leader doesn’t necessarily mean employees are thriving.

“Less than 20% of employees working for a good leader felt seen, felt heard, and felt like they were reaching their full potential,” Grossman said.

These good leaders were trained for stable times, he said, but “We’re not in stable times today.”

Today’s leaders need to rethink their attitudes “about being open, about unlearning, in some cases, what we’ve learned in the past,” Grossman said. “Because there are new skills needed today that will help us move from good to exceptional.”

Heide Harrell, M.A., APR, PRSA’s 2026 chair and host of Member Mondays, agreed that unlearning can be difficult.

“It’s so easy to stick with, ‘This is the way it’s always been done,’” Harrell said. “But we’re living in times where the way it’s always been done doesn’t work anymore. It requires different thinking.”

Grossman said he has observed “an invisible, quiet failure” among good leaders in organizations today, which he likens to a slow leak that can cause costly damage in the long term.

From good to exceptional

To elevate themselves from good to exceptional, leaders must make their employees feel seen and heard and help them reach their full potential, Grossman said.

Good leaders thank team members for their work contributions and provide support. Exceptional leaders, however, recognize both the work and the person.

Grossman, a self-described Broadway fan, said that just as every musical’s protagonist sings an “I want” song that makes clear what they hope for, business leaders must understand what their employees want, too.

“The question for us as leaders is, ‘Do you know what that song is? Do you know what’s important to every single individual on your team?’” he said. “Because when you do, you can recognize their work in the context of what’s important to them.”

Why gratitude matters

The No. 1 factor that differentiates exceptional leaders from good leaders is gratitude, Grossman said.

“We need to provide that gratitude in a way that’s not just about the work, but about the person and the contributions they make,” he said. “The top thing that you can do to move toward becoming an exceptional leader is to share gratitude.”

He urges leaders to make employees “feel seen” by expressing gratitude for what the person has done, the impact it had, “and how it connects to who that person is, and what matters to them.”

Doing so also requires leaders to make themselves more visible as people.

Leaders often wear a protective armor, Grossman said. “We think that [being] professional is super important, versus sharing parts of ourselves to help others understand who we are, and what matters to us.”

Sharing more of themselves “encourages them to share their truths, as well,” he said.

To create safe environments where employees can speak up, leaders “need to take off that armor and talk about their own mistakes and vulnerabilities.”

Ultimately, Grossman said, gratitude offers leaders one of the simplest ways to make the people around them feel valued — not only for the work they produce, but for who they are and what they contribute.

Photo credit: ryker

The post Leading With Your Heart and Your Head first appeared on PRsay.

For decades, the industry defined earned media as one thing: a journalist chose to cover a story someone pitched. No payment, no guarantee, just the credibility of a third party deciding your story was worth telling. That definition hasn’t disappeared, but it’s no longer complete.

Today, earned media is any third-party content, paid or unpaid, that signals credibility and authority to the audiences and algorithms that decide what gets trusted, cited, and recommended. The “earned” isn’t in the transaction. It’s in whether the content genuinely builds authority.

I’ve spent my career watching technology change the way consumers discover, evaluate, and trust products. Every time the discovery channel shifts, brands that understand the new signal architecture win.

This is one of those moments. And if you’re a marketer or communicator who hasn’t adapted to that shift, you risk building strategies that are invisible to the audiences you’re trying to reach.

Why earned media matters more than ever

The core value of earned media hasn’t faltered. Third-party validation remains one of the most powerful tools in a communicator’s toolbox. When a journalist, analyst, or credible publication covers your organization independently, it signals to audiences and AI that what you’re saying is trustworthy.

That fundamentally hasn’t changed, and it won’t. What has changed is how people discover information. These signals inform AI algorithms if your content is worth surfacing before a human ever sees it.

AI has become the new customer voice

Think about how your audiences find information today. Consumers are increasingly turning to AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude to answer questions, compare solutions, and research brands. According to Bain & Company, about 70% of consumers use AI-powered tools as part of their product research and purchase decision-making process. Instead of clicking through results one by one, audiences are letting LLMs do the work right in the search platform itself.

