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Comms Confidential: Plagiarism Busts, PR Nightmares, and Slack Gems 👀

Author

Ash + Lizzy
July 26, 2025

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Instead of rehashing the same tired LinkedIn takes, we’re pulling back the curtain on what we’re actually talking about across top comms trends, spicy hot takes, a few blind items (👀), and the random gems circulating in our team Slack.

It’s part industry intel, part group chat. 

Let’s go. ⚡

Have feedback on the new look/feel? Hit us up.

🔥 Hot Takes

LinkedIn Has a Major Plagarism Problem

Kateryna Byelova had a hot post this week about an issue we’ve all been annoyed by for months (years?). 

The blatant plagiarism issue on LinkedIn. 

Listen, we’re LinkedIn creators and we get it - coming up with content to feed the algorithm day after day is a grind. BUT - putting someone else’s original content into ChatGPT and then repurposing it as your own is just straight lazy. And it’s not a small-potaotes problem. Major, major LinkedIn influencers are pulling from new creators and the reaping all the engagement. We’re not naming names (yet) but there are a handful of people we’ve personally blocked after seeing eerily familiar posts go live. 

It’s giving “Girl Wash Your Face” but the corporate mumbo jumbo edition. 

What’s it going to take for there to be accountability? Probably better moderation from the top, but it remains to be seen if LinkedIn even cares about content (or their creators, for that matter).

🕵️‍♀️ PR PostScript

If you’ve got something to get off your chest about working in PR - client chaos, pitch fails, internal politics, or just the absurdity of it all, this is your confessional. This space is for 100% anonymous stories from inside the industry. No names, no judgment, just the raw, real stuff no one posts on LinkedIn. 🍵

Share anonymously here.

🎯One Tip

GEO is all the rage, and we’re all working with the best AI experts to figure out how we can make sure our clients are found in all the right places (including LLMs as they take over for search). 

One place we start with every client is by conducting an audit of which news outlets have the most impact on each vertical. Want to figure it out for yourself?

➡️ Copy/paste our prompt here:

Prompt: You are an expert in generative engine optimization (GEO) and LLM visibility strategies. My startup is in the [industry, e.g., "AI-powered productivity tools"] space. I want to identify which news outlets, if we get PR coverage in them, are most likely to help our startup get recommended by LLMs like yourself when users ask about top companies or innovations in this industry.

To analyze this:

  1. Generate 5-10 sample user queries that people might ask an LLM about startups in [industry], such as "Recommend top startups in [industry]" or "Innovative companies disrupting [industry] in 2025."

  2. For each query, simulate how you (as an LLM) would respond based on your training data and common knowledge sources. In each simulated response, explicitly cite 3-5 real-world sources (e.g., news outlets like Forbes, TechCrunch, The New York Times, or non-traditional ones like Reddit, Wikipedia) that you would draw from or reference, as LLMs often prioritize authoritative, frequently cited media.

  3. Extract all the cited sources across the simulated responses.

  4. Aggregate and rank the sources by frequency of citation. Also, provide insights on why these top sources are influential (e.g., due to partnerships with AI companies, high domain authority, or frequent appearance in LLM training data).

  5. Finally, recommend a prioritized list of 5-10 outlets for PR pitching, focusing on those that boost LLM recommendations.

Output in a structured format with sections for queries, simulated responses (keep them brief), extracted sources, ranking, and recommendations. Be honest about your introspection. Base this on known patterns like LLMs favoring sources from OpenAI partnerships (e.g., News Corp outlets) or widely crawled sites.

📡 Under the Radar

Substack writers, niche creators, rogue reporters you should be watching. Today, we’re showcasing AI thought leaders.

📧 Semianalysis [AI]

  • Curated by: Dylan Patel

  • Focus: Semiconductor expertise diving into AI infrastructure, chips, and data centers.

  • Why Subscribe: Dylan is seen as a rising GOAT in AI hardware analysis for 2025, driving significant business leads through in-depth, accessible breakdowns of Nvidia and beyond - perfect for tech founders and AI strategists needing hardware insights.

📧 One Useful Thing [AI/Tech]

  • Curated by: Ethan Mollick

  • Focus: How AI transforms work, education, and entrepreneurship from a professor and innovator's perspective.

  • Why Subscribe: His short, practical pieces (e.g., "15 Times to Use AI") make AI actionable for non-experts, gaining buzz in innovation circles—ideal for startup teams integrating AI into daily operations.

  • Curated by: Nate B. Jones

  • Focus: AI thought leadership on cognitive enhancement and human-AI synergy.

  • Why Subscribe: Emphasizes the future of work with 39K subscribers, appealing to media and tech innovators for insights on AI's role in productivity and decision-making.⭐️ Favorite story of the week:

👀 In the Wild

PR this week: the good, the bad, the embarrassing. 

