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In the past ten years of my career, I’ve subscribed to hundreds of free and paid newsletters. Most of them come and go, but a few have staying power. These are the ones that provide actual value.
One of the first marketing books I read was Permission Marketing by Seth Godin. In it, he discusses how we are so overwhelmed by constant interruptions from advertisements that we tune most things out.
However, we (usually) have control over one kind of interruption: email.
When you opt into an email list, you implicitly agree that the company will provide something of value and give them permission to interrupt your inbox.
Of course, there are all sorts of email lists, some more advertorial than others. But the principal remains the same: they need to provide value.
In this post, I’ll share the best PR newsletters and tell you exactly why I think they’ve earned the right to interrupt my inbox.
1. PR Insider – Weekly PR Campaign Roundup
The PR Insider delivers a categorized roundup of PR campaigns, expert insights, and event calendars each week, making it a one-stop resource for inspiration, ideation, and staying ahead in the industry.
With help from Grace Burton at Digitaloft, Thea Chippendale puts together an exhaustive weekly newsletter. (Knowing what goes into our newsletter, I honestly don’t know how they have time to fit in all of the great information they do.)
Below, you can see examples of the hot topics of the week.
Then, a roundup of dozens of campaigns categorized by reactive PR, product PR, data-led PR, creative PR, and thought leadership.
Next is a weekly interview with a PR expert interview, where experts share their tips and campaigns.
Last is a complete list of major events in the coming week that will help you plan campaigns or reactives around these events.
My favorite feature, however, is that Thea and Grace have been compiling and categorizing all of the campaigns featured on their list into a free, shared Google Sheet (be sure to make a copy before filtering):
Why subscribe?
This newsletter is an invaluable tool for inspiring and ideating. Finding great digital PR examples, campaigns and resources takes a lot of work and time.
As Thea told me in our podcast conversation:
“I felt that the PR resources and news, like PRWeek and AdAge, all those creative platforms are behind a paywall…I’ve got the whole campaign list that people can go through and use for brainstorms.
I want the PR insider to be something that everybody can use, from somebody who’s still in university doing a PR degree to a head of PR role or PR director.”
Also See: Pretty Little Marketer.
Thea actually mentioned Pretty Little Marketer’s newsletter as inspiration for her PR Insider.
Pretty Little Marketer for social media what Thea’s newsletter does for PR. It’s a collection of news stories, insights, and campaigns from the social side of the industry.
2. The Grapevine – Monthly PR Campaign Roundup
The Grapevine offers a monthly snapshot of the best campaigns across industries and insightful year-end trends that can be used for ideation and inspiration.
Iona Townsley of PR consultancy Heroine and Annie Shortland of BuiltVisible compile hundreds of campaigns each month broken up by industry:
For someone like me, finding campaign examples to include in posts or for inspiration is always a time-consuming process. This, in conjunction with PR Insider, has become a valuable and welcome addition to my inbox.
The feature I love that The Grapevine team does is their year-end report.
This year, they collected insights and data from thousands of featured campaigns to understand what is trending, what gets the most links, and much more.
Bonus points for the excellent design of the report as well. I highly recommend checking it out.
Why Subscribe?
Our State of Digital PR survey reported content ideation as the most challenging part of digital PR. Curated lists like these are game-changers for ideation.
Since Iona and Annie—both PR experts—curate this list, I feel confident they are assembling the best campaigns.
Between this and PR Insider, PRs should have no shortage of campaign inspiration.
3. BuzzStream Newsletter – Intersection of PR and SEO
BuzzStream’s weekly newsletter bridges PR and SEO with practical outreach tips, curated resources, and tactical advice from years of experience.
The real value comes from our 14 years in business, during which we’ve been lucky enough to tap into some of the brightest minds in the industry to help us stay on top of everything, from Google’s algorithm updates to AI advancements to the changing media landscape.
Each week, we package a new article, video, and piece of tactical advice readers can use to level up everything from content ideation to maintaining journalist relationships.
The feature I spend the most time crafting is the weekly outreach tip. It’s custom-written weekly based on my personal outreach experience or tips from expert guests.
Most subscribers tell me this is their favorite part of the newsletter!
Why Subscribe?
Every successful agency using BuzzStream has stressed the importance of PR and SEO working together to succeed in building an online presence. I’ve seen it first-hand in my own agency experience.
