Not only did the boozy long lunch die some time ago, but it’s also now looking like the quick coffee catch-up might be on life support.

Recent findings from WeGrow’s Agency Pulse Wave 3 survey suggest media agency professionals still value relationships, but have become far less tolerant of irrelevant outreach, poorly prepared meetings and time-wasting interactions.

The WeGrow research focused on media agencies. But it raises the question of whether a similar trend is playing out in PR agencies and, if so, how it is affecting PR-journo relationships.

PR remains a relationship business. Yet the conditions under which those relationships are built have changed. Journalists are busier. PR teams are leaner. Clients expect faster results and clearer reporting. Remote work has made face-to-face meetings less common. Digital tools have made outreach easier, but not always better.

That doesn’t mean the PR-journo relationship has become any less important, but the way it functions is changing.

Changing times

Elle Kress, founder of WorkTribes and Hey Goodnews PR, remembers being trained in a very different culture.

“When I look back to the start of my career, when I started as a grad in a big PR agency in London, we were really encouraged to pick up the phone and call journalists or arrange coffee meetups,” Kress says. “And that was the best way to secure coverage for our clients.”
That model has changed.

“Now, picking up the phone is just something that I’m not sure journalists like,” she says. “I definitely get the impression that follow-ups should happen via email or via text.”
Kress believes the shift has been driven partly by remote work. Journalists are often working from home, making after-work drink catch-ups harder to organise. PRs are also working more flexibly, which reduces the incidental contact that once came with city offices, media events and agency life.

But she suspects increasing workloads are the bigger issue. “Journalists are having to pump out a lot more stories than they used to. And PRs are having to create and generate more stories than we’ve ever had to do before.”

Doing the digital legwork

Communications consultant Christos Tzortzis believes the issue should not be framed as digital efficiency versus old-school relationship-building.
Tzortzis has spent 12 years agency-side, mostly in enterprise technology, including roles at Archetype and Hill+Knowlton Strategies. He argues digital tools shouldn’t replace relationships but rather make PR professionals better prepared before they approach journalists.

“The digital stuff is the legwork,” Tzortzis says.

That legwork includes reading publications properly, understanding what individual journalists cover, using media databases intelligently, following journalists on LinkedIn and other platforms, and knowing their preferences before pitching them.

For Tzortzis, the point is not simply to know what the news is. AI can summarise the day’s top stories. What it cannot reliably do is teach a PR professional how one journalist’s treatment of a story differs from another’s, what a publication’s rhythm feels like, or when a particular angle is likely to land.

“It’s not our job to know what the news is,” he says. “What you need to do your job is you need to read how Paul Smith is covering something versus how David Swan is covering something versus how Ariel Bogle is covering something. You need to understand the rhythms of publications, what days certain things come out. You can do all that online, you don’t need to be going for a coffee with journalists every week to understand what they’re writing. Platforms like Influencing provide journalists’ bios and sometimes other useful information, like how and when they like to be contacted.”

Tzortzis says LinkedIn has become more important for Australian tech PR as Twitter has declined as a source of media intelligence.

But regardless of the platform in question, Tzortzis’s advice is to use it to do the required research before approaching a journalist.

Get the basics right first
Long-time tech journalist David Hague says while being schmoozed can be enjoyable, he’s more interested in PRs delivering what he needs in a timely manner.   

“When I first started dealing with PRs in technology journalism, they were largely there to help vendors get products and information to journalists,” he recalls.

“Over time, many became more like gatekeepers between journalists and the companies or product people we actually need to speak to. That’s not necessarily a problem, but if PRs are going to occupy that position, they need to be useful.

“Keep track of what we cover, return emails and phone calls, get answers, organise access and follow through. Don’t fly journalists across the country for a big launch and then fail to provide review products or information afterwards. The relationship does matter, but the best relationship is still built on doing the basics well.” 
 

When digital opens doors
Marine Géraud, founder of Tech Stories Lab, is an experienced PR and communications consultant specialising in B2B technology.

She now works largely remotely, often with clients outside Australia, and says digital tools have opened up opportunities that were once harder for freelancers and smaller agencies to access.

