the sPRint: A Trillionaire-Sized PR Problem
June 18, 2026 | We cover public perception of corporations, the World Cup, and the decline of local journalism. Plus, are wire releases worth it?
Subscribe to the sPRint to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox:
The Warmup
June Fun Fact 📅 In June 1980, Ted Turner launched CNN (Cable News Network) in Atlanta. CNN became the world's first 24-hour all-news television network, fundamentally altering the speed at which PR professionals had to manage crises and pitch stories.
The World Cup is in full swing ⚽Despite a lot of controversy, soccer fans are living their best lives—and so are advertisers.
Hi, Angela 👋 The Spry PR team recently welcomed a new Public Relations Manager, Angela Sidlauskas, to our team. Angela is supporting Spry and our clients' success through PR and communications strategy, media relations, and content creation.
Fast Twitch: Elon Musk Becomes a Trillionaire, and Public Sentiment Doesn’t Look Good
Following a historic IPO from SpaceX last Friday, Elon Musk officially became the world’s first trillionaire. While this might be nice news for Musk and his sycophants, brands should keep tabs on the public reaction to Musk’s new world record.
In a March 2026 poll of likely voters by Cygnal, the company found that only 20% trust large corporations to act in the best interests of ordinary Americans. The findings crossed political lines and household income, with even the highest earners (51%) saying they have no trust in corporations at all. Additionally, new reporting Bloomberg shows that a meager 37% of Americans have a favorable view of CEOs—like, all CEOs—which indicates that brands have a real reputational crisis on their hands.
Couple this with the myriad of reporting, viral social media posts, and think pieces about billionaires (need I say more?), and you have an environment where large, corporate brands must walk on eggshells with public opinion. That said, there is also an opportunity here for brands to highlight the good that they’re doing in their communities (and reinforce that they aren’t simply destructive greed machines).
The High: The 50 Best Soccer Ads Ever
In coordination with the start of the 2026 World Cup, the editorial team from The Drum published a piece this week ranking the greatest soccer ads of all time.
Slow Twitch: Local Journalism Continues Its Decline, and Brands Should Be Paying Attention
Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack released their 2026 Local Journalist Index this week, which revealed the stark reality of local journalism in the United States. Since 2002, the number of local journalists per 100,000 Americans has dropped by a staggering 81%—and between 2025 and 2026, the number dropped slightly, from 8.2 to 7.8 journalists.
As large conglomerates gobble up local media properties—such as Nexstar and Sinclair—reporting is compressed, coverage is skewed and newsrooms shrink. Where local media has historically been a trusted source of critical information about communities, Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News found that nearly 77% of U.S. counties produced no content at all related to local education, healthcare and civics.
This is bad news for a number of reasons, and not just for Americans in local news deserts. One of the key mediums for community engagement with brands is—you guessed it—the local news. So, here's why we all might want to advocate for and support the protection of local journalism, in business terms:
👥 The people who staff your headquarters, retail locations, and manufacturing plants (currently or in the future) are all humans who live in the local community. You want them to want to work for you.
👨👩👧👦 The people who don't work for you have children, who may go on to pursue a career that leads them to become future employees or customers. You want them to know you and like you.
🤝 Companies and business associations in your area also have leaders, employees, customers, and community stakeholders, creating opportunities for strategic partnerships that lift your brand and can have a direct impact on revenue. You want them to see value in collaborating with you.
Read the full breakdown from Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News here.
The Home Stretch: Wire Releases—Do We or Don’t We?
Newswires are worth the money, actually.
Before my fellow PR pros scoff and unsubscribe, hear me out! For small to mid-size companies, we know that paying to send a press release over the wire generally won't result in much original coverage, unless it's something really big or groundbreaking. But, wire releases ARE doing something valuable these days: Providing context for AI search engines and AEO.
Take my rebrand to Spry PR, for example. I knew there could be confusion around the new name, and I also wanted to make sure that AI answers about my company had the facts straight and the messaging right. In addition to publishing our press release on our blog, we also distributed it via PRNewswire to ensure that Gemini had the receipts. That is the entire reason we did the newswire release, and it worked. Incognito searches cite both our blog and our press release, and the messaging is on point.
And, here's another example. I have a client who is very new to PR. They had a product update that needed visibility—it's not something that would get the attention of many tech writers, but it WAS an update that users (and potential users) needed to be aware of. So, we did a paid distribution, and guess what? Once again, Gemini has all the context and facts. When we search for "[client name] + AI" or is "[client name] an AI tool" on incognito mode, we get the press release as a citation for the answer.
The value in using a newswire these days is more about contextualizing information about your business or brand and less about crossing your fingers and hoping for coverage.
Like the sPRint? Share it with the rest of your team!
This is a 100% human-written newsletter (imagine that!). Be kind and share the marketing goodness here 👉 https://sprypr.co/newsletter-subscribe
