AI is both “the opportunity of our time” and a growing source of public concern, said Ray Day, APR, during PRSA’s June 8 installment of “AI Pulse.” For communicators, the challenge is learning how to use the technology responsibly while helping organizations navigate its risks.

Recent news headlines have warned that “The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam” (The Wall Street Journal), “The ‘Techlash’ Against AI Is Here” (Rolling Stone), and “Silicon Valley Confronts AI’s Big PR Problem” (Bloomberg).

As the Journal reported, “In one poll after another in recent weeks, respondents have overwhelmingly voiced concerns about AI,” as “a wave of anger has brought protests, swayed election results and spurred isolated acts of violence.” Job cuts attributed to AI have deepened Americans’ mistrust of the technology, the paper reported.

For PR professionals, “It’s important to come up with some rules of the road for how you’re engaging with AI,” panelist Amanda Carl-Pratt said during “AI Pulse,” PRSA’s monthly livestream hosted by Day, vice chair of Stagwell, executive chair of Allison Worldwide, and PRSA’s 2026 immediate past chair.

“The first rule of engagement is to own the output,” said Carl-Pratt, who leads communications at Google DeepMind, the company’s AI-development lab. “The buck stops with the human. The AI can draft, it can edit, it can optimize, but the human always has to be behind the final product.”

Communicators “bear the responsibility of making sure that the material we’re putting forward is free of errors, free of hallucinations, free of misinformation, regardless of what tools generated it,” she said.

When using artificial intelligence in their work, PR pros should also “fight cognitive offloading, which is when people defer to AI outputs without fully evaluating them,” she said. “You need to use AI as your collaborative partner” to challenge your hypotheses, poke holes in a crisis strategy or simulate stakeholder push-back.

“But never let it replace your original strategic thinking or critical judgment,” she said. “Make sure that the things that make us uniquely good at what we do are not being offloaded to AI.”

Carl-Pratt urged communicators to disclose their use of AI and avoid misleading audiences.

“As people who are responsible for company reputations, it’s important that we always operate with radical transparency,” Carl-Pratt said. “If you’re using AI to inform your message, you should say that.”

When using AI, communicators should also protect the privacy, security and copyrights of their company’s data, she said.

‘Irresponsible’ for communicators not to use AI

“We have to be able to stand behind the outputs that we produce,” said panelist Steve Mnich, head of product communications at Anthropic.

Communicators need to understand AI’s strengths and weaknesses, he said. “Where is it less factual? Where is it more likely to hallucinate?”

At the same time, Mnich said, for public relations practitioners it’s “irresponsible to keep AI to the side, to not lean in” to the technology “and hope at some point that you’re going to figure it out.”

Mnich said the communications professionals he sees using AI “the best, who are really thoughtful about the pros and cons of it, who are leaning in and taking the responsibility of being engaged with AI” are studying the models and seeing what they can do.

“Without that hands-on experience on a day-to-day basis,” Mnich said, “you’re going to continue to see two paths within the communications industry, and within companies: Teams that are really leaning in, experimenting, and asking AI to do more and more work. And teams that are slow, that are lagging.”

As new and improved versions of AI continue to roll out, “the teams that are leaning in and being encouraged to lean in” have a greater “ability to stand out,” he said. “It’s an interesting re-frame of what responsibility means.”

The discussion ultimately framed responsible AI use not as a reason for communicators to avoid the technology, but as a reason to engage with it more.

Illustration credit: Antony Weerut

The post How Communicators Can Use AI Responsibly first appeared on PRsay.

Do you actually know this audience?

You may know the demographic profile, but do you know the people? Where we live online? Who shapes how we think? What we’ve fought for and what we’re watching brands do right now?

That question has serious stakes. Considering the political headwinds around diversity, equity, and inclusion are as volatile as ever, the pressure on brands to go quiet is real. And so is the cost of getting this wrong — in both directions.

How do you do your homework? Get to know your public:

Know where we are.

We’re on TikTok, and there’s a reason for that. Feeling safe and understood in at least one online space is associated with lower suicide risk and lower rates of recent anxiety for all LGBTQIA* young people, and for LGBTQIA+ young people of color in particular. Research from the Trevor Project suggests TikTok has become one of those spaces for many LGBTQIA+ young people.

Queer creators describe TikTok as a platform that delivers content tailored to your interests and identity — one that becomes a space for people to come together and connect in ways that feel more individual and intimate than anywhere else. For the LGBTQIA+ community, the For You algorithm goes beyond offering entertainment or educational content – it offers a safe community, especially for those in environments where being out carries real risk. For many, it is their lifeline.

GLAAD’s 2026 Social Media Safety Index found that with the exception of TikTok, platform scores dropped across the board — hitting historic lows for Meta, X and YouTube in their protections for LGBTQIA+ users. TikTok maintained strong protections for LGBTQ people in its Community Guidelines while other platforms rolled them back.

