Why Your AI-Written Pitch Might Never Reach a Journalist: Featured CEO Brett Farmiloe on Let's Talk PR & More with Sherry Goldman

Transcribed from the episode audio; filler words and false starts removed, numbers written as figures, proper nouns corrected, wording otherwise unchanged.

[Show open: "Let's Talk PR & More. Public relations, media, publicity, integrated communications, marketing, digital, reputation management, and more. Let's Talk PR & More with award-winning PR strategist Sherry Goldman."]

Sherry Goldman: I'm Sherry Goldman, president of Goldman Communications Group, and welcome to Let's Talk PR & More. My guest today is Brett Farmiloe. Brett is founder and CEO of Featured.com, which acquired HARO in 2025 and connects experts with journalists, podcasters and editors. Before Featured, Brett built the small-business digital marketing agency Markitors, amongst other companies. Today we're going to talk about media relations and AI's impact on media relations, and also the PR-journalist relationship. So I'm glad Brett is joining us here today. Welcome to the show, Brett.

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah, thanks for having me, Sherry.

Sherry Goldman: Great. Let's talk. First, the question I ask everybody when we get started: tell us a bit about your career trajectory and why you're interested in marketing in the digital space.

Brett Farmiloe: Sure. So I'm a four-time founder and started my career as a financial auditor, and wasn't sure that auditing was the right path, so I hopped in an RV with three friends and we traveled 16,000 miles across 38 states and interviewed more than 300 people about their career paths, and learned one thing: everyone's an expert in something, but no one has a meaningful outlet to really share it. And that's helped guide me across four different companies, from doing a digital marketing agency that was acquired at the end of 2021 to now running three brands with Featured, Help a Reporter Out and Connectively.

Sherry Goldman: Wow, so interesting. So why Featured? Why HARO?

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah, I think that there's this unmet problem that journalists need sources for stories, and that never changes. You always need a source to inform the direction of the story, to provide a quote, to validate some of the findings that a journalist has had. And so there's this unmet demand that people need an outlet to share, and HARO helps fill that gap, where a journalist on deadline can essentially put out a call for help, or a call for a query, and that goes out three times a day in a newsletter. Sources could reply directly to the journalists if they could be helpful. And it's been really cool to see matches happen. I think every six seconds we're connecting a journalist with a source for a story.

Sherry Goldman: I get HARO, and I've certainly responded to some queries over time. But six seconds, that's crazy. So, as a former journalist and now obviously a PR pro, I appreciate both sides of the equation, so to speak, right? Journalists need PR people, PR people need journalists, and as you said, that connection is so important. And media relations is more important, I think, than ever. At least it's having a resurgence, thankfully, in my opinion, thanks to AI, because earned media is what AI is primarily sourcing. But AI is also impacting it, not always for the better. So tell us what you see AI's impact on this is, and then we'll go through some specifics.

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah, I think, like you said, AI has created a resurgence in earned media. So most public relations professionals that I speak with are now optimizing for the new front page. The front page used to be the newspaper, and then it was a search engine result page, and now it's an AI answer summary. And so most public relations professionals are looking at earned media as one of the most reliable ways for a business to appear in that AI answer summary. And so you're seeing it's kind of the wild, wild west in terms of seeing what works and what doesn't. You're seeing a lot of experimentation in the space, but I think the constant is that if you have news, and again, if you're able to provide that news in a helpful way to journalists, then it's a mutually beneficial relationship that's having that resurgence.

Sherry Goldman: All right, that makes sense. So let's talk about it and how AI is impacting it specifically. I know that you said, in terms of pitching, that 21% of pitches submitted through HARO are AI-generated, and yet 35% of journalists opt out of receiving them entirely, right? So let's talk about how AI is being used in pitching, and is it effective, from your perspective, what you hear from the journalists on that side of the equation?