In this new zero-click environment, brands should strive to be THE answer to consumers’ questions.

This is a crucial shift in how information is surfaced and consumed. AI systems don’t evaluate your content the way a human reader does. They don’t pay attention to how the placement was procured. Instead, they assess whether information appears on credible, authoritative sources, whether your key messages are reinforced consistently across the web, and whether the signals across those sources point to genuine expertise and trust.

In other words, AI doesn’t evaluate content through a media-plan lens. It looks for signals like credibility, quality, authority, and consistency.

Visibility is now a competitive metric

PR success has traditionally been measured by coverage, reach and traffic. Did we get the story? What size audience did it reach? Did it drive clicks? Those metrics still matter. But AI introduces a new layer of value that most of us weren’t trained to think about: visibility as a signal.

I’ve measured consumer behavior across dozens of product categories and hundreds of campaigns. The pattern is always the same: the brands that show up consistently in the right places, with the right message, over time are the brands consumers learn to trust. AI is learning the same way.

A placement in a credible publication shapes how an AI system responds when someone asks a question in your category, even if no one ever clicks on that article. This is why consistent presence across trusted sources matters more than ever. A single piece of great coverage is a win. A consistent footprint of credible, authoritative content, earned and editorial, is what shapes how AI understands and represents your organization.

What communicators should do next

None of this means abandoning what’s worked. It means expanding our frame. Here’s how I think about it:

Let earned and editorial content work together. Traditional media relations and editorial-style third-party content aren’t competing strategies; they’re complementary signals.

Earned coverage validates your authority through independent voices. Editorial-quality sponsored content, placed in trusted publications, reinforces that authority by expanding your footprint into the same credible spaces at a scale that can impact online visibility.

When both are present, consistent, and aligned in message, they compound each other’s impact. Earned media validates, and sponsored editorial content amplifies. Together, they build the kind of multi-source authority that AI systems are designed to recognize and cite.

Prioritize authoritative placements. Not every publication carries equal weight with AI systems. Focus on placements in outlets that AI recognizes as credible, well-indexed sources- the ones that consistently show up when relevant questions are asked.

Create consistent messaging. When you reinforce key messages consistently across earned, owned, and editorial channels, AI recognizes patterns of authority. Fragmented, contradictory messaging creates gaps, and AI fills those gaps on its own based on patterns it recognizes in online posts and chatbot conversations, good or bad.

Focus on frequency over time. Organizations that show up consistently across trusted sources over months and years, with consistent messaging, are the ones AI learns to trust.

PR teams have the most influential voice at the table

This isn’t a threat to what communicators have built. It’s the validation of it.

Think about what PR has always done: build credibility, establish authority, create consistent presence in the publications audiences trust. This new version of earned media — real, third-party validation in authoritative sources regardless of procurement — is what AI is actually hungry for.

For the first time, the broader marketing world is paying attention to what we’ve known all along. The signals PR has been building for decades are now the exact signals that determine whether a brand gets recommended, cited, or ignored.

PR doesn’t just have a seat at the table anymore. We’re the leading voice in organizations primed to take advantage of this shift. The brands that invest in this compounding strategy- earned and sponsored coverage building cumulative authority over time- aren’t starting over. They’re accelerating.

Discovery has changed. The communicators who understand that credibility, consistency, and trust have always been the point are the ones who will win this next era.

This is our moment. And we’re just getting started.

Stacy Stusynski is chief commercial officer at Brandpoint, where she leads the development of Brandpoint Intelligence, a platform giving MarCom professionals real-time audience and competitive insights and measurable AI visibility. With decades of experience in digital health, consumer tech, and GEO/AI visibility spaces, she is a leading voice on why AI has become the new customer voice and how brands can feed it strategically through earned and third-party content.

AI illustration credit: MAMA Studio

The post The New Definition of Earned Media in the AI Era first appeared on PRsay.