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They Said It — Week of May 30, 2026
PR
June 4, 2026 at 10:17 AM
Hey, they said it, not us.
Your New Favorite Substack: ‘Sorry for Cold Calling’
June 3, 2026 at 10:39 AM
Your new favorite Substack blog is called Sorry for Cold Calling. It’s written by Rob Smith, PR pro between agencies at the moment. Rob loves interviewing journalists. He has done it for years with media-brand targets. He will pay special attention to media-brand journalists who go indie, but…
PESO + Retrieval
PR
May 23, 2026 at 3:39 PM
What becomes of the PESO model in the era of retrieval?
Cheat Sheet: SMB Targets
May 20, 2026 at 11:26 AM
Here's an assortment of SMB-ish targets in media brands; SMB itself is not profitable territory for publishers these days. Legions of creators have seen to that.
Cheat Sheet Spotcheck: Paid Content Rates, Spring 2026
May 20, 2026 at 10:48 AM
Here's brief spotcheck of rate ranges for paid content in six top publications. The information was gleaned from rate cards. Note that everything is negotiable: The more you buy, the lower the rate.
When Querying LLMs, Context is Everything
May 20, 2026 at 7:25 AM
Context is everything when it comes to LLMs and retrieval. What are you trying to get at? What is the scenario?
The Five Lenses of AI Coverage
May 18, 2026 at 12:14 PM
A long, long time ago (in 2016), if you had an announcement that involved anything that could be perceived as AI was routed through the resident “AI and Emerging technology” reporter.  Now, pitching “AI reporters” as a category is meaningless since every major outlet covers AI now and…
An Ugly AI Discovery Fail
May 18, 2026 at 5:52 AM
With a big assist from Claude Opus 4.7, SWMS busts some myths about AI discovery. If you sell such services, it might be time to revise the deck.
Cheat Sheet: Case Study Reporters
May 16, 2026 at 3:57 AM
You just don't see that many case studies anymore, sometimes because the end user's legal department doesn't permit them. Other times, they are saved for owned media purposes. But there remain a few publications that do specialize in them. Here are the related targets.
They Said It -- Week of 5/11/26
PR
May 15, 2026 at 4:14 AM
Welcome to the sixth installment of They Said It, a fun, easy-to-scan column that comes from the mouths of others. Let us how you like it! 
BI, Bloomberg Go Big Into the Dopamine Business
May 11, 2026 at 9:39 AM
Not that there's anything wrong with that...
Analysis: How to Talk to a Know-It-All
May 7, 2026 at 3:58 AM
This document initially was meant to remain internal to SWMS, not to be published. The workshop's mission: how to pitch indie experts with a bit of arrogance to them. Its context: as time goes on, the number of friendlies will diminish while the number of head cases will rise. Early versions of this…
Cheat Sheet: CTO Podcasts
May 6, 2026 at 2:52 AM
If your client can talk about high-performance technology, here are some conversational highways to pitch success.
Cheat Sheet: Agentic AI Influencers
May 4, 2026 at 1:05 PM
This cheat sheet will introduce you to 19 indie prophets of agentic AI, those with a newsletter or a podcast or who speak on the topic. It's OK to be late to this party. Everyone is. Even the experts struggle.
Cheat Sheet: Sales Podcasts and Newsletters
May 4, 2026 at 5:50 AM
Sales is fundamental to any kind of business. And yet, strangely, there's not a lot of vertical focus on sales success. Here's a cheat sheet on back doors to sales-focused earned media in the form of newsletters and podcasts.
Cheat Sheet: Supply Chain Podcasts
May 1, 2026 at 1:21 PM
Surprisingly, there's quite a few solid podcasts in this well-worn B2B niche, and they appear to be pitchable. Happy hunting.
They Said It -- Week of Apr. 30
PR
April 29, 2026 at 2:35 PM
Welcome to the fifth installment of They Said It, a fun, easy-to-scan column that comes from the mouths of others. Let us how you like it! 
Visual Analysis: How Influence Actually Flows in Enterprise Tech
April 21, 2026 at 4:15 AM
When you look out of a jet plane window at 35,000 feet, it looks like you're flying very slowly as you look down at the earth. The truth is you're flying at 550–600 mph over the ground. It just doesn't seem that way.
Recipe Card: Paige Gross, CIO Dive
April 20, 2026 at 1:35 PM
Paige writes about enterprise AI from a strategic, CIO/CAIO lens. She closely watches the news and trends in this space; not just the biggest players but those making moves here.
Contributed Content Gatekeepers Cheat Sheet -- Apr. 2026
April 19, 2026 at 12:00 AM
After a thorough scrubbing, you still have 177 clubs to crash. Many shops no longer assign a job slot to somebody that does nothing but manage contributions. The trend: it's a shared duty.