Discipline II · Press & Editorial Relations
Media Architecture
You build media relationships before you need them — so that when a story breaks against you, you get the courtesy of a question before anyone publishes.
17 yrs
Placing & killing stories
140+
Active press relationships
1st
Call answered, not screened
What the engagement entails
Rosalind Hartwell
Head of Media Relations · Former Newsroom Editor
Seventeen years of shaping coverage where business, law and politics collide. The calls I take now are from editors I've known since they were stringers — and that history is the asset. When your name surfaces in a newsroom, someone in that room already knows your number, your record, and that you don't waste their time.
Media architecture is the standing infrastructure of trust with the press: who covers you, what they believe about you, and which of them will pick up the phone for your side of the story. We build it in calm weather so it holds in a storm.
Editorial relationships
- WSJ
- FT
- BBC
- WSH
- NYT
140+ editorial relationships built over 17 years.
What's included
01
Beat mapping
Every reporter, editor, and producer who can write your story — profiled, ranked by influence, and tracked as beats change hands.
02
Relationship cultivation
Background briefings, useful tip-offs, and honest no-comments that teach a newsroom you are a source worth calling.
03
Narrative architecture
A single defensible account of your organization, decided in advance, that every interview and statement reinforces.
04
Hostile-press playbook
Pre-drafted responses, access strategies, and escalation rules for the journalist who arrives with an agenda.
How the architecture gets built
Phase one
Audit
We read everything ever written about you, score each relationship from hostile to allied, and find the gaps that would hurt most.
Phase two
Introduce
Controlled briefings with the twenty desks that matter most — no asks, no spin, just the beginning of a working relationship.
Phase three
Sustain
A quarterly rhythm of contact, placement, and correction that keeps your account current in every newsroom that counts.
"One story placed well, in the right outlet at the right moment, does more than ten statements issued after the damage is done."
Media questions, answered
Can't our in-house team handle the press?
Day to day, yes. But in-house teams lack the cross-newsroom relationships and the detachment to trade with an editor when the story is hostile. We extend your team precisely where it is thinnest.
Do you plant stories?
We place true stories with the right outlet at the right moment, and we kill false ones with facts. Anything else destroys the credibility the whole discipline depends on.
How do you handle a journalist who won't be fair?
You make their story less interesting than the alternative story — with access, data, and context that rewards fairness. Most journalists prefer a good story to a hit piece.
How long before the relationships pay off?
Typically two quarters of steady contact before a newsroom treats you as a known quantity. That is exactly why the work has to start before the crisis.
Continue to the adjacent disciplines
Discipline I
Crisis Containment
Discipline III
Regulatory Narrative
Discipline IV
Digital Sentiment Control
"Your first hour of decisions decides whether you lead the story or chase it."