When every other platform pulls up the welcome mat, the community moves toward the one that keeps it out. That migration is cultural intelligence your client needs.

So when a brand asks where to show up, the answer in 2026 is specific, and it requires understanding what kind of presence earns trust in a space the community built for itself.

Know who shapes the conversation.

This community has never been one audience. The creators shaping it reflect that, each one speaking to a different intersection of identity, experience, and platform.

The creators who carry cultural weight in this community build it through proximity, authenticity and consistency.

• V Spehar (@underthedesknews) has built a community of over 5 million between TikTok and Instagram by breaking down current events with clarity and empathy. They have covered gender-affirming care, Gen Z voter engagement, and major political moments in a voice the community trusts. That trust took years of consistently showing up as themselves, unapologetically.
• Brielle Winslow-Majette (@thats_y_yuh_wins_low ) first built her TikTok following by challenging beauty norms and advocating for the representation of women with PCOS. She is now the first (Acting) Black executive director of Garden State Equality, presenting on LGBTQIA+ policy at Rutgers, while continuing to create content that reaches her community directly. Her audience follows her because she’s never performed her identity for a brand. Any partnership that asks her to would show.
• ALOK (@alokvmenon) has performed in over 40 countries, sold out the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, released a comedy special executive-produced by Christopher Guest, and had a documentary about their life executive-produced by Jodie Foster at Sundance. Their TikTok moves between poetry, provocation and cultural commentary.
• Matthew and Paul (@matthewandpaul) are a gay couple whose TikTok is built around one of the most underrepresented intersections in LGBTQ+ content — love and disability. Matthew has Retinitis Pigmentosa, leaving him with 95% vision loss. Their daily life together as an interabled couple is the engine of everything they create, and they have extended that platform into LGBTQ+ children’s books, writing stories that reflect families like theirs.
• Eden & Jay (@edenxjay) are a queer Latina married couple and new parents whose TikTok documents life at the intersection of love, culture and family. When gay marriage became legal throughout Mexico, they returned to Oaxaca — one of the country’s most traditionally indigenous communities — to get married. They also host Preciosa Night, one of the largest queer Latina events in the country.

Follower counts are easy to find but the cultural context — why the community connects and why it matters to us — takes actual research and understanding.

Know your own people.

There’s one audience most Pride briefs skip entirely: the LGBTQIA+ employees already inside your client’s organization.

A SurveyMonkey poll of more than 2,000 LGBTQIA+ adults and allies found that around 40% consider a company’s gravest Pride error to be overlooking internal issues such as discrimination, harassment, or the absence of inclusive policies. That ranked higher than insensitive marketing campaigns. Higher than failing to include LGBTQIA+ voices in external communications.

Around 34% of respondents don’t believe companies listen to LGBTQIA+ perspectives when planning for Pride at all.

One group consistently missing from both internal and external Pride communications: LGBTQIA+ Latinos. The U.S. Latino LGBTQIA+ population is large, growing, and largely invisible in brand strategy — addressed in Spanish only when budgets allow, and rarely with the cultural specificity that actually earns trust. That gap is worth naming in the brief before someone else does.

The most genuine initiatives are educational panels, workshops, and gathering feedback from the community before June 1, not after.

If a client’s external Pride messaging is stronger than their internal reality, that gap will surface quickly. It always does.

Know your resources.

Two resources every communicator should be familiar with:

• The HRC Corporate Equality Index is the most authoritative benchmark for LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion in the country. In 2026, 108 Fortune 500 companies earned a perfect score of 100. Pay particular attention to how your client scores on transgender and nonbinary inclusion, as those numbers consistently lag behind the overall CEI score. That gap is exactly what the community is watching. If your client is on that list, that’s a credibility asset worth knowing about. If they’re not, it’s a strategic conversation worth having.
• The GLAAD 2026 Social Media Safety Index is required reading before advising any client on platform strategy this month. The sixth annual evaluation covers TikTok, YouTube, X, and Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and Threads — assessing each platform’s policies on LGBTQIA+ safety, privacy, and expression. If you’re recommending where a client shows up, you should know which platforms the community trusts and why.

Two more worth bookmarking: the 2026 Curve Power List, published annually during Lesbian Visibility Week, and OUT100, Out Magazine’s annual since 1994. Between the four, you have your platform strategy, your workplace benchmarks, your influencer research, and your cultural landscape.

Most Pride briefs are built backward. The message comes first and the audience comes second, if at all. Flip that order and suddenly the platform strategy, the partnerships, the tone, the timing all make sense in a way no approved messaging list can manufacture.

June is the deadline. The homework was due months ago.

Andrea Gils Monzón is a strategic communications consultant, PRSA Board member, and founder of Shiftmakers Agency. She counsels organizations at the intersection of AI, ethics and marketing communications.

Photo credit: hooyah808

The post Pride 2026: Do You Actually Know This Audience? first appeared on PRsay.

Nine in 10 reporters surveyed said they’ve received a “no comment” response in the last three years, as politicians, government officials and other public figures have become less willing to engage with reporters.