📛 A No Good, Very Bad PR Week:

Sequoia Capital, the storied VC firm known for backing tech giants, is embroiled in a heated personnel controversy after partner Shaun Maguire posted inflammatory comments on X labeling New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's background as from a "culture that lies about everything" to push an "Islamist agenda." The remarks, widely decried as Islamophobic, sparked backlash from over 1,000 technologists demanding discipline, thrusting the apolitical firm into unwanted culture wars and testing its leadership's response.

  • What's Going Right: Neutral stance prevents escalation; Botha's listening mode buys time for internal alignment without alienating partners or investors.

  • What They Should Do Better: Issue a clear, values-aligned statement to reclaim narrative control; implement partner social media guidelines to prevent recurrence and reassure diverse stakeholders. 

Fire Ranking: 🔥🔥🔥 (3/5 fires) – Damage is contained but simmering; prolonged silence risks reputational erosion in a polarized tech ecosystem.

🫠 It’s Giving Zuckerberg, Circa 2004 (Not in a Good Way)

Cluely was recently covered in this scathing feature by The San Francisco Standard - it’s giving us PR palpitations. The AI startup, founded by 21-year-old Roy Lee, has turned controversy into its core business model. Suspended from Columbia for an AI tool to "cheat" on interviews, Lee relaunched it as a real-time teleprompter for jobs, meetings, sales, and dates, which he boldly marketed as "cheat on everything" (likened to calculators or spellcheck in their manifesto). Viral TikTok/X videos, like one with 13M views of him lying on a date, drove buzz, landing $15M from Andreessen Horowitz via a reenacted suspension skit.

They tout $7M ARR, 100K users, and spotty profitability, but mixed reviews abound: The Verge deemed it underwhelming, with tests exposing slow, inaccurate outputs. Embracing a frat-bro ethos, the team hosts wild parties (one police-shutdown), splurges on a $100K camera rig, and eyes $1.5M rave stunts.

Expert Take: Pick a lane. Cluely's saga is just viral chaos. The "cheat on everything" messaging kills credibility, especially in an AI ethics-focused industry. It should be reframed as an "empowerment aid" for job seekers to build trust, not cheat the system. That $15M from Andreessen Horowitz is high-stakes; without curbing frat-bro antics for substance, it could be their last round. Typically, investors ditch immaturity fast. 

🔁 Media Moves

Who's going where and why it matters. Not just job shifts - power dynamics, layoffs, and behind-the-scenes moves.

🧳Paris Martineau moved from Wired / The Information to Consumer Reports. She started recently as a senior investigative reporter in Consumer Reports’s special projects team.

🧳Pranav Dixit moved from Vox (and formerly as India tech correspondent at BuzzFeed News) to Business Insider as a correspondent covering Meta. He joined Insider earlier this year after completing a 2022 Nieman Fellowship at Harvard

🧳David Jeans moved from Forbes to Semafor, where he started recently as a media reporter covering the intersection of media, politics, and technology.

🧳 Toluse Olorunnipa moved from The Washington Post to The Atlantic, where he joins as a staff writer after 6.5 years at the Post.

🧳 Dhruv Mehrotra moved from WIRED to Bloomberg, where he joins the team working alongside Surya Mattu and Jeffery Kao.

🧳 Brit Morse departed from Fortune due to recent layoffs. She was the writer of the CHRO Daily newsletter covering workplace topics and C-suite executives.

🧳 Amanda Friedman joined Politico as a health care reporter, where she will cover the surgeon general and write the Pro Health Care PM newsletter; she is a recent University of Florida graduate and former reporter at The Independent Florida Alligator.

🧳 Riley Beggin moved from USA Today to The Washington Post, where she joins as congressional economic policy correspondent.

🧳 Alexandra Bruell returned from maternity leave at The Wall Street Journal, where she continues as a reporter.

🧳 Edith Chapin is stepping down as editor-in-chief of NPR after 13 years in editorial leadership roles; she will depart in September or October.

🧳 Lucille Sherman departed from Axios after more than three years as a Raleigh reporter covering North Carolina politics; she is also exiting journalism to explore new paths.

🧳 Ryan Hogg departed from Fortune due to widespread layoffs, where he served as Europe Business Reporter covering major companies, tariff wars, and global business for two years; he is taking a short-term gig through September but remains open to work.

☕ Totally Unrelated

Stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else but still slaps - aka things we shared this week in Slack. 

Morning Jams 🎶 

When we stopped just sharing “cool” music and started sharing our favorite bops, these winners emerged:

Living Rent Free, Forever 💔

This generation’s messiest ex-couple Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham shared cryptic mirrored images on their Instagram stories this week and it sent Ashley right back into a deep analysis of this 1997 Silver Springs performance which has lived rent-free in her mind since she was a child. Skip to 4:03 to get to the good stuff. 

RIP, Ozzy 🤘

The Colab was rocked (pun intended) by the passing of Ozzy Osbourne this week - a man who seemed like he’d truly never die. In case you want to join us on a little trip down memory lane, here are some classic moments from The Osbournes (which is where most of us knew him from, let’s be real). 

Something else on your mind? Say hello. 

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