We’ve also done a Digital PR SEO Impact Analysis, showing how and when digital PR campaigns impact rankings and organic traffic.
If you’re keen to learn more, check out our podcast interviews with James Brockbank of Digitaloft, Ross Hudgens of Siege Media, and Nicole DeLeon at North Star Inbound—to name a few.
Our newsletter shows you exactly how to ensure your strategy achieves both.
4. Mark Rofe’s Digital PR Newsletter – Digital PR Tactics
Mark Rofe’s newsletter distills his years of hands-on digital PR experience into actionable tips and examples, delivered with a straightforward, no-fluff approach.
These days, you can’t miss Mark.
If you haven’t already seen his digital PR newsletter, you might have seen digital PR expert Mark Rofe on this giant “Date Mark” billboard, his viral trip to Nandos, his appearance on our podcast, or his UK Christmas Tree store. He also runs a successful digital PR course.
He uncovers new tools, tactics, and tips in this digestible newsletter.
The newsletter is straightforward and has no extra elements that I would call “features,” which is part of why I like it.
However, as you can see below, Mark does an excellent job of backing up his strategies with real-life examples.
Why Subscribe?
Mark’s newsletter offers actionable advice based on his real-life experience in digital PR.
Also See: Matt Seabridge’s Digital PR Observer.
Matt is a digital PR expert you may have seen on LinkedIn or X. He recently started his Digital PR Observer Newsletter and launched his Digital PR Tips website.
He only has a few issues at the time of writing, but the quality is top-notch.
5. MuckRack – Daily Media Industry Overview
MuckRack’s daily email offers quick insights into journalism and highlights trends and top journalists in an easy-to-digest format.
The format reads like a blog post/email hybrid, so it’s always a quick, engaging read.
One feature I like is their “Leaderboard,” which features a journalist in the industry doing great work.
As a PR, it’s always important to remember that real people are on the other end of the pitch emails we write and the stories we are trying to get covered.
Why Subscribe?
Every PR needs to understand a journalist. And you can’t understand that without knowing the industry. MuckRack’s newsletter captures the journalism industry zeitgeist.
Also See: CNN Reliable Sources
If Muck Rack’s newsletter is about how the news gets written, CNN’s Reliable Sources is about how the news gets consumed. (There’s also a podcast version.)
It’s a perfect complement to the Muck Rack newsletter.
6. Daily PR Brief – PR Article Roundup
The Daily PR Brief simplifies the endless flow of articles by curating and summarizing the most relevant PR news daily, offering a perfect balance of breadth and simplicity.
For someone who loves an inbox zero, I also love this approach. It saves me from subscribing to other newsletters.
In the newsletter, you’ll find a list of top articles.
And then briefly summarizes each article with two to three sentences:
It’s built by ITK Information Services, which specializes in media monitoring, research, and analysis for PRs, so they know the news to grab, but the value for my inbox is the simplicity.
The most interesting feature is that they built it using a tool they’ve created called Report Mule, which automates link and coverage reports for PRs.
I like having a newsletter that highlights essential takeaways from a news story. This helps me decide whether to click and read it further. (Nick LeRoy’s SEO For Lunch Newsletter also does this well.)
Why Subscribe?
This newsletter also covers key stories from smaller pubs you may have missed and stories from more prominent PR news outlets like Ragan.
I appreciate the excellent mix of stories about the media industry.
Also See: Ragan PR Daily News Feed
PR Daily highlights top articles from PRDaily.com every day. The site is one of the best places to get PR news, so if it’s somewhere you often visit, subscribing to the newsletter will save you the trip.
7. Michael Smart PR – Quick, Tactical Traditional PR Advice
Michael Smart’s emails deliver concise PR advice in a conversational format, perfect for people like me who want tips without feeling overwhelmed by information.
It’s simply text in an email, usually no more than 350 words.
Since they come in this format, they feel less like a traditional “newsletter” and more like an email from a colleague.
This, to me, makes it a value to my inbox.
He still manages to fill them with actionable advice based on his over 22 years of running a successful PR firm.
Mike occasionally links to his courses and webinars, but for the most part, he delivers PR tips.
One feature to point out is his catchy subject lines and intro sentences in his emails, which I tried to encapsulate below:
You can tell that Mike has spent a lifetime writing emails to hook readers.
Why Subscribe?
Most of us don’t have time to read long newsletters, so this is a fantastic option if you want quick advice from a seasoned PR professional.