Audiences were also surveyed. Some 39% believe “no comment” indicates the source — whether it’s a person or an organization — is hiding something.

The study suggests that journalists may be better served by explaining their efforts to obtain information rather than simply reporting that a source had “no comment.”

“It’s clear that saying someone ‘had no comment’ doesn’t cut it anymore,” said Randy Picht, executive director of the Reynolds Journalism Institute. “We need a new approach that shows the public how hard reporters are working to collect the facts.”

For an experiment within the survey, audiences were shown two different versions of a TV news story. One included the phrase “no comment,” while the other said: “The story will be updated when we hear back.” Audiences found the latter version more credible.

Major Garrett, chief Washington correspondent for CBS News, said the PR infrastructure around public figures disengages them from the journalistic process.

“Fewer and fewer people are now empowered to say anything on the record, even though they might be directly involved in it,” he said. “So, the ‘no comment’ thing is reflective of that impulse.”

Sources who require reporters to go through their media relations teams “want to have one story, and they want to put that story through an internal process before it goes out,” Garrett said.

Fernanda Camarena, a journalist and faculty member at the Poynter Institute, suggested that instead of telling the audience that a source had no comment, reporters can say: “Here is what the public still does not know because this office declined to answer.”

Illustration: Dzianis Vasilyeu

The post The Credibility Problem With ‘No Comment’ first appeared on PRsay.

The tournament will feature 48 teams, double the number that competed in the 1994 World Cup. The athletes will play a total of 104 matches in 16 venues.

“More tickets will be sold, and at much higher prices,” said Jeff Bliss, who led the World Cup organizing committee and is now CEO of the Javelin Group marketing firm in Alexandria, Va. “There will be a lot more player- and team-sponsorship opportunities.”

Bliss moderated PRSA’s World Cup webinar on May 12, hosted by PRSA’s Sports & Entertainment Professional Interest Section. The larger number of teams and matches this year, and the three different countries where the games will be played, create logistical and transportation issues, language and cultural challenges, and political and security concerns, he said.

“The other issue is the lower quality of some of the matches in the first round,” he said. “Only four of those 72 matches will feature top-15 teams.”

But the largest controversy surrounding the 2026 FIFA World Cup involves ticket prices.

For example, the Portugal–Colombia game is averaging over $2,500 in buy-in — the upfront cost to enter the highest-demand ticket categories — with tickets reportedly listed for several million dollars.

A reason for hope

Nina Beeston is a London-based senior director of partnerships and public relations at THE·TEAM, a marketing and talent agency for sports, media and entertainment.

The expanded number of teams and matches for the 2026 World Cup brings “more opportunities for countries outside the traditional football powers and for their players, and that can only be a positive thing,” she said.

“The flip side is that teams competing don’t automatically mean more meaningful visibility for every player. It’s a lot harder to cut through when there are more matches, more storylines, and more players competing for attention.”

Panelist John Kristick is co-head of Playfly Sports Consulting. Before joining the company, he led the successful bid to host the FIFA World Cup 2026 in North America.

“The awareness of the sport in our country is as sophisticated and significant as any place in the world,” he said. “We’re very optimistic that this will go down as the greatest World Cup in history.”

Mark Levinstein runs a sports practice at law firm Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., and he is executive director of the players association for the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team.

“The ticket prices are a concern, but kids will be inspired whether they watch it on television or they go to a game,” he said. “The biggest hope is that fans of soccer will get together with people who are not fans of soccer. They will celebrate, they will have parties, they will watch games, they will learn about the sport, and they will stay fans of the sport.”

A ‘toxic event’

Panelist Scott M. Reid is a sports and investigative reporter for the Orange County Register who has covered five World Cups. This year’s World Cup “is the most toxic event I’ve ever covered,” he said, pointing to ticket-pricing controversies and criticism of planning efforts by FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football. “It’s all negative, and there’s a lack of conversation on the actual tournament.”

Reid said there’s a tone-deafness to FIFA.

“They don’t understand the sophistication of the soccer market. That’s reflected in the ticket prices. The West Coast games are really poor. I think you’re going to have a hard time selling those matches to a sophisticated soccer audience. This is just another opportunity for FIFA to cash in.”

Panelist Patrick Wixted is a senior vice president at Ketchum Sports in Washington, D.C.

“I have a lot of clients like New Balance, MasterCard and PNG that are leveraging the culture of soccer around this time frame,” he said. “From a sponsor perspective, we’re trying to celebrate the game, celebrate the culture of soccer, and stand out from a sponsorship standpoint in a media landscape that’s as busy, and as fragmented, and as crazy, as ever.”

Photo credit: kovop58 — stock.adobe.com

The post World Cup 2026 Brings Communications Challenges and Opportunities, Panel Says first appeared on PRsay.

“‘Operationalizing values’ means getting an organization’s values — what they believe, what they say they stand for — out from where they’re typically hidden in the employee handbook, in the careers page of the corporate website, and putting them to use where people get the work done,” he said.

