{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Bigger Stage w/ Matt Stone","title":"T.J. Winick: Why AI Made Earned Media Matter More, Not Less","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2887,"description":"A former ABC News correspondent explains why AI didn't kill earned media — it made it the asset most founders are ignoring. T.J. Winick on how ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity now decide how you're described, the reporter's playbook for getting covered, and how to turn a crisis around in a single news cycle.\n\nSHOW NOTES \nFor twenty years, T.J. Winick built stories from the inside — six of them as a correspondent for ABC News. Now he helps founders survive the same machine he used to run.\nHis argument in this episode cuts against the grain: AI didn't make earned media less important. It made it the asset most founders are ignoring at exactly the wrong moment. For decades, being found meant ranking on Google — SEO, a clean website, owned channels, with press coverage treated as a bonus on top. That's flipped. The people you want