Hello! If you’ve subscribed to this newsletter, then you know that the media industry is rapidly changing. So, Now You’re A Journalist is a once a month publication for marketers, communicators, and PR specialists who want to understand the media industry and how to tell better stories.

In this issue: Creators weigh in after Instagram announces 90-minute horizontal videos. The Associated Press updates its Styleguide to include one big recommendation for how journalists use AI. A new report on trust in media could have major implications for brands that rely on the press to share company news. Plus, a tech journalist who reviews products for a living shares the number one mistake brands make when they pitch him.

Here we go!

Three days after Instagram announced what it called its “biggest update ever,” creators are questioning whether its new long-form video feature is worth adopting without a promise of ad revenue sharing. The new video format, called Features, lets a test group of creators upload horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long, positioning Instagram to compete more directly with YouTube while leaving creators to rely primarily on brand deals and other outside revenue streams. Instagram head Adam Mosseri and Vice President of Product Tessa Lyons announced the test of the new format on Monday.

According to the announcement video, Features lets a test group of creators upload horizontal videos such as podcasts, vlogs and interviews, which will appear on Instagram’s Explore page and in its main feed. The move is a reversal for Mosseri, who previously resisted longer videos on the platform. “I have been against doing long-form video on the platform for a long time,” Mosseri said in the announcement. His concern was keeping Instagram focused on connecting friends, not just entertainment. Previously, Mosseri has also said shorter videos such as Reels drive more shares and direct messages. Lyons, who pushed for the change, is the one who convinced him to try long-form video again.

Creators quickly chimed in and by Wednesday the announcement video had drawn hundreds of comments, many concerned about monetization. “But YouTube pays creators for long form, why use IG for this?” user @hirbensalazar wrote. Instagram does not plan to share ad revenue from Features with creators, a key difference from YouTube, which pays creators a share of ad revenue through its YouTube Partner Program.

On the Colin and Samir Show, Mosseri said creators can be paid by a platform, by fans or by brands, and that on Instagram, “you primarily get paid by brands,” as an early response to how creators can monetize their work. Instagram did leave open the possibility of sharing ad revenue from Features later.

Instagram is pitching the new Features tool to podcasters, comedians and other creators who want to post full-length shows without sending viewers to another platform. Creators can post short clips as Reels that point viewers to the longer video. Instagram also plans to let creators group related Reels into a series on their profiles.

Some creators, such as user @brock11johnson, welcomed the change, writing that it always felt clunky to post clips on Reels and then send people elsewhere to watch the rest. User @shannonmckinstrie said long-form video “gives us more room to build trust, tell our full story.”

When Instagram first tried longer videos, it launched IGTV in 2018, which allowed vertical videos up to an hour long. The company did not pay creators directly for IGTV videos at the time and later shut down the standalone IGTV app. The comparison wasn’t lost on commenters. “Let’s call it IGTV for all the seasoned social media managers out there,” the trade publication Adweek wrote from its account. Another user, @viva_glam_kay, asked whether long videos would be easy for people to find, or “a lottery game the same way reels are.”

This time, Instagram is also betting on television as a differentiator. It launched its TV app in December on Amazon Fire TV. In June, it began testing horizontal video on the app, expanded to Samsung smart TVs in the U.S. and said it would experiment with episodic series and live programming. At the time, Meta said in a blog post that it was “still in the early stages of understanding what social video looks like on TV.”

As of Monday, Instagram’s TV app is also available on Apple TV in the U.S., where viewers can use their phones as remotes.

See the full Instagram announcement

The Associated Press has added new artificial intelligence guidelines to AP Stylebook Online. The AP says it based them on its own policies for what the news organization does and doesn’t do with AI.

The guidelines appear in Stylebook Online’s Topical Guide. The full list is available only to subscribers.

In a tip released on LinkedIn with the update, the AP Stylebook said, “Any output from an AI tool should be treated as unvetted source material.” It added that writers must apply their editorial judgment and sourcing standards when considering and editing any information for publication.