Goldberg, founder and chief reputation architect of Reputation Architects Inc., a crisis communications firm, was PRSA’s guest on May 28 for Strategies & Tactics Live. (Watch the full episode on LinkedIn here.)

For the crisis-themed May issue of Strategies & Tactics, Goldberg wrote a piece called “Why Culture Drives How Organizations Decide Under Pressure.”

Organizations often “treat values as messages to communicate, and relegate them to inspirational wall-art” or “fodder for townhall-meeting speeches … that nobody’s going to remember,” he said.

Conversely, organizations that embed values into their culture “see them not as communications assets, but as tools” to help them stay on course when waters turn choppy. During a crisis, an organization’s values “guide employees in their daily work, the thousands of decisions, collectively, people in an organization make every day.”

Not just for crises

When a company sets clear values-statements that are simple for people to understand, employees can ask themselves: “Is what I’m about to do consistent with our values? Is this email I’m about to send transparent? Is it what I would expect of an organization I were doing business with?”

Guided by a framework of values, “organizations will find themselves having far fewer crises,” Goldberg said. “Because you’re giving employees tools to make better, faster, safer decisions” that help prevent self-inflicted problems.

“By using values, you not only give yourself a framework for dealing with a crisis, but for keeping crises from happening in the first place,” he said.

John Elsasser, editor-in-chief of PRSA’s Strategies & Tactics publication and host of S&T Live, asked why some organizations might believe that values guide their decisions — until a crisis strikes.

Organizations tend to confuse values with messaging, Goldberg said, “because both tend to be written in the same kind of aspirational language. But they’re very different animals. Messages are designed to influence perception, a kind of external theater, if you will. Values are meant to guide behavior” and internal decisions.

In a business environment that rewards arithmetic, “values are like a foreign language,” he said. “When the pressure hits, people tend to default to the behavior that the culture has consistently told them they will be rewarded for: to maximize revenues, protect market share, et cetera. And that happens because values exist in a sort of no-man’s land between what leadership wants to believe about itself and what the system actually rewards.”

When a crisis strikes, “speed is everything,” Goldberg said. “The public’s not going to give the organization the benefit of the doubt and wait to see what the organization does before forming judgment. Their first impression, what they see and hear or don’t see and hear immediately, is going to set the narrative.”

Making a good impression soon after a crisis occurs “buys you some time to make the next set of decisions,” he said. “Values are a decision-accelerator so that you can be more certain in your decision-making.”

Here, Goldberg takes part in the S&T Live lightning round!

The post S&T Live Recap: Culture, Crisis Comms and Operationalizing Organizational Values first appeared on PRsay.

In part one last week, I argued that judgment used to be built almost accidentally — through proximity to pressure, consequence, and the small daily tasks that quietly trained an entire generation of professionals. AI has dismantled much of that apprenticeship. The instincts that protect a business haven’t become obsolete; they’ve become harder to develop. Which raises the practical question early-career professionals keep asking me: if no one is going to hand you judgment, how do you build it yourself?

Judgment starts early

Here’s the part students rarely get told explicitly: you don’t have to wait for authority to start developing judgment. You can begin building it deliberately, right now.

Judgment develops through a loop: making decisions, living with the consequences, and reflecting honestly on what happened. Earlier generations fell into that loop by accident. You’re going to have to step into it intentionally.

Start by slowing yourself down before you act. Not outwardly — mentally. When you’re given a task or a problem, ask what happens if nothing is done. Ask who gains and loses influence from this situation. Ask what could go wrong—not catastrophically, but plausibly.

Practice second-order thinking. Don’t stop at “What should we say?” or “What should we do?” Push yourself to ask, “What happens after that?” Then ask it again. Over time, this becomes instinct.

Creating artificial pressure

Create pressure before reality does. One practical way to do that is to use AI and real business news as your training ground. Take a recent business event — a product failure, an earnings miss, a recall, a cyber incident, a regulator letter, a labor issue — and freeze it before the outcome. Ask: What decision has to be made right now? What do we know, what don’t we know, and what can’t we say yet? Who actually has authority, who has influence, and what are the constraints?

Then use AI to role-play the stakeholders you’re likely to face: the skeptical customer, the angry employee, the board member, the journalist, the regulator. Let it challenge your assumptions and force tradeoffs. After you choose a course of action, fast-forward and compare your decision to what the company actually did and how it played out. The goal isn’t to guess right. It’s to build the habit of framing, pressure-testing, and reflecting — because that habit is judgment.

Take ownership seriously, even when the stakes are small. Own a piece of work end-to-end. Own the outcome. When something doesn’t go as planned, resist the urge to explain it away. Ask what you would do differently next time — and actually change your behavior.

Reflect deliberately. After decisions — good or bad — ask which assumptions held and which didn’t. Ask whether timing mattered more than content. Ask whether restraint would have served you better than speed. This reflection is where experience turns into judgment.