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah. So with HARO, and Connectively and Featured, we run every pitch that we receive through an AI detection. And that AI detection essentially says, hey, was this human-written or was it written by AI? And if it's a 100% score, which we see about 21% of the time, then we essentially can flag that for a journalist to look into further. And we also give the journalists the option to say, one click, opt out of anything that's 100% AI-generated, and we see about 35% of those journalists click that button, which is not clicked by default. So you have two camps of journalists. You've got some that prefer that nothing AI-generated hits their inbox, because, let's be honest, plenty of stuff hits the inbox on their end. And then you've got the journalists who actually optimize for getting connected with the best source for their story. And they don't care if that initial response was AI-generated, as long as they get connected with someone that they could speak with and then inform the content that they create.

Sherry Goldman: I'm interested in the fact that 21% of the pitches, you're saying, are totally AI-generated. So PR people aren't writing their own pitches. They're having AI write them for them.

Brett Farmiloe: That's from what we see. We don't see the actual operations on their end. We just see the data that comes through. I think that the misconception that a lot of PR pros sometimes have when they approach a platform like HARO is that it's a numbers game. And I think that the time and era that we're in is actually not a quantity game. It's a quality game. So focusing on quality relationships with journalists, focusing on replying back to queries that are relevant to clients, I think those are the PR professionals that are winning in today's environment.

Sherry Goldman: No, listen, I have a love-hate relationship with AI, and everybody who listens to my show knows that. I don't think it should be used to write pitches. I think it's a great tool for certain things, but if it does our writing for us, I think it sounds too generic. How do you tell that it's AI-written, can I ask? Or is that the secret sauce that you have?

Brett Farmiloe: No, it's just a partnership with an AI detection company that's based out of Brooklyn. They're called Pangram. And the thing that I like about them is, when you go to their homepage, it says "AI detection that actually works." Now, with that said, I think that there's opportunities for false positives. Models are advancing and they've become better and better. Pangram's an AI detection tool that keeps advancing alongside those models. And so for us it's very much just a signal. It's not the end-all, be-all. We want to equip journalists with all the information that they need to make an informed decision on who to take action with.

Sherry Goldman: And so you'll still send the pitch through, but it has a flag, so to speak, that says this was written by AI, this was generated by AI.

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah, exactly. There's a percentage score that is associated with pitches, and also color-coded to say, okay, 100%, red, AI detection, or 0%, green: hey, this looks pretty good from our perspective.

Sherry Goldman: And then, if I understood correctly, 35% of journalists are opting out of receiving them entirely. That means one third of the journalists that are on your service do not want AI pitches. That's a large chunk for me.

Brett Farmiloe: I'd say it's even higher. Like I said, the submission form has that box unchecked by default.

Sherry Goldman: Okay, and this is a small little box that's at the bottom of it. So a lot of people may just hit delete, not bother to check the box, so to speak.

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah. Because I think, at the end of the day, journalists are accustomed to fielding a high quantity of pitches and being able, in a very honed skill, to get to the quality ones quickly. And so I think that even as the inbox becomes a very loud, noisy place, and becomes noisier through AI pitches, journalists are still able to get to the source that they need for a story.

Sherry Goldman: Okay, so in terms of us pitching: how do we adapt our pitches so they will be read by journalists, and hopefully be the catalyst for stories we want to get our clients in? What's your suggestion? Do we do it from scratch? Do we really go back to the old school, get to know those journalists? But obviously HARO gives us, or in future gives us, the opportunity to reach far more journalists that we may not know and have relationships with. So how do we adapt our pitches?

