Nobody knows exactly what PR looks like in 2035. But the signals are clear enough that we can make some reasonable calls. Here’s what the evidence points to.
Trust is already broken, and that’s the starting point
Any honest look at PR in 2035 has to start with the trust problem, because that’s what the whole profession runs on. And right now, trust is in bad shape. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, which surveyed 33,000+ people across 28 countries, found that two-thirds of respondents worry about journalists, government officials, and CEOs intentionally lying to them. Nearly two-thirds say they can’t tell reliable news from disinformation. The 2026 report found that only 32% of people globally believe the next generation will be better off, with people pulling back into smaller, more insular circles of trust. It’s the environment PR in 2035 operates in.
The media PR was built around is getting smaller
The outlet list is shrinking. Brookings found that U.S. journalism cut 2,700 jobs in a single year, with 2.5 newspapers closing every week on average, even as traffic to major news sites rose 43% over the last decade. More readers, less money, fewer journalists. What’s left by 2035 won’t be a smaller version of what we have now. It’ll be fewer generalist outlets, more vertically focused ones, and editors who are more selective because they have to be. Getting coverage means knowing the space well enough to be genuinely useful to the people covering it.
AI is a channel now, not a future consideration
By 2035, a meaningful portion of how people encounter information about your company will come through AI-powered search and AI assistants rather than a link on a search results page. This is already happening. USC Annenberg’s 2025 Relevance Report documents major PR firms appointing chief AI officers and running systems that scan tens of thousands of outlets daily to track how clients are represented. Research from Princeton and IIT Delhi, published at KDD ’24, showed that specific content and citation practices can increase brand visibility in AI-generated responses by up to 40%.
The PR people doing the best work in 2035 will understand how LLMs build their picture of a company: what they cite, what they weight, how that representation gets updated. That practice already has a name: AI Relations, or Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). In 2035 it won’t be a specialty. It’ll be a baseline expectation.
The skillset is shifting, not disappearing
USC Annenberg’s 2025 Global Communication Report found that one in four Gen Z PR professionals expect AI to reduce entry-level positions. That finding gets a lot of attention. The one that matters more: 74% of PR professionals across all generations are still optimistic about where the field is headed. That optimism is probably right, but only if people are honest about what’s actually changing.
Production work (drafting, monitoring, formatting, summarizing) is getting absorbed by AI tools. That frees up time, but it also means that work stops being a differentiator. What holds its value is judgment: knowing which story to push, which reporter actually cares, how a message reads to a specific audience on a specific day. USC Annenberg’s research on the future of PR education is clear that data literacy is moving from nice-to-have to foundational: reading measurement data, tracking AI citation patterns, understanding share of voice across both traditional and generative channels. By 2035, not being able to do that will be a real gap.
Reputation work becomes something you do before you need it
University of Kansas research found that readers trust news less when they think AI was involved in making it, even if they’re not sure how much. At the same time, a University of Maryland audit found that around 9% of newly published U.S. newspaper articles are already partially or fully AI-generated, with smaller outlets using it more.
Human-authored, well-sourced content will matter more as verified expertise becomes harder to find. The kind of deep, analytical reporting that journalists from outlets like The Information, Axios, the FT, and Sifted write by hand — much of it behind a paywall — becomes increasingly valuable. By 2035, reputation management will mean building a clear, credible record long before anyone needs to look you up. That same idea reshapes crisis communications. It becomes part of everyday reputation hygiene: the steady work of creating a public record that models, journalists, and investors can trust when the pressure is on.
Teams get reorganized around information environments
Most comms teams today are organized by channel: media relations, social, content, internal. That structure made sense when the channels were relatively stable. By 2035 it probably makes more sense to organize around information environments: traditional media, AI systems, direct audience channels, and the people who know how to work in each.
That means hiring for skills the function hasn’t historically needed: people who understand how content propagates through AI systems, how to structure information for generative retrieval, how to measure presence in environments that don’t report impressions or placements. USC Annenberg research on corporate communications found that the most forward-looking CCOs already describe their function less as media relations and more as intelligence: tracking, analyzing, and acting on information across everywhere organizational reputation lives. By 2035 that framing won’t be exceptional.
What doesn’t change
What doesn’t change is the core job: understanding audiences, building trust, and communicating clearly under pressure. By 2035, the tools and channels will look different, but the work will still be about credibility. The unit of trust will also shift: audiences will follow people before they follow companies. Personal brand and company traction come first. Reputation follows. The PR function that understands this, and builds communications strategy around people as much as organizations, will be far more relevant in 2035 than the one that doesn’t.
