Brand Journalism: Innovations in Press Releases and Online Newsrooms

Allison Carter has built her career around content in all its forms. She cut her teeth during the early days of social media, helping small businesses create and execute content strategies across platforms. After a brief stint as an advertising copywriter with companies including Microsoft and Chase, she joined her hometown newspaper, the Indianapolis Star. Over seven years she worked as a social media producer, a trending content writer, and in her happiest roles, as an editor to talented reporters and photographers, helping figure out what audiences really want to read and keeping the legacy paper’s digital strategies sharp. She played a small role in the 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning story “Mauled.” She joined Ragan in 2022 and currently works as executive editor for PR Daily. She lives in Indianapolis.

Holly Fair is assistant vice president of corporate communications at Lincoln Financial Group. She currently leads the company’s external communications center of expertise which is dedicated to media relations and thought leadership at the national level, as well as reputation management activities. She also drives the content strategy for Lincoln’s online newsroom. She has deep expertise developing measurable communications strategies, collaborating with executive leadership and others to tell a corporate story that supports business objectives, maximizes brand visibility and mitigates crises. Before joining Lincoln in 2012, she worked as the director of global marketing and communications at Theorem Clinical Research. Prior to that, she held several marketing communications roles in the insurance industry. She started her career in employee communications at State Farm Insurance.

Renata Nyul is vice president for communications at Northeastern University where she leads a broad portfolio of strategic communications functions designed to tell the story of the latest innovations at the university, engage internal and external audiences, and promote the institution at a global scale. She oversees the university’s media relations efforts to manage stories in top-tier press in major media markets within the U.S. and beyond; an award-winning in-house daily news operation, Northeastern Global News (NGN) that covers the university and the world; digital design and development to showcase the storytelling done by NGN’s team of journalists; enterprise social media including 24/7 listening and analytics and content creation across platforms; and the award-winning photography and film production to feature the university community. In addition, she plays a key role in crisis communications.

Dan Landson is a communications lead at Southwest Airlines, where his team recently won the "Best Overall Video" and "Grand Prize" awards in PR Daily's Video & Visual Awards. As a PR professional, he's always looking for unique, creative and strategic storytelling opportunities to generate positive brand awareness and revenue growth through owned and earned channels. He previously served as a producer with KLAS-TV in Las Vegas for seven years, where he oversaw editorial content to create compelling newscasts that captured and retained viewer interest. He was responsible for helping to increase KLAS-TV #1 ranking in morning newscasts, and leveraging social media channels to engage and grow audiences when news outlets were just beginning to use these channels as a way to extend their reach beyond television.