Why every PR agency needs an online newsroom

You’ve nailed the pitch, drafted a killer story, and sent it out into the world. But it lands in a journalist’s cluttered inbox, buried under dozens of other emails.

Sound familiar?

Yeah, it sucks.

For many PR agencies, getting stories seen is one of the most frustrating parts of the job. Between tracking down the latest image assets, reattaching press kits, or dealing with outdated PDF attachments, valuable time and momentum get lost. Often journalists get so tired of chasing the key details, they lose interest entirely and move on.

So how do you fix it?

Simple: give your stories a permanent, beautiful home that journalists can actually use.

Enter the online newsroom.

An online newsroom is a website that serves as your central hub for everything press-related. It's a dedicated space to publish press releases, share news, host high-res multimedia resources, and provide contextual info – like company boilerplate and press contacts – all in one place. It can live as part of your main corporate website, or have its own site that you link to from your brand domain.

Gone are the days of wrangling PDF attachments like a herd of wild cats. 

For PR agencies, online newsrooms provide:

• A single, professional, always up-to-date destination for every story you share
• A way for journalists and stakeholders to access information without endless emails
• A place to archive your work and show off results to current and future clients

It’s more than a press page. It’s your complete storytelling command center. Or a self-contained wild cat sanctuary, if you will. 

A great newsroom doesn’t just look good. It makes life easier for everyone.

At minimum, your newsroom should include:

• Press releases of your latest stories that are easy to read and share
• High-res images, logos, videos, and other media assets
• Contact information for fast follow-ups
• Company backgrounders and boilerplates
• An archive of past announcements and wins

All of this helps build trust and credibility with media contacts and with your clients. When a journalist lands on your page and finds everything they need in one click, you’ve already made their job easier.

Journalists historically love people who make their jobs easier. A media contact that knows you are easy to work with is one that will keep coming back to you and your agency time and again.

Curious what a great newsroom looks like in action?

Check out these prime examples from the Prezly community, split into agency and brand newsrooms – click on the images below to view the full example.

You'll notice a few common elements:

• Clean and effective layout
• Language options for localization
• Contact details and boilerplate

Take a look.

Example: Ogilvy's colorful Prezly newsroom

See full example

Example: Ketchum's multilingual Prezly newsroom

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Example: Weber Shandwick's minimalist Prezly newsroom

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Example: Minimalist & chic

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Example: Ubisoft has built a brand legacy through storytelling

See full example

Example: Sony equips journalists with the assets they need to tell their story

See full example

For PR teams managing multiple clients, deadlines, and media relations, a newsroom isn’t just a convenience, it’s a strategic advantage that directly supports your success. 

Traditional PR relies heavily on direct pitching and media list hustle – you pitch your story or share it through a mass email or newswire, it reaches journalists, and here the story ends. Outbound PR.

A newsroom allows you to build a smarter, more scalable foundation for your outreach. It helps your stories live longer, reach further, and look more professional at every stage of the process. In short, it opens the door to inbound PR.

Here’s how:

Instead of scrambling to attach the latest headshots, logos, or product images to every new email, a brand newsroom gives you a single, organized location to store and share all your assets. 

Each client can have a dedicated space where press releases, high-res media assets, contact info, and supporting documents live together in one accessible place. No more digging through old folders or sending WeTransfer links that expire (which is possibly the most annoying thing in the history of the world). 

Everything is up to date, brand-approved, and just one click away.

Because you're hosting all your stories, media assets, and company details online, you have the power to update anything you want in real time without having to manually distribute those changes to your contacts.

Got a new logo? Update it once in your newsroom and you're good to go. Need to make a correction to a press release? Update it in your newsroom and any journalist that visits that press release will be served the latest version.

Having a press room doesn't make life easier for you – it helps media outlets save on their most precious asset: hot takes. Sorry, I mean: time.

The last thing a journalist wants is to email back and forth asking for a photo, a logo in the right resolution, or the contact person for a quote. With your own newsroom, reporters can help themselves to the materials they need, exactly when they need them.

Unlike a one-off email, your newsroom content lives online and remains searchable long after the pitch has gone out. This means that visitors to your newsroom – be they journalists, bloggers, influencers, and even potential partners – can stumble upon your story weeks or months after it was published. 

When clients see their stories housed in a beautiful, professional, and above all consistent newsroom, it sends a powerful signal of brand identity. It tells them you’re not just pitching their brand, you’re building it.