The principle isn’t new for the AP. When the news organization first issued standards for generative AI in August 2023, it gave nearly the same instruction to its own staff. At the time, it said AP journalists must apply their editorial judgment and AP’s sourcing standards to anything an AI tool produced. The new tip speaks directly to anyone who uses the Stylebook.

The update follows other recent AI changes at the AP. In July, the AP revised its internal AI guidelines, MediaPost reported. Under those revisions, AP journalists may use AI for tasks including early-stage research, translation, transcription, document summaries and help with grammar and headlines. AI can’t replace original reporting, source verification, fact-checking or editorial judgment, and a journalist must review all AI output.

The 2026-2028 print edition of the AP Stylebook, released in July, also expanded its chapter on artificial intelligence. New entries include “AI agent,” “AI slop” and “vibe coding.” The Stylebook advises avoiding “vibe coding” outside quotations in favor of clearer language.

Read the Full Associated Press Announcement

Trust in the news is climbing back, slowly. In Gallup's September 2026 poll, 33% of Americans said they trust the mass media a great deal or a fair amount, up from a record low of 28% in 2025. It’s a promising lift for traditional media and the PR people who rely on them to share company insights, but that still means two out of three Americans do not trust the press.

During the 12 years I spent producing television news in Orlando, I watched journalism shift from a pillar of the community into the circus many consider it today. I left the industry for many of the same reasons people tuned out. And if the people making the news lost faith in it, your buyers have too. For decades, the shortcut to being believed was getting a reporter to vouch for you, but that’s no longer the case. Today’s audiences decide who to trust long before they enter your sales funnel, and they decide in places most businesses aren’t watching. The businesses that win the next decade won’t be the ones with the best press contacts. They’ll be the ones other people vouch for, in public, where buyers and chatbots can find them.

Some in my industry will read Gallup’s numbers as a sign the old playbook is coming back, but it’s far too soon to make that claim. A five-point rise still leaves most Americans unconvinced, and the audience didn’t wait around for the press to win them back. They’ve already moved on.

That shift should change how we think about public relations itself. Ask a room of business owners what PR is, and you'll hear press releases, TV appearances and publicity. It’s no wonder so many small businesses decide PR is for big companies with big budgets. The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) defines it as "a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics." The words “publicity,” “press,” and “media” are notably absent.

What many people think of when they mention “PR” is, in fact, one tool. The job is building relationships with the people who shape a buyer's opinion. That includes referral partners, podcast hosts, reporters, social media creators, past clients and the community. Those relationships require real stories. When I worked in news, most pitches never made it past a first read — if they even got that far — because businesses sent us an advertisement and called it a story.

In the newsroom, our test was simple. Take the business’s name out of the story. If it still matters, it’s news. If it doesn’t, it’s an ad.

Picture a financial coach in January. The usual social media post promises a new year and a new you, then pushes a free strategy session. Plenty of coaches promote some version of it, and some send their freebie to the press, hoping someone will cover it.

Now imagine the same coach asks their own clients what’s actually helping them pay down holiday debt, then shares what they learn with local families. That information is timely, it’s local and nobody else has it. And when a reporter calls, the coach becomes the source.

But a reporter’s call is no longer the only way to earn that kind of credibility, because the places buyers go to check you out have shifted. More and more, they’re talking to their AI assistants. In a February 2026 McKinsey survey, 68% of U.S. consumers said they had used at least one AI tool in the past three months, most often to research general topics. Some of your buyers may already be asking a chatbot who to use.

Aside from their chatbots, people are going to people they trust, and multiple surveys show that’s often not the press. Globally, the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer found that among people whose trust was shaken by recent events, net trust fell for major news organizations and rose for neighbors, family, friends and co-workers. People haven't stopped wanting the truth. They're just turning to whoever is closest to the story.

Chatbots and trusted people have one thing in common: Neither is scrolling your feed. A friend might forward an article, while a chatbot cites a web page, but both are reaching for something published, something that can be found, linked and passed along.

In Muck Rack’s May 2026 analysis of links cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, journalism made up about 27% of citations, and when people asked how to do something, the tools leaned on reference material and content brands published themselves. The press still matters, but it’s no longer the only gatekeeper. What you publish yourself counts, too.