“Fully remote work has opened a lot of opportunities that were previously closed, particularly if you’re a freelancer, a solo consultant like I am,” Géraud says. “Trusting to work with someone who’s based on the other side of the world in a purely digital format doesn’t really scare companies anymore.”

But Géraud doesn’t argue that in-person contact has lost value. She believes that precisely because face-to-face contact is no longer the default, it can carry more weight when done well.

“In-person has become a lot more meaningful than it used to be,” she says. After attending a conference recently, Géraud was reminded of the usefulness of direct human contact.
“It reminded me how you can get access to very high-up people who you would not get access to otherwise. I was able to have a five-minute conversation with someone in an organisation who I know is very important. That person gave me really good insight and I could not have had that in any other way except at an in-person event. Saying a quick hello to that person brought me so much valuable insight that I can then use to conduct my PR campaigns for my client.”

Has PR become less fun?

Kress worries something has been lost as PR has become more digital-first.

“I definitely miss the olden days in PR,” she says. “I feel we’ve lost a little bit of the fun.”
Kress notes that when she started in the PR industry 14 years ago, journos and PRs socialised regularly.

“We’d be encouraged by our bosses to take journalists out for lunch, for coffee and drinks after work. I feel like we’ve just lost a bit of that relationship building. And maybe we need to bring that back.”

Kress also wonders if ‘digital fatigue’ is growing. Her experience with WorkTribes, the online community for PR professionals she founded, indicates people still crave in-person meetups.

“You can do emails and Slack messaging, but actually looking at the whites in people’s eyes is where the trust and the real conversations happen,” she says.

Géraud makes a related point.

“Efficiency is a double-edged sword,” Géraud says. “You’re more efficient, which means you have more time to do what? More work. PR has, in my opinion, become busier, faster, more fragmented.”

Small operators can’t afford to be anonymous
Larger agencies often have inherited networks, recognised brands and long-standing media lists. Kress points out smaller players need to invest more effort in relationship building.

She says freelancers and those who run micro agencies “really need to invest the time into getting to know key journalists” and to “make sure that journalists know who you are, what you do, what type of clients you work with so that if they have a story and they’ll reach out to you for comment from your clients.”

Is this a generational thing?

Kress observes younger graduates entering PR have grown up with Instagram, Facebook, instant messaging, Slack and LinkedIn, so different approaches to outreach and relationship-forming are to be expected.

“I think we can learn from all the generations,” she says.

Géraud agrees younger professionals are often more comfortable with digital communication. But she says the answer is not to force everything back onto the phone. The real skill is knowing which channel suits which situation.

“I’m torn,” she says. “If you can do something really well by doing the text or an email, yes. If you do that all the time and never, ever, ever pick up the phone, I don’t think that’s going to be helpful. I think everything has its place and it is about being strategic.”

Tzortzis makes a similar point. Although he describes himself as more digital-first than relationship-first, he says that if he were a junior PR in 2026, he would probably “upweight the face-to-face stuff”.

He also points out different approaches are needed, depending on the field a PR is working in.

“Consumer PR is a little bit different in terms of the way that you construct stories and the way that you do media relations compared to corporate and B2B – so maybe you do need a bit more of a face-to-face relationship.”

But regardless of their field, Tzortzis cautions PRs against imposing too much on journalists.  

“COVID changed things and the shrinking media pool changed things,” he said. “Journalists are more junior than they ever were. Journalists are busier than they ever were. It’s not like the good old days of the 90s. The journalist is 26 and getting told to write seven stories a day. They’re stressed, don’t waste their time.”

Less but better contact

So, exactly what are the new rules of engagement for PRs and journos?

Based on what Influencing was told, they are as follows.   

Email works for general pitching. Texts and phone calls work when there is trust, urgency or a strong reason. Coffees, lunches and events still matter when they create access, context or familiarity.
What’s on the way out is the vague catch-up, the cold call with a half-formed pitch, the recurring meeting with no purpose, and the mass email dressed up with fake personalisation.

And, for good or ill, the olden days aren’t coming back. Both PRs and journos stand to benefit from opting for digital efficiency where appropriate, while continuing to invest time in building mutually beneficial relationships.