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah, I think that it's a couple of things. One of the things that has stood out since I've spoken with so many journalists in acquiring the platform is that journalists are busy and they're doing a lot more with less. And the very blunt quote that I heard was, "I don't want to hear from you until I want to hear from you." And I think that's kind of a truism that just goes unspoken in terms of the journalist-PR relationship. So as much as a PR professional wants to get in front of a journalist, I think the framework that works actually goes back to the HARO acronym. HARO is Help a Reporter Out, but the way that I frame it is: be helpful, be authentic, be relevant, and be on time with your pitch. If you could be helpful and help a journalist do their job, that's great. Be authentic is, use the humanity that you have instead of the AI generation tools that are at your disposal. Be relevant is, essentially, look at the credentials that you've got, look at the instructions that a journalist has put out there, and follow those instructions to a T. And then the O, on time, is essentially, know that a journalist is on deadline. The quicker and faster that you could help them do their job, the better.

Sherry Goldman: Right. Now, that totally makes sense. That sounds like good media relations 101, for sure. It's a shame not everybody knows that. Do we have to adapt our pitches differently to be read or included in the LLMs?

Brett Farmiloe: You know, I think that every PR professional is going to have a different take on that. I've heard everything from "talk like you're texting them" and "make it short and sweet." And then also, I think that it's the same kind of format that works, as long as you're following that helpful, authentic, relevant, on-time type of framework. The pitches, it's a matter of getting to the right communication channel that a journalist uses. For some, that's the inbox. I'm talking with more professionals that are taking their communications to other channels like LinkedIn. And the thing that's also surprising is that a journalist typically has their burner email, they've got their real email, and they've got their private email that they're only going to give out to their trusted relationships. So at the end of the day, I think it's a game of trust and credibility, and if you could build a valuable relationship with a journalist, then you'll probably get that private email and be on speed dial.

Sherry Goldman: And I'm assuming that your recommendation to build that trusted relationship with the journalist is to be authentic, send them pitches that are on target, don't spam them, be responsive.

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah, totally. And I think one of the secret weapons that PR professionals have is a tool like HARO. The biggest blank is, what is a journalist working on? And that is a guessing game until you see something like HARO come out and say, oh, this is what they're working on and this is where they need help. Let me be helpful. So I think that's the name of the game. And then, beyond HARO, there's other places that you could start to try to get informed on what a journalist may or may not be working on. We're seeing some really good innovations on tracking what a journalist has recently produced and then trying to predict certain angles that they may be taking next. So I think it's always that guessing game of what a journalist is working on, and the rare occasion of them promoting what they are working on is the chance to be helpful and start with that relationship.

Sherry Goldman: No, that makes sense. That kind of answered two questions, which is, do we need to pitch differently for each platform? And it sounds like you're saying yes.

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah, I think that it just depends. If you're on a platform like LinkedIn, you're going to want to have it really short and sweet and direct and to the point. If you're on an inbox, then maybe there's a little more space that's there. I think that at the end of the day it's about actually pitching, and then seeing what works and adjusting your strategy accordingly.

Sherry Goldman: And it sounds like also, what I'm hearing, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, that we need to do our due diligence first. We need to know what that reporter is working on and what stories they've done in the past. And, you're right, predict what they're doing, but really understand their body of work, not just the thing that they might put the query out on, so that you're pitching them something that's relevant and interesting and would at least be considered.

Brett Farmiloe: Absolutely. One of the things that actually came on my radar yesterday was the APR accreditation, and looking at the frameworks that inform accredited PR professionals. And the RPIE framework came in, and it stands for research, planning, implementation and evaluation. I think too often we just jump to implementation and we don't think about the research that goes into it, the planning that goes into it, before you jump into implementation. So I think the call to action for any PR professional is to do the research, plan based off of what you're finding in the research, and then jump into that implementation phase.

Sherry Goldman: No, that totally makes sense. There are no quick fixes. And honestly, you're talking to an APR person. I actually ran the awards program for PRSA, and I'm also a college professor and teacher. You have to start with the situation and understanding the research, and understanding the problem and your target audiences and everything, before you can jump in and create even good tactics to implement.

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah, absolutely. And it's looking at the shortcuts sometimes. You know this better than anyone: if you're going to be in public relations from a long-term career perspective, it's going to be based off the relationships that you've got. So you've got to take a long-term view, as much as you have the short-term pressure.