Also See: Gini Dietrich’s Spin Sucks Newsletter
Gini is another seasoned PR practitioner with a similar newsletter approach.
She founded the P.E.S.O. Model ( Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned media), which many of our users have told me about. She’s also the author of Spin Sucks, and the host of the Spin Sucks podcast (one of our top-rated PR podcasts.)
Her tips are similarly highly actionable but extend more into social media, SEO, and lead generation. So, if you’re looking for a little more outside the box of just PR, this is a good one to subscribe to.
8. User Mag – Deep Dive into Online Culture
User Mag brings commentary and quirky news from the wild world of internet culture, helping me (and everyone else) understand trends shaping the behavior of today’s online users.
Former New York Times reporter and current Washington Post technology columnist Taylor Lorenz’s Substack, User Mag, sends out the newsletter every few days.
The articles are great, but my favorite feature is her roundup of weird news from around the web.
It’s everything from PR fails to wacky TikTok trends and more.
Realizing I can’t keep up with the fast-moving internet culture—especially Gen Z culture—this has become a welcome, albeit sometimes disturbing, value-add to my inbox.
Why Subscribe?
As a PR, it is critical to understand how and why users interact with the web, not just what the metrics tell you.
With Taylor’s credentials, I know I’m getting a detailed look from a quality source.
For example, Taylor’s recent newsletter convinced me to open an account on Blue Sky.
I came across User Mag after listening to Taylor’s new podcast Power User, on Vox Media. She explores some of the internet culture topics that User Mag covers but in much more depth.
Also See: Garbage Day
Former BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Broderick writes Garbage Day, a Webby Award-winning newsletter that follows internet culture.
His newsletter is a similar dive into the depths of the internet but goes even stranger and darker than User Mag. I laugh (and usually cry) every time I read it.
9. Source of Sources – For Journalist Requests
Source of Sources is a straightforward, free roundup of journalist queries that helps PR professionals discover real opportunities while maintaining a focus on quality and authenticity. (Did I mention this is completely free?)
This was created by Peter Shankman, the original creator of Help a Reporter Out (HARO), an essential resource for digital PRs and link builders.
HARO was eventually sold and renamed Connectively. But Connectively announced it was shutting down on Dec. 9, 2024, leaving Source of Sources as one of the remaining alternatives.
The newsletter itself is a list of journalist queries like the one you see below:
These queries are displayed in a helpful list, broken down by category:
The best feature of this newsletter is that it is entirely free.
Peter explains on the website: “It takes me a few minutes each day to do this, and the good Karma is immeasurable. So I’m not charging. If you really feel like sending me a donation or something, why not just send a few bucks to an animal hospital or animal rescue society somewhere.”
He told me he has rigorous quality control methods and will boot spammy users, so this tool’s future is very bright.
Why Subscribe?
Responding to requests from journalists is an excellent way to supplement your email outreach efforts and gain extra monthly links and coverage.
As I explained in my journalist requests post, it’s not a replacement for a solid digital PR strategy but a supportive tactic.
10. 1440 – General News Overview
1440 provides a clear, unbiased daily overview of global news, complete with curated articles that inspire fresh ideas and help PR pros stay informed about the bigger picture.
I’ve probably subscribed to hundreds of generic news roundups. I subscribed to 1440 about five years ago, and it has consistently remained a quality addition to my inbox.
Everyone needs one of these in their inbox, and of all the ones I’ve tested, 1440 provides the most value without feeling overwhelming.
One feature that is actually a great bonus for PR content ideation is the Etcetera section at the end of the newsletter.
Here, the newsletter curators show a mix of random (interesting) articles from around the web.
As a content creator, I always ask myself: why does 1440 choose these articles to highlight out of everything on the web?
Why Subscribe?
I can’t stress enough how important it is for a PR professional to listen to and track the news. 1440 breaks it up into simple categories, such as business, science, technology, and politics, making it simple to track big stories from a macro level.
Even if you are hyper-focused on your campaigns and niche, it is crucial to have an ear to the ground on everything else.
Also see: Axios Newsletters
One of the top tips I’ve always had for people starting a new industry or client is to subscribe to newsletters.
Axios provides newsletters tailored to different industries, breaking news, and location-specific for major US Metros.
Did I miss any? Let me know by DMing me on LinkedIn or BlueSky.
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