The Mid-Year Receipts

Grading our own predictions (and a few pitch requests)

Dear Media Friends (and random internet strangers),

Scroll all the way down for a few pitch opps

It’s July 1. The midpoint of the year. Actually, the pedants among us will note the exact midpoint of the year is actually noon tomorrow — July 2, the 183rd day — but close enough. We’ve crossed into the back half, which means every confident thing we said in January is now old enough to check. (One of these predictions goes back further than January, but we’ll get to that.)

Photo by Marvin Meyer

So before anyone writes a Q3 plan, a little accountability. Here are three things our industry predicted, graded on how they actually aged.

1. “The big agencies will swallow each other, and it’ll get bloody.” Called it.

This one we saw coming, and it still stung. Omnicom and IPG, two of the largest agency conglomerates in the business, merged, and about 4,000 jobs went with the merger, along with several long-standing agency brands folded in to cut overlap. And it didn’t stop there — by February, Omnicom had doubled its savings target and signaled still more cuts into 2026. The trades keep framing independents and boutiques as the winners of the fallout, and there’s truth in that. But the quieter story is the people — seasoned communicators were absorbed into the new mash-up, sidelined, or shown the door mid-career. If you’re one of them, the upskill-or-consult advice is real. It’s also exhausting to hear when you’ve been doing this for twenty years. Grade: accurate, and no fun to be right about.

2. “AI will eat earned media.” Half right, and the wrong half got the headlines.

Yes, generative engine optimization is real. Buyers now start inside ChatGPT and the rest before they touch a search bar, and showing up in those answers matters. That part the field nailed. What got oversold was the panic — the idea that the machine replaces the work. It didn’t. When communicators gathered in Brooklyn this spring, the throughline was almost boring in its steadiness: AI is changing the information ecosystem, not the purpose of communications. Tell a true story to a human audience, and the machine tends to follow. I mean, we’ve been hearing the high tech/high touch story since the earliest days of Silicon Alley. Been there. Done that. Digitally designed the t-shirt.

Here’s my own receipt: I’m doing more press release work this year, not less. Clients are tired of the AI churn. When announcing a product, you don’t want to sound like everyone else’s announcement. A real document, written by a sentient being, that a journalist can actually trust is a win, and sometimes a big one. It’s not a hunch, either; the pitching data backs it. Based on information provided in a Qwoted webinar, outreach volume is up more than 200% as AI has made it effortless to spray inboxes and infinitely more irritating to be on the receiving end. Right now, a hand-crafted, genuinely personal pitch stands out simply for being human. The panic said craft was dying. My inbox says craft got more valuable. Grade: right about the tool, wrong about eulogy. Also notable, I’m excellent at predicting trends. I failed miserably with eBay (I couldn’t see the appeal of selling used things on a mass level), Yoga accessories (shrugs.) And reality TV. We can debate these three for hours if you’d like.

3. “Newsletters are the new pitching lane.” Called it — five years ago.

For nearly half a decade, the people who watch media have predicted that newsletters would be the next credible pitching lane. Muck Rack added newsletter authors to its database back in 2021. Well — five years of serious migration later, it’s all true. Pitches to independent platforms have quadrupled since 2022, and single-voice newsletters now rival legacy outlets for reach: Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American is close to The Washington Post in subscribers.

As you’ve always known, in old media and in the newest iteration, the relationship is the asset.

So the prediction was right. What nobody resolved is the churn underneath. The person you pitch today is running a fragile one-woman business, and the platform beneath her is a moving target — writers are already leaving Substack over its 10% cut and its branding swallowing their own. The outlet you build a relationship with this summer may live somewhere else by spring. The outlet you build a relationship with this summer may live somewhere else by spring. The relationship is and has always been the asset; the URL is rented. Grade: right that it's a lane, naive about how much it evolved into the verbal equivalent of the autobahn.

And one prediction I never made — about myself.

I’m a big-picture person. I call out the trends. I map the year. And this year still handed me something that wasn’t on the card. As of yesterday, I’ve taken on a leadership role I genuinely didn’t see coming. More on that soon. I bring it up only because it’s the whole point of a mid-year audit — even the person grading everyone else’s forecast didn’t call her own.

So here’s your homework before you write that Q3 plan: pull up whatever you believed in January. Grade it honestly. Notice where you were right, where you were loud, and where the year had other ideas. Then plan from what’s true now, not from what you predicted then.

So how was your Q1 + Q2? Anything you’d like to schmooze about?

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Wanna work together? I don’t blame you!

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Publicists — what I’m actively working on.

A few things on my desk right now. Please send pitches via email to rcwprpitches@gmail.com. Please don’t add me to random distribution lists. It makes me crankier than you can imagine.

• A roundup I’m building for Yahoo: the things we wish we’d had growing up. The tools, formulas, and gadgets that didn’t exist when we were teenagers and would’ve changed everything. If you rep something that’s the modern answer to an old problem, pitch me the then-and-now — not the spec sheet.

• National Lipstick Day (July 29), for Hello Gorgeous! I’d love to hear about the newest formulations, shades and trends. I’d also love to hear about a lipstick with an actual story — a reformulation, a comeback shade, a founder who’ll say something real. Not a swatch gallery. I want the story behind the bullet.

• And a standing note: if you work with Dyson, Shark, or Cricut — or with Microsoft on laptops — be in touch. It's been a while since I reviewed a laptop, and my readers keep asking. I'm still finishing my take on Apple's MacBook Neo, the surprise budget Mac from March. Spoiler: not my fave ever.

See you next Wednesday!

Rachel