Sherry Goldman: I love that. I want to look at this from the other side's perspective. How is AI matching journalists with opportunities? Because I know we just spent time talking about what the PR people can do, but what can the journalists do? How do you identify journalists, and how do you match them with opportunities or support them through that process?

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah, I mean, look, at the end of the day, the lens that we have is the company name of Help a Reporter Out. So we're trying to think of, how else can we help reporters at this time that they need a lot of help? And they need help in various areas, whether that's sources for stories, whether that's landing their next pitch. And also the unique trend that we're seeing is that, in the journalists I speak with, I ask them, hey, I know it's tough out there, how many sources of income do you have right now? And the journalist holds two hands up: eight fingers. They're writing for multiple different publications. They've got a Substack that they've just created and they're trying to get subscribers. They're offering a consulting, hourly agreement to give advice to PR professionals on how to pitch. And so I think that a lot of where a journalist needs help is thinking about how they are becoming an independent creator that is less reliant on the traditional model and more reliant on what media could look like in 2027 and 2028. So those are some of the overall really surprising trends that I'm seeing, and in terms of how the company's supporting it, it's amplifying all those different sources of income that a journalist has.

Sherry Goldman: And is that because the media itself is shrinking? Newsrooms are cutting back. Online's cutting back. Obviously podcasting and digital is growing, but they tend to be either more entrepreneurial or certainly much smaller staff, in a sense. Is that a piece of that puzzle, or is it something else, from your perspective and insight?

Brett Farmiloe: I think it's a bunch of different things that are boiling up. You look at a recent example like the Washington Post discontinued their book review department, and now all of a sudden you have ten writers who were reviewing books that now are out of a job. And so folks like that have turned to Substack. I think one of those writers, in just a couple of months of going over to Substack, accumulated 30,000 subscribers, and now has one of the most followed, authoritative book review places. I think that's an incredible story, and I think that's one thing that you're seeing. I also think that there's this underlying thing that doesn't get talked about enough, which is, over the last couple of years you've seen publications make these deals with AI companies to license their content. And journalists are saying, well, wait a second, I wrote that content and I'm cut out. What's up with that? And I think that there's a certain sense of, well, okay, maybe I need to think more about the economics going forward for my profession. How do I make sure that my work gets rewarded on an ongoing basis? And I think that's why you're seeing, beyond the necessity of going to platforms like Substack and really owning the content that you create, I think that the economics play into it. And I also think that the editorial freedom to write what you want to write factors into it as well.

Sherry Goldman: No, it totally makes sense. Do PR people, from your perspective, understand that? I mean, when PR people pitch, we want to pitch the Washington Post or the New York Times or Good Morning America. Do they understand, when they're looking for journalists to take their pitch to or to connect with, that they should look at, I'll call it a freelance journalist, but an independent journalist who might have a Substack or a podcast or some platform, so to speak?

Brett Farmiloe: I think that PR professionals are understanding the shift and know that an independent journalist on Substack that has an engaged audience, even though that audience might be small, is still engaged. I think the thing that needs to follow is client education, always. If the client comes to you and says, hey, I want to be in TechCrunch, PR professionals are like, well, that was a great strategy in 2010, when getting on TechCrunch meant everything and that was the one big hit that made your business. But now what really makes your business is a continuation of all of these earned media hits that now accumulate into the big win. And so those accumulations, media's more fragmented than ever, where you have independent creators, you've got writers at different publications, but they all have to add up to ultimately make that big win. And I think PR professionals understand that.

Sherry Goldman: It sounds like we need to do a better job. How do we educate them, from your perspective?

Brett Farmiloe: I think it's the results. I think at the end of the day it's about solving a problem that a client has. And the problem today that clients are coming to agencies with is, how do I appear in AI? When someone says, in an AI engine, what's the best X for Y, how does my brand appear? And they don't have the answers, which is why they're talking to the PR agencies. I think that PR agencies can start with experimenting for their own companies. If you don't have the client and the case study that exists today, you need to become the case study. And I think that's the really unique time that we're in, is that you could experiment, you could have a lot of research and development around this. You could now apply those learnings that you've had for your own agency to your trusted clients, and then be able to take those results over to prospective clients and have a playbook to execute.

