If you’ve watched a little too much Sex and the City or Scandal, you might think Public Relations is all crisis phone calls, dramatic monologues, and clever one-liners delivered in glass-walled conference rooms. It makes for great television. It is also wildly inaccurate.

In reality, PR is about helping clients connect with the audiences they serve. Most often, that means generating publicity and securing media coverage that builds visibility, credibility, and trust. It can also include supporting social media strategy, producing newsletters, helping shape website messaging, or creating content that reinforces a brand’s story.

If 2024 hinted at where public relations was headed, 2025 made it unmistakable: the center of gravity in media and storytelling has shifted—and PR professionals who adapted were far more effective than those who didn’t.

This was not the year of chasing headlines for the sake of visibility. Instead, it was the year PR became more intentional, more owned, and more human. The tactics that worked reflected a new reality about how audiences consume information, who they trust, and where influence truly lives.

So much of public relations is rinse and repeat.

And no, that’s not a criticism of our profession. It’s how PR works.

In an industry that constantly evolves—new platforms, new news cycles, new audience behaviors—the fundamentals stay the same. They’re built around how newsrooms operate, what reporters need, and how stories actually get told.

If you understand - and master - those fundamentals, you can communicate with the media more effectively than most people.