Pay attention to your emotions under pressure. Decisions are rarely made in calm environments. Fear, ego, urgency, incentives, and reputation are always in the room. Most bad decisions aren’t caused by ignorance — they’re caused by anxiety, pride, or the need to appear decisive. Notice when fear is driving urgency. Notice when ego is pushing certainty. Judgment improves when you can recognize those signals in yourself and compensate for them.

Where bad decisions begin

Watch, too, for whether ethics show up before a crisis forces them to. Most operational failures I’ve seen didn’t start with bad intent. They started with small rationalizations under pressure — because something was technically allowed, because speed felt necessary, or because no one would notice in the moment. Building judgment means catching those rationalizations early, in yourself, when the stakes still feel low.

Judgment doesn’t require authority to begin forming. It requires intention.

AI can help you explore options, test scenarios, and accelerate learning by exposing you to patterns faster than experience alone would allow. But it will never replace responsibility. You will still be the one whose credibility is on the line, whose decisions affect real people and real outcomes, and whose judgment will be remembered.

The truth is simple. Judgment isn’t something you wait for. It’s something you practice.

You don’t need to recreate the work of the past. You need to recreate the pressures that made that work matter.

AI doesn’t replace judgment. It reveals whether you’ve begun to build it.

That’s the work that lasts.

David J. Chamberlin is the managing director of the Strategic Communications Advisory Team at Orrick, where, alongside Orrick’s lawyers, he advises clients on reputation risk, communications strategies to address those risks, and global business operations issues. He previously served as the head of global communications at Nortel Networks, the chief communications officer at PNC Bank, and the chief marketing officer at SonicWall.

Illustration: Daria

The post How to Teach Yourself Judgment, On Purpose first appeared on PRsay.

What are best practices for engaging an audience? How have you stayed in touch with the local community and visitors, and continued to reach a diverse audience internationally, following the challenges of the past few years with the pandemic?

We recognize that people may want a podcast because they can’t just come to our programming whenever they feel like it. So, we have a podcast that comes out every Tuesday, where we dive into all sorts of burning intelligence questions of today. We talk to experts, historians.

We also have our specialty programming for audiences who may have difficulty coming during regular hours. We have all types of access programming to prevent the obstacles that may exist from getting in the way of someone enjoying their museum experience. For example, [with a neurodiverse] audience, we don’t want to have the lights and sounds going.

Our museum experience is very interactive. It’s bright and dark. It’s loud in moments. That’s what brings it to life for our audience, but that’s not always the right experience for someone, and we recognize that. So, we have two different days. One is for the family audience, and one is for the adult neurodivergent audience — that’s a group that we haven’t seen a lot of programming for.

People age out of this family programming audience, and then what? They’re adults who still have the same needs. So that was exciting, when a couple years after we created our first family programming, we realized we [needed to] address the older audience of the same community.

As far as our local community, D.C. is its own total environment in and of itself. We’re birthed here; we’ve been here for 23 years. We love being a part of the fabric of D.C. When events like the government shutdown occur, we recognize that they’re affecting our local community. So, we put together a 50% federal furlough discount. How do we show them that we care and we are part of this community? Because they’re part of our community — it’s finding ways to connect with audiences where they are.

The International Spy Museum is doing some great education work in the community — with programs for memory care (Spy with Me), the neurodivergent community, hospitalized children, Title I Schools and even cybersecurity awareness tips.

We have someone who does our memory care programming, which is once a month for an hour online. It’s personalized. I’ve sat in on that programming before, and sometimes we have repeat goers, sometimes we have new people. It’s so open — it’s wonderful.

Then, [there’s] our partnership with WeGo. Several years ago, the group connected with us. They work with pediatric patients in hospitals — kids who certainly cannot just go and experience the museum, so we bring the museum to them. It’s a result of WeGo that we get to use these robots — they’re super cool. Ours is named Patrice, and the kids direct where the robot goes. Our Youth Education team will walk the kids through and give them the most exciting tour and talk about animal spies.

What’s great about this place is that people are so passionate about sharing knowledge and creating opportunities. It comes through in every sense of it. I feel fortunate to work with people who are so excited to do the work that they do.

We had our first-ever online exhibit on open-source intelligence, which speaks to all the information publicly available online. With that, there are some things that people probably should know about for their own cyber safety, right?

So, there are issues that we touch on without it necessarily being obvious, but once you get into the nitty-gritty, you realize they are in our purview. We want to make sure that whenever we’re diving into exploring these subjects, we’re helping people be better consumers of news or whatever it might be to live life in a more successful way for them.

How do you protect and promote important parts of history authentically — and real-life stories of intelligence officials — while also keeping the information fresh, fun, accessible and relevant to today’s consumers and a wide-ranging audience? 

The Digital Learning HQ — the question is finding the right channel for it. In whatever industry you’re in, PR is something totally different — if your tool is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. So, figure out what the right channel is for the story or information you’re working with is. Sometimes that’ll mean pitching an article to a specific group. Sometimes, that’s something that lives on your YouTube channel. Sometimes, it should be a podcast.

