Why non-media companies should hire journalists—and the problems they’re uniquely equipped to solve

Journalists can build real systems.

Most growing companies eventually arrive at the same problem: they need to produce far more content than they used to across blogs, newsletters, social platforms, sales materials, and executive communications without letting quality fall apart.

What begins as a few isolated channels quickly turns into a complex publishing operation, complete with review processes, brand standards, product input, PR coordination, and performance targets layered on top of one another. At that stage, storytelling stops being a creative side project and starts looking much more like infrastructure.

That shift is why so many non-media organizations are turning to journalists. And rightfully so.

I’ve lived on both sides of it, first inside newsrooms and later inside companies responsible for driving revenue, navigating regulation, and persuading audiences who have grown skeptical of anything that sounds remotely like marketing. What surprised me most was not that these worlds collided, but how often companies underestimated the range of problems journalists can actually solve.

When it works, journalists become something closer to narrative architects than content producers, and when it does not, even exceptional reporters tend to stall, usually because they were hired into environments that treated storytelling as an output rather than as an operating function.

Here are the problems journalists are uniquely well-suited to solve.

Journalists are, at their core, storytellers

Journalists are trained to find meaning inside complexity, conflicting sources, and technical detail, and turn them into narratives people can actually follow.

For non-media companies, that ability is no longer optional. In a market flooded with generic blog posts and AI-generated slop, sharp, unique POVs become a competitive advantage. And the brands that stand out are the ones that can explain what they do, why it matters, and how they are different without resorting to weak claims or performative thought leadership.

Journalists instinctively do this very well.

They build content engines, not just articles

Strong journalists rarely limit themselves to producing individual pieces, and inside companies that take storytelling seriously they often end up designing the machinery behind it: how ideas get pitched, how claims are vetted, how other stakeholders are integrated early, how publishing cadences stay predictable, and how a single piece of long-form work feeds newsletters, social channels, search growth, campaigns, and internal communications instead of living in isolation.

As companies grow, the mechanics of publishing tend to become more complicated than anyone initially expects. Ideas circulate across departments, launches accumulate layers of review, and standards can drift depending on timing or which stakeholders happen to be in the room.

Journalists who adapt well to corporate environments often become the people building stability into that system, because they are used to working inside editorial calendars, establishing sourcing and review norms, integrating fact-checking early, and creating rhythms that allow quality to hold even as volume increases.

They align cross-functional teams around one narrative

One of the most under-discussed costs inside growing organizations is narrative fragmentation, where product says one thing, marketing another, PR optimizes for placement, legal rewrites for risk, sales improvises, and customers receive five slightly different versions of the same company.

Journalists are trained to reconcile conflicting information, to surface the real through-line when stakeholders disagree, and to pressure-test internal claims before the market does, which makes them unusually effective at translating between technical teams, executives, regulators, and the public.

Placed correctly, they become gravitational centers for messaging across functions.

They make PR sharper, not weaker

The best journalists inside companies do not replace PR teams so much as make them more effective, because their instincts allow them to stress-test pitches before they ever leave the building, anticipate where a story could fall apart under scrutiny, sharpen framing, remove weak claims, and help communications leaders understand what will actually land with skeptical editors rather than what just sounds good internally.

In regulated or high-stakes industries, that partnership can be invaluable because it shifts communications from reactive response toward strategic preparation.

Why this only works if executives design for it

All of that upside depends on how journalists are deployed.

When journalists move brand-side, autonomy tends to go away, decision-making becomes distributed across functions, stakeholders multiply, approval chains grow longer, and speed pressures begin to collide with standards in ways that feel foreign to newsroom veterans.

Executives often underestimate how destabilizing that can be for people who previously operated with significant editorial independence, and how much smoother the transition becomes when roles, scope, decision rights, and process are clearly defined from the start.

Journalists who succeed in-house are not the ones who cling to newsroom norms but the ones who learn how influence works inside institutions, where persuasion is collective and progress depends on navigating systems rather than ignoring them.

What I want executives to walk away thinking

Storytelling has become one of the most powerful competitive advantages a company can build, especially in crowded markets where products are increasingly difficult to differentiate on features alone.

Journalists tend to be unusually good at this work, but hiring them is not enough.

Executives have to be clear about what they are hiring for and build roles, processes, and decision-making structures that let those people do their best work inside a commercial environment.

When leaders ask me whether they should hire journalists, my answer is yes, but only if they are prepared to treat storytelling as a real operating function.

If you are building a brand-side editorial function or considering hiring journalists into your organization, I work with leadership teams to evaluate whether their operating model, review processes, and narrative systems are actually designed for that talent to succeed. Request a meeting.