the sPRint: You Can See Everything… But Can You ‘PR’ Everything?
September 11, 2026 | We react to the mind-bending trailer for “You Can See Everything” and share tips for better coverage reports. And, we remember 9/11 through the eyes of the PR professionals who were there.
The Warmup
A Tale of Two McGuire/Maguires 🇺🇲 Do you know who founded Labor Day? Apparently, there’s some historical dispute about the whole thing. Some records suggest that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, started the holiday. Others point to machinist Matthew Maguire as the founder. Whose team are you on?
Client Wins 🎉 See Spry PR client Peacock Tariff Consulting in Supply Chain Brain, Forbes, and Assembly Magazine this week.
Fast Twitch: You Can See Everything… But Can You ‘PR’ Everything?
The trailer for Nathan Fielder's new A24 documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, You Can See Everything, is going viral for being weird and unnerving, much like the rest of Fielder's comedy portfolio. The trailer gives me the sense that this movie will be a "feel-bad treat," similar to Tim Robinson's Friendship circa 2025.
Yesterday, I saw someone ask if this documentary is going to help Holmes' reputation. Yes, the same Holmes who created the biotech startup Theranos and was later convicted for defrauding investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Without seeing the full documentary, it's hard to comment with 100% confidence about any change in her reputation or likability, BUT...
Nathan Fielder's deadpan delivery combined with a woman who has been through the reputational wringer (and who is probably desperate for a chance to redeem herself, at least to a small degree) should make for a really interesting watch.
When I think about audience perception, some people might view Holmes' decision to do the documentary as an act of some courage, seeing as Fielder is a comedian who is well-known for making people look silly.
Also working in Holmes' favor is the nature of her crimes—defrauding institutional investors (AKA, very wealthy people). It doesn't necessarily make her more sympathetic to the average viewer, but could certainly soften the perception of her crimes if you look at current public opinion on billionaires and the ultra-rich.
Fielder's previous work also may suggest this outcome for Holmes since he's made a career for himself of starting fake businesses with silly premises or pushing the boundaries with stunts like "Dumb Starbucks."
His style of comedy in itself seems to be a critique of modern business culture. Now, he is releasing a documentary about one of the most notorious white collar criminals of the 21st century.
Again, it's hard to say without seeing the full documentary, but I don't predict that audiences will feel that much more sympathetic to Elizabeth Holmes. If anything, I think they'll leave wondering how and why our system makes it possible for people like her to commit fraud on such a major scale.
As a side-note: I'll definitely be seeing this one in theaters.
The High: Gen Z Makes Buying a House Fun Again
A new article from Business Insider’s Alcynna Lloyd reveals a fun new Gen Z trend—this time, it’s in the world of real estate. In the article, Lloyd interviews several young realtors who are using humor to promote their listings, from “Love Island” references to “high-speed home tours” and quasi-standup.
It’s a refreshing reprieve from the gloom that has largely settled itself over the housing market in the U.S.—in 2025, the National Association of Home Builders released research showing that nearly 75% of American households could not afford a median-priced new home. Thank you for your service, Gen Z!
Read the article about funny Gen Z realtors in Business Insider.
Remembering 9/11: A Day That Changed the U.S. Forever
We would be remiss to send our newsletter today without acknowledging one of the most somber milestones of our lifetimes: Today marks 25 years since a series of devastating attacks shook the United States to its core on September 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 innocent people on the day of the attacks.
In 2021, PRWeek published an excellent (and tasteful) piece with reflections from PR professionals who were in Manhattan on 9/11 and in the days that followed. One story—that of Justin Blake, who is currently the Executive Director at the Edelman Trust Institute—stands out in particular.
According to the article from PRWeek, Blake was pulled in to staff a client’s grief center—Cantor Fitzgerald had lost 658 people in the North Tower, more than half of its staff—and with more than 100 Edelman volunteers, Blake helped handle media and direct reporters (while shielding the grieving family and friends from less respectful members of the media).
“Within a few days, any questions I had about how PR can be helpful at a time like this quickly dissipated,” Blake says. “It really reinforced how impactful and useful skilled PR people can be particularly in times of crisis.”
I was only nine years old on 9/11. My memories from that day include gathering in one of our fourth-grade classrooms to watch the news on TV. I remember seeing my dad cry later that night, while I still didn’t fully grasp the extent of what had occurred. No one could prepare for a crisis of this level, and the examples set by the people in this article clearly show that the best we can do is be human, use our skills to help others, and pick up the pieces together.
Read the full article from Chris Daniels here.
The Home Stretch: 5 Tips for Better Coverage Reports
Like many things in life, media coverage is a nuanced thing. You might look at a list of 100 media hits and think, “Great! We were mentioned 100 times!” But, if those mentions were only in random market analyses or mentioned 100 times over because of a crisis, you might want to think twice.
Muck Rack recently published a clear list of signals that you can use to better evaluate and understand your coverage:
Relevance: What are you trying to say about your brand or topic, and how clearly did that come through in the piece?
Sentiment: Were your mentions largely positive, negative, or neutral? PS—this can be an especially useful metric when recovering from a crisis, where you can directly point to gains in positive sentiment and declines in negative sentiment.
Prominence: Did you sneak a quick comment into the piece, or was it a feature article about your CEO? These hold different levels of qualitative weight.
Tags: This is more specific to Muck Rack users, but it can help provide context. It’s similar to share of voice as you compare across competitors, spokespeople, campaigns, and themes.
Alignment: You’re doing all this PR for a reason, right? Think about the higher level business goal. How did this coverage move you closer to that?
To be fair, this article is a plug for Muck Rack’s Curation Engine, which “replaces Boolean busywork” with AI trained by the platform’s Media Intelligence team. However, it’s still worth thinking about how these signals (aside from tags) can help you better contextualize media performance.
Read the article on Muck Rack’s blog from Jessica Andrews, Senior Director of Product Marketing.
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