Look at each individual story and figure out where it will help you achieve your goals, and what your goals might be. It’s not just numbers for the sake of numbers. Is there something you want your audience to take away from it? How do you know if they took that away? Do you want someone to join as a member? Or [maybe it’s] tickets to the museum, or people attending a free program and knowing that you get to share some information. Everything looks different, and how you approach it should vary based on what you want to get out of it and what you want your audience to get out of it.

We have so many stories to tell. I don’t have enough time to [tell them] all, but that also means there’s so much to dig into. Sometimes it’s telling a story of a moment in history through the lens of today. And there are ways to refresh them naturally.

I did an article in 2019 with Refinery29 that was looking at Taylor Swift — whether the album was likely to come out, and what information an intelligence analyst might use to identify what might be going on using rumors intelligence, imagery intelligence — all these trappings of forms of intelligence. That’s a way that you take something a little older and make it new. You can do that with anything. At the time, I paying attention to Taylor Swift.

That’s part of the fun. You can bring a lot of this into today’s world, especially some of the more lighthearted stuff, and help people understand, because learning is much easier when you’re not seeing it happen. Then, try to figure out the truth from the noise. We talk about that in the “Fateful Failures” exhibit. How do you know what’s real and what’s extra?

You recently spoke on a panel about AI-powered media relations and what journalists and news influencers need from PR. Can you share some of those trends, tools and tactics — and what’s next for media relations?

AI is coming in as a massive piece of the PR landscape and of life, right now. We have to look at it as any other sort of technology. So, whether good or bad, if people are going to be using it, we need to consider how we’re going to interact with it. The same way that I look at how Gen Z and Gen Alpha turn to TikTok now as a place where they ask questions — that’s where they Google, right? So, we have to figure out if people are going to start Googling on the equivalent of a ChatGPT, and we need to know what ChatGPT is pulling.

When you’re doing your PR research, trying to figure out who you’re pitching — what media outlets and individuals — you want to know what’s being scraped by ChatGPT and other AI-related enterprises. That has to be part of the strategy behind it. We have to find audiences where they are, and if audiences are going to AI ventures, then we have to meet them there.

Below, Bran offers advice for PR’s next generation.

Exterior credit: Nic Lehoux, courtesy of RSHP

Image of Aliza Bran: Amy Jacques

The post More From the SPY Museum’s Aliza Bran on Storytelling and Engagement first appeared on PRsay.

We didn’t call it judgment back then. We called it experience.

But if I’m honest, most of what shaped me over the last three decades had very little to do with the visible outputs of the job. It wasn’t the press releases, the media lists, the campaign plans, or the rewrites that mattered. Those were table stakes.

What mattered were the operating conditions those activities put me into: watching narratives form without my permission, realizing too late that silence had operational consequences, seeing how credibility actually moves through an organization or a political system, or owning a decision that affected customers, employees, regulators, or investors and couldn’t be undone once it was in motion.

That’s how judgment used to get built — almost accidentally — and that apprenticeship largely no longer exists.

AI now does much of the work that once created those learning moments. Drafts are instant. Analysis is cheap. Scenarios multiply. Speed is assumed. My instinct is still to preserve the old tasks because they feel like they “build muscle,” but if I do that uncritically, I miss the point—and I train people for a version of business and communications that no longer exists.

If judgment used to be learned accidentally, it now has to be developed deliberately.

How judgment was really built

Looking back, what actually made people effective early in their careers wasn’t mastery of deliverables. It was exposure to pressure inside real operating systems. You learned — often quickly — that narratives don’t wait for approval, that silence has downstream effects, that some voices carry decision-making authority and others only advisory influence, and that credibility is often borrowed long before it’s earned. You learned that the response itself can reshape the business problem, that timing affects trust, cost, and risk — not just perception — and that accountability mattered because there was no undo button.

None of that came from training programs. It came from being close enough to consequence to feel it.

Over time, what we really developed were a small number of durable instincts: the ability to anticipate what will happen if nothing is done; the ability to recognize who actually has influence and authority in a given moment; the ability to think past the first move and anticipate operational, reputational, and stakeholder reactions to the response itself; the ability to know when speed improves outcomes and when restraint preserves trust; and the ability to own results rather than just produce recommendations.

Those instincts haven’t been made obsolete by AI. If anything, they matter more now.

What AI can’t replicate

AI is exceptionally good at mechanics. It drafts, summarizes, models scenarios, and analyzes faster than any team I’ve ever led. What it does not do is decide. It does not prioritize enterprise risk. It does not understand power, fear, incentives, or organizational context the way humans do. And it does not live with consequences.

The risk isn’t that early-career professionals will rely on AI. You should. The real risk is that you begin to confuse speed with maturity, fluency with judgment, and output with leadership. If organizations don’t intentionally create ways for people to experience pressure, tradeoffs, and accountability, they will end up with leaders who sound polished, move quickly, and haven’t developed the instincts that actually protect the business when it matters.