Now, not every platform earns a place in that conversation. When Peec AI analyzed 30 million sources cited in U.S. AI answers in March 2026, the three most-cited websites were Reddit, YouTube and LinkedIn. These are all places where people argue, explain and put their names behind what they know, in public. Now look at where most small businesses spend their energy: private groups, posts behind logins and livestreams that scroll out of sight. Your busy Instagram feed might feel like visibility, but to a chatbot, it barely exists.

Most of us are also counting the wrong things. Likes, followers and discovery calls measure attention, but not trust. PR’s job is to build the trust that makes a sale possible. Trust is what we should be measuring. So stop asking how many people saw you and start asking where they stand. Are they skeptical, with no reason yet to believe you? Persuadable, with a foothold but no conviction? Or are they excited about you, because the public record backs you up? A good salesperson can talk a skeptic into yes, but a better strategy is letting the world do that for them.

None of that moves with one viral post. It moves the way a newsroom works: a clear beat, a steady pipeline of stories, publishing them where they can be found and paying attention to what changes. Trust is built story after story.

So, now you’re a journalist. Find one story only you can tell, publish it where your buyers will look and earn someone else’s voice behind it. The press may never fully win back the public’s trust, and your business can’t afford to wait for it. The question that will decide who gets hired is the one every business owner should be able to answer: Who’s vouching for you?

Amanda Green is the founder of InYourVoice MediaWorks and creator of the Newsroom Narrative System. Learn more at inyourvoicemediaworks.com.

1.) As a tech journalist, you receive a lot of story pitches from startups. What's something companies consistently get wrong when they try to get your attention?

Just get to the point. Don't introduce yourself. (I see your name in the From line.) Don't say you hope I'm doing well. (Even if you honestly care, it's a wasteful distraction.) Or how excited you are. (Sorry, but I don't care.) Simply tell me what the product is and why it matters. Briefly explain the context of how it's different from other stuff I might know. Point out how it's superlative or if it's unique. And be sure to include a link to a product/crowdfunding page, an image, and any relevant specs in five or fewer bullet points.

Of course, that's assuming you've caught my attention with an equally pointed subject line in the first place. And that you're not referencing an old pub I freelanced for years ago and clearly haven't posted for recently. There are so many mistakes to make. But to keep this answer short...many of them can be avoided just by being brief and including the basics.

2.) Have you ever received a pitch that made you immediately lose interest in a company or product you might otherwise have considered covering? What went wrong?

I'm sure I have. But it's a little tough to say, because by definition I wouldn't have given it a full look before hitting delete. Actually, now that I think about it a little more, there is a situation that comes to mind where I lost interest. Honestly, I'd have to look up the product, cause I don't remember it. But I clearly remember being spammed several times within a one-week period. Normally, I just delete folks trying to "bubble this up to the top of my inbox." But this was to the point that I called them out on it. There was an in-person media roundup -- I think maybe a Pepcom event in NYC -- so they were really keen to get me to stop by their table. But four pitches between two people in one week? Too much. I remember purposefully skipping their table because I was so annoyed by the number of emails they'd sent. And then later, at CES, I heard about what the product actually did and thought it's too bad they pushed me away with being overly persistent. Cause I might've been interested.

3.) If you could change one thing about how companies communicate with their audiences, what would it be?

I would immediately change all the wording from "we" to "you" statements. In other words, make it about the audience, what they're going through, the problems they're trying to solve. Don't make it about yourself, saying what you've accomplished, what you're doing, and how happy you are to be doing it. Take out the "me" and the "we" and stick to stuff about "you." Or if you're going to include stuff about yourself, explain why it's relevant to the audience. "We've been in business for 80 years, so we know how to make speakers that fill your living room with great sound." Or something like that.

Scott Tharler is an award-winning technology journalist, author, podcaster, and speaker with more than 25 years of experience covering consumer technology, gadgets, travel, and the ways innovation impacts everyday life. Find him on LinkedIn and co-hosting The Tech Collective podcast.