Traditional PR is largely outbound: you send, follow up, hope for media coverage. A newsroom adds an inbound PR component by creating a destination for media to find and engage with your stories organically through cool things like SEO. 

In PR, timing and visibility are everything. You can write the perfect media pitch, but if the journalist never sees it (or if accessing it is a hassle) your chances of media coverage drop dramatically.

An online newsroom acts as a frictionless bridge between your news and the people who have the power to amplify it. 

A newsroom can help your content go further:

• Permanent URLs are easier to share than email attachments
• No login or download barriers for journalists
• Mobile-friendly layouts look great anywhere
• Journalists can find what they need without sifting through emails

When your story is easier to access, it’s easier to cover.

Publish your own newsroom in just 5 minutes

Create a fully branded, multimedia, multi-language newsroom right now with a 14-day free trial of Prezly, no payment info required.

Create my first newsroom

PR has changed significantly in the past decade or so. The tools and habits that once worked are no longer enough to keep up with the demands of modern storytelling and press outreach.

Why, might you ask?

Every day, journalists receive dozens, sometimes hundreds, of email pitches. Many of these emails are never opened because at least half are purely irrelevant, poorly formatted, unsearchable (or all of the above). 

A clever subject line might help you stand out briefly, but it’s no longer a guarantee that your story will be seen, let alone covered. 

In a sea of noise, sending yet another email with a press release and a few attachments often ends up ignored or deleted. Traditional pitching on its own has simply lost much of its effectiveness.

Imagine the desktop clutter of your average journalist. It’s the stuff of nightmares.

Sending press materials as attachments may feel convenient on your end, but it adds unnecessary steps for the recipient. PDFs, zip folders, and cloud file transfers require time to download and open, and they may not even be accessible on mobile devices.

Worse, they can get caught in spam filters, expire, or break entirely. When your materials are difficult to access, you risk losing the journalist’s interest and your coverage is gone forever.

Having a list of contacts is important, but a media list alone doesn’t get your news in front of the right people at the right time. 

Today’s PR involves much more than sending one-off emails. It includes building a digital presence, creating shareable content, and making your materials accessible across channels.

Social media, email newsletters, and direct-to-consumer updates are now part of the standard PR toolkit. A single email to a static list no longer drives the kind of sustained reach your clients expect. Especially when half of that list is outdated as hell.

An online newsroom solves many of the problems that email, attachments, and (heaven forbid) media lists create. It helps you deliver news in a way that matches how the modern media world actually works.

Prezly was built for agencies, which means fewer tools to juggle and more time to focus on results.

With Prezly, you get:

• Beautiful, customizable newsrooms for every client
• Manage multiple client newsrooms through a single tool
• Automatically user-friendly layout – no coding or design skills required
• A built-in story editor that supports text, video, image galleries, embeds, and more
• SEO-friendly and mobile-ready pages
• Direct pitching from your newsroom
• Hub sites that let you create a public PR portfolio

All of that adds up to more reach, better workflow, and fewer headaches.

We'd love to show you how easy it is to set up a newsroom (in less than 5 minutes!) and really make a difference to your media relations workflow. Book a demo with our friendly team :)

You’re in this industry because you know the power of a great story. Your time should be spent on building strategic narratives, fostering media relations, and driving visibility for your clients.

What it shouldn’t be spent on is chasing down file attachments, formatting documents, or wrestling with tools that make your job harder instead of easier.

Prezly is built to simplify your workflow so you can focus on what actually matters.

Here’s how Prezly helps you do more with less.

Forget the hours spent resizing images, uploading files to cloud folders, or manually copying and pasting release content into multiple platforms. Prezly gives you a single space where you can publish stories, pitch them, and share them with the right people (all without duplicating your efforts).

Managing five clients is one thing. Managing fifteen is something else entirely. With Prezly, you can create individual newsrooms for each client, all from one intuitive dashboard.

A professional newsroom does more than look good. It works hard behind the scenes to provide a better experience for everyone involved. Journalists can find everything they need without extra emails. Clients get a polished, branded space where their stories shine. It’s what we in the business call a “win–win”.

When you’re not bogged down by logistics, you can spend more time doing the work that actually drives results. Prezly does the boring bits so you can focus on the meaningful ones.

Build your first newsroom today and discover how much simpler and more impactful PR can be.

No developers required. No technical headaches. Just clear, compelling stories that make your agency (and your clients) look absolutely fantastic.