Hiring for judgment, not just output

This is why hiring — and especially hiring recent college graduates — has become so consequential. After all these years of working at the intersection of communications, marketing, government relations, legal, and business operations, I’ve learned that when we are hiring new graduates, we’re not really hiring for output. We’re hiring for trajectory. And in the AI era, that distinction matters more than ever.

AI makes it remarkably easy to sound finished. Answers are structured. Language is confident. Thinking appears clean. None of that tells me much about how someone will perform when priorities collide, information is incomplete, and the business is under pressure.

So the job of an interview isn’t to reward fluency. It’s to see past it. I listen to how candidates respond to uncertainty, challenge, and shared outcomes. When your first instinct is questioned, do you become defensive — or more thoughtful? Do you take ownership of results that didn’t go as planned, or do you explain them away? Blame stops growth faster than failure ever will.

The idea of ‘judgment velocity’

At this stage of your career, I’m not looking for confidence. I’m looking for what I think of as judgment velocity: how quickly you learn as the complexity and stakes increase.

Early careers aren’t shaped by a few visible wins nearly as much as they’re shaped by patterns. People remember who made things clearer, who made decisions easier, who reduced risk, and who made fewer things worse. Reliability compounds. Recklessness does too.

In part two on May 27: how to teach yourself judgment on purpose — without waiting for authority, or a crisis, to do it for you.

David J. Chamberlin is the managing director of the Strategic Communications Advisory Team at Orrick, where, alongside Orrick’s lawyers, he advises clients on reputation risk, communications strategies to address those risks, and global business operations issues. He previously served as the head of global communications at Nortel Networks, the chief communications officer at PNC Bank, and the chief marketing officer at SonicWall.

Illustration: DesignHunt

The post Judgment, Early Careers and the Age of AI first appeared on PRsay.

This spring, communications graduates enter a profession reshaped by AI, ethics, and digital strategy. Success requires mastering office culture and unspoken rules. Like interns, these new hires navigate their roles with nerves and ambition. I recently asked senior-level PR pros for advice on starting this professional journey.

1. Finding your niche in PR

According to Sophia Kianni, co-founder of Phia, successfully transitioning into a new role requires adopting critical mindset shifts. Her insights serve as a valuable guide for young professionals seeking to make an immediate and high-impact impression.

“The goal should be understanding what are the skill sets, what are the non-negotiable attributes required to reach the highest echelons of this field. Within that field, pick a specific area to be proficient in.”

Kianni added that critical thinking remains essential when using AI tools: “Above all else, people need to apply critical thinking skills that inform how they prompt large language models. 

2. Applying critical thinking to AI tools

Matt Panichas, executive vice president of corporate & special situations at HUNTER PR, outlined a strategy for transitioning from the classroom to the profession’s front lines. Critical thinking remains essential in the age of AI.

“Above all else, people need to apply critical thinking skills that will inform how they prompt LLMs. If you’re putting in garbage prompts and garbage thinking, that’s exactly what you’ll get back. Don’t let critical thinking atrophy because of the notion that AI can do the thinking for you. That approach won’t succeed in today’s environment. The professionals who will thrive are the ones who can push deeper, assess a situation, identify what actually matters to stakeholders and build a strategic narrative around it. That’s not a skill you can automate.”

PR success is a two-way street: pros bring skills, and agencies provide growth. Not all agencies foster success; new hires must master narrative intelligence while ensuring their environment supports their goals.

3. Choosing the right agency fit

As Tiffany Rolfe, chair & global chief creative officer, R/GA, emphasizes,  “Young adults should explore agencies. Find the agency that fits you vs fitting into an agency.”

Professionals succeed when they align with company culture rather than forcing themselves to adapt. Matt Panichas builds on this by showing how agency philosophy drives development.

“If an agency talks about AI like it’s a replacement for critical thinking rather than a tool that amplifies it, that tells you everything you need to know about how they’ll invest in your development. The best shops will teach you why before they teach you how — and that makes all the difference,” Panichas said.

 More than mere advice, these insights offer a blueprint for modern communicators. By mastering narrative intelligence and vetting their workplaces, emerging professionals don’t just enter the workforce — they lead it.

4. Managing a crisis in the golden hour

In elite communications, the “Golden Hour,” the first 60 minutes of a crisis, determines whether a brand recovers or collapses. Navigating this window requires precision and speed. Julia Parisi Wendelken, director of global marketing at Tiffany & Co., shares insights on leading effectively when the stakes are highest.

“Common sense is really powerful in these situations, thinking about yourself as a consumer and what you would want to see from the brand you are representing is probably the best way to navigate out of a crisis.”

Beyond managing crisis response, relationships are built before conflict ever arises, and trust becomes the foundation for resilience. This sets the stage for the final discussion.

