I don’t want to pick a fight with PR, but I will

The newsroom habits that turn live events into content gold

I don’t want to pick a fight with public relations people. Truly, I don’t. They do a difficult job, one that most journalists would find impossible. They calm anxious executives, manage impossible expectations and somehow keep a dozen messages on track at once.

I like PR people. I’ve covered numerous events of theirs, including the esteemed PRCA in the UK, and I’ve often admired their professionalism. In fact, I once dabbled in PR myself, briefly and rather unsuccessfully, which only deepened my respect for how hard it is. They keep the media machine running when everyone else is ready to pack up and go home.

But there’s a gap, and it’s growing.

In this world of mounting AI, automation and real-time publishing, many PR teams still don’t quite get how to turn an event into content that lives, breathes and spreads. They see content as something that happens after the event. A tidy recap. A press release. A few quotes and photos once the bums have left the seats. By then, of course, the conversation has already moved on.

The journalist’s advantage

A journalist never waits for something to happen before thinking about the story. The story begins before the lights come on and the microphone crackles to life. We build frameworks in advance. We make sure we know which speakers might be interesting, which themes might spark debate and which panels might produce the quote of the day.

We’re already thinking of the headline before the first keynote starts. PR, by contrast, often starts thinking about content when the event after party is almost over. It’s a tidy, risk-free process, but it misses the energy of the moment.

The secret is anticipation. Good content from live events isn’t about what happened. It’s about what’s happening. The trick is to prepare so well that you can publish almost instantly. And I very seldom see this happen.

With a bit of experience and a few AI tools, you can have the basics lined up before the event begins. With pre-prepared templates, anticipated outlines and possible prompt structures, you are already ahead of the pack.

That way, when the first quote lands or a speaker says something sharp, you can shape it into a post or a short article within minutes. The tools exist to make this easy. Whisper for instant transcription. ChatGPT for summarising. Canva or Descript for quick clips and captions. But none of that matters unless the mindset is there first.

Capture, don’t control

PR’s and journalists gets out of the starting block from a varied premise. PR’s focus on control. Journalists focus on capturing.

PR’s want the story to fit the message. Journalists want the message to fit the story. It’s a small but important distinction.

The best content doesn’t come from the carefully approved talking points. It comes from the throwaway line, the unexpected quote, the off-script moment when someone says something real. Those moments can be captured, cleaned up and shared instantly across multiple platforms, but only if you are ready - in advance.

Audiences do not care about polish. They care about immediacy. So, publish fast and refine later, because speed matters. With attention spans getting shorter, waiting for sign-off is the surest way to make your content irrelevant.

Modern content creation is iterative. You publish, refine, expand and build the story as it unfolds. It’s the rhythm of newsrooms everywhere, and AI fits perfectly into that flow. The machine can handle the clean-up, but the human decides what’s worth saying.

Borrow a few newsroom habits

So yes, I don’t want to pick a fight with PR people. They’re professionals. They have a vital role. They make the rest of us look slightly more organised than we are. But when it comes to event content, they could borrow a few newsroom habits. Prepare early. Capture fast. Publish first. Polish later.

And here’s the rub: content that appears after the moment has passed is like a tree falling in a forest with no one interested in listening. It simply does not make a sound.

What do you think?

If you’ve worked on both sides - journalism and PR - I’d love to hear how you handle event content. What works, what doesn’t and how do you see AI fitting into it all?

Next time, I will look at how journalists can use AI to build live content pipelines from conferences, before the first speaker even takes the stage.