Challenges and Opportunities for Journalists and PR Professionals
The media world is evolving faster than ever, and journalists and PR professionals are facing a lot of pressure to adapt. With shifting audience habits, the rise of misinformation, and the growing presence of AI tools, they are facing significant challenges, but also exciting opportunities.
Cision conducted its 2025 State of the Media Report at the beginning of the year to understand how media professionals are navigating these changes, collecting responses from 3,126 journalists, influencers, and media professionals across 19 markets globally, including key European countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
The Biggest Challenges for Journalists Today
Journalists are navigating a complex environment where staying relevant and credible isn’t easy. Their top hurdles include:
- Adapting to new patterns of media consumption: Audiences consume news differently than before, often across multiple platforms and formats.
- Maintaining trust and credibility: Fighting back against the “fake news” label and misinformation campaigns is a constant battle.
- Declining advertising and circulation revenues.
- Lack of staffing and resources.
- Integrating generative AI: AI tools are becoming part of the newsroom toolkit, but managing their implications requires care and caution.
How PR Professionals Can Support Journalists
Public Relations experts play a crucial supporting role in this ecosystem. Most journalists (63%) appreciate especially the PR job for connecting them with relevant sources, insiders, and exclusive material. They’re also valued for providing verified data and research in short time and offering story ideas with context, credibility and relevance. However, journalists emphasize that there are some things they want to avoid: irrelevant or spammy pitches, and inaccurate or promotional information lacking substance.
PR-Journalist Connection
The first get in touch with the journalists is crucial to build fruitful relationships with them. To success on this, it’s important to understand what journalists do not want. They don’t want to be spammed with irrelevant pitches, nor pitches that sound like marketing brochures, or inaccurate or unsourced information. Neither want they to be followed up repeatedly, they only welcome it once. So, to make a real connection, PR professionals should focus on clear introductions, explaining why they want to connect, preferably via email, as that’s the favorite via for 96% of journalists. Their pitches should be fresh and only tell relevant stories, and for 32% of journalists it’s also a plus if the invite them to industry events to foster connections.
Crafting the Perfect Pitch
Most journalists agree on the reasons why they reject some pitches: mainly because they aren’t relevant to their audience or they’re too promotional, without substance. So, what makes a pitch really stand out?
- It must include a compelling data point or a unique story angle.
- According to 45% of journalists it should be brief, between 100 and 300 words, depending on its complexity.
- It should also include contact information.
Multimedia can be a bonus, but its usefulness varies, about 20% of journalists appreciate it, while 36% say it depends on the context.
Journalists on Social Media
Social platforms are now indispensable tools for journalists. 64% use it to publish and promote their work; 55% also use it to engage directly with their audience; 51% to crowdsource information and insight; and 48% to build professional networks.
The most popular platforms among journalists include LinkedIn as the top one, followed by Instagram, Facebook, X, WhatsApp, and YouTube.
AI’s Growing Role
AI is no longer the future, it’s already here. Just from last year, the percentage of journalists who use generative AI tools has increased on a 6%. Nowadays, over half (53%) of journalists already actively use AI for work, with another 14% planning to adopt them soon. However, 33% still don’t use it and is not planning to.
The main uses they give to AI is to research certain topics, to help transcribe interviews and audio or to summarize texts. Journalists are open to AI-generated content, but only if it meets high standards of accuracy, authenticity, and creativity. In fact, 29% of journalists are somewhat opposed to AI, while only 2% are strongly in favor.
This approach to AI has an impact on PR professionals and how they use it to generate pitches or press releases. 72% of journalists express concern about potential factual errors and loss of quality and 58% are aware that the quantity will increase, but not necessarily the quality.
Takeaways for PR
In this sense, when working with AI tools, PR professionals must prioritize transparency and verification to maintain credibility with journalists who are rightfully cautious about AI-generated content. This means ensuring all content is thoroughly fact-checked and validated by human experts before distribution. PR teams should adopt a journalist-like approach to AI experimentation, embracing the technology’s potential to streamline workflows and spark creative ideas, but never bypassing the critical human oversight needed to verify accuracy and maintain professional standards.
Uwe Schmidt, CEO of the German PR agency Industrie-Contact (IC)
The key is balancing innovation with the responsibility to deliver trustworthy, authentic communications that respect both media relationships and audience trust while maintaining the distinctly human perspective that sets professional PR apart from automated content generation.
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