5. Building stronger professional networks

In PR, a professional’s network defines their reputation. These relationships don’t just support a career; they ensure its survival. To understand how to move beyond transactions and build lasting, meaningful professional bonds, Margot Edelman, general manager of the New York office and co-lead of the U.S. Tech Sector at Edelman, discussed the role of friendship in a high-pressure field.

“Going to conferences and attending meetups are great ways to build relationships. Organizing and hosting events is an easy way to bring people together and have something to offer instead of asking people to spend time with you. It is also a key way to bring clients to these discussions, to keep them on the flow of information, and you are seen as a connector. Organizing events such as showcases and luncheons is an effective way to add value by inviting guest speakers to engage and contribute to the conversation. If you can provide that, for people whom you want to know more about, it will build a relationship.”

PR thrives on long-term relationships and consistency. Credibility comes from showing up and providing value well beyond simple transactional exchanges.

6. Leading through information noise

Modern communications demands leadership, not just survival. While AI rewrites the rules, judgment and empathy remain the industry’s core. To succeed, specialists must lead conversations rather than just manage noise.

For graduates, branding equals reliability; “on time” is late in PR, and arriving prepared is fundamental. Your presence — from mastering strategies to punctuality — defines your professional brand.

Katherine Orellana is an NYU graduate student and member of the PRSA New Jersey and New York Chapters, specializing in crisis prevention and crisis management communication. She focuses on navigating complex brand narratives and strategic reputation defense within the ever-evolving media landscape.

Illustration credit: Jonmart

The post 6 Ways to Build a Career in Modern Public Relations first appeared on PRsay.

As AI-generated content becomes embedded in daily communications work, legal experts say many PR teams are moving faster than the policies and protections meant to govern the technology.

“It is estimated that the number-one consumer of news content is going to be AI,” said Cayce Myers, Ph.D., LL.M., J.D., APR. “For those of us working in the communication realm, the legal realm, there’s opportunity, and there’s risk.”

Myers, a professor of public relations at Virginia Tech’s School of Communication, was among the guests for the May 11 episode of “AI Pulse,” PRSA’s monthly livestream hosted by Ray Day, APR, vice chair of Stagwell, executive chair of Allison Worldwide, and PRSA’s 2026 immediate past chair.

“For PR people, particularly those on the content-creation side of things, you’re using AI, and you get a good product, but where is that product coming from?” Myers said. “Is it the aggregate of intellectual property owned by someone else? We’re seeing a proliferation of lawsuits in that area.”

Panelist Samantha Rothaus, a partner at Davis+Gilbert, a law firm in New York, advises marketing and communications clients on issues related to AI-generated content and intellectual property.

Accuracy is important for communications professionals who are using AI to generate content, she said, “Not only because inaccuracies look bad for you and your clients, but more importantly, inaccuracy can be misleading and deceptive. And that can create regulatory risks and legal risks.”

Around the country, laws are emerging on different AI-related topics, she said. Those developments “are hard enough to figure out and keep up with, and on top of all of that, in recent months the federal government has been taking steps to try to minimize a lot of those laws, to defang many of those laws. There’s a lot of uncertainty in how to comply, what does compliance look like, what does enforcement look like?”

Creators file copyright-infringement lawsuits

Dozens of AI-related, copyright-infringement lawsuits have been filed, primarily in New York and California, “by any kind of creator that you can imagine,” Rothaus said. “Authors, novelists, journalists, media companies, musicians, labels, filmmakers, visual artists: Groups of these plaintiffs have banded together and filed many, many lawsuits against AI companies such as OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic.”

Panelist Michael Lasky, a senior partner at Davis+Gilbert who founded the firm’s public relations law practice, said he sees significant gaps in AI policies and governance within the field. “And that creates significant risk.”

Day asked the panelists to explain the differences among intellectual property, copyright and privacy.

“Intellectual property, or IP, is the umbrella term,” Lasky said. “For most public relations practitioners, the key pillars are copyright, which protects the fixed, tangible expression of an idea; trademark, which is a tagline, slogan or logo that connotes the origin of goods or services; and the right of privacy, which includes a person’s name and likeness in all of its manifestations — their distinctive voice, their look, their photograph, their persona.”

According to a report the firm produced, 99% of public relations firms are using AI. The top reasons are to write content (79%), take notes or summarize meetings (75%), spark ideas (58%), and monitor media (53%).

Myers said it’s important for communications companies to create policies on how they use AI. Lasky concurred, saying, “It’s a question of using it responsibly to meet a particular need, and of having an intelligent conversation with the client about their concerns.”

In a survey the law firm conducted last fall, 37% of PR companies were developing their own closed, proprietary AI systems, specific to their clients.

“That’s something we’re going to see more of,” Lasky said. But when it comes to using AI responsibly, “you’re either [going to] get this, or you’re [going to] be left behind.”

Illustration credit: THIBNH

The post AI Copyright Lawsuits Pose Growing Risk for Communicators first appeared on PRsay.