Sherry Goldman: Are the journalists that are entrepreneurs, are they understanding they need to connect with the PR people as well, and using your service from the other perspective? Are they more accepting of AI, or shying away from it?

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah. I think that every journalist is an entrepreneur today. And I think that the DNA of a journalist and the DNA of a traditional founder-entrepreneur type, it's a bit of a gap. And by necessity, though, journalists are becoming entrepreneurs, and they're incredibly smart in the way that they're able to build up their customer base, build up subscribers. I think that, intuitively, when there's just an inkling of success, it becomes addicting, and people want to experience more and more and more success. And I think that's what's happening. So journalists, I think, first and foremost have to accept that they are now an entrepreneur. And if that's the new role and responsibility, how do you become the best entrepreneur that you can? You identify a problem, you offer up a solution, and you do that at scale. And I think that's the job to be done for a lot of writers today.

Sherry Goldman: No, and that makes sense, because even if you're working at an established paper, the New York Times, the New York Post, because I'm in New York, the answer is journalists are somewhat judged on how many clicks their article got when it posted online. They're not necessarily just judged on the column inches in the print paper. They're really judged on what it does, its traction online, or if they posted that link on social media, how many clicks it brought to the website.

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah, totally. And I think that there's actually publications with whole monetization models around that, where the compensation is the performance. So I think that's really where reciprocity comes into play: are you able to help the journalist out beyond just providing information for their story? But when the story comes out, are you able to share it? Are you able to help them do their next job to be done, which is to promote that content, to develop a following, and the conversation around that content? And I think that's where some PR agencies are stepping in and recognizing that the job is not done. It is a starting point, not a finish line anymore, when the story actually gets published.

Sherry Goldman: What should PR pros do? What are the things that they should keep in mind, from your perspective, overall, in terms of being able to maintain or forge relationships with journalists, and do it in this crazy world of AI?

Brett Farmiloe: I think that the traditional journalist has changed. I think that targeting is shifting. And I think that you need to be able to now accept that the TechCrunch journalist that you once pitched, it might just be as valuable to approach the mom-and-pop blog that's based out of Spain. And what I mean by that is, I think that there's a lot more people to pitch. There's a lot more people that have a gap that you can fill. And the hard part of this is determining who has the connection to help your client achieve the objective that they want. Does the mom-and-pop blog in Spain actually get cited in AI search engines? And if so, should you reach out to that person and try to work with them? I think the evaluation part of PR is going through a transformational shift. And the thing to keep in mind is: evaluate, from a research perspective, find the blogs and find the journalists that have the authority to help your clients achieve that objective. Measure it. Do the stuff that works, and then, for the stuff that doesn't, I think you go back to the drawing board.

Sherry Goldman: That sounds like great advice, and a great place to end the show, because we're out of time. Thanks so much for being here. Appreciate talking with you.

Brett Farmiloe: Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Sherry Goldman: That's Let's Talk PR & More for today. You can find more information about the show and about me at Goldman Communications Group's website, www.goldmanpr.net. And if you want to hear this show again, or any past show, you can listen to the podcast, which is posted on Goldman Communications Group's website, as well as on your favorite podcast sites, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and iHeart. Thank you again for listening. I look forward to talking PR and more with you again next week.

Featured is an AI co-pilot for public relations (PR) that helps communications professionals and subject matter experts find earned media opportunities, draft responses, and secure coverage across journalist requests, podcasts, bylined articles, speaking engagements, awards, and other PR opportunities. The company owns and operates HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and Connectively, which connect journalists and publishers with subject matter experts. Featured supports more than 100,000 users and helps publishers fill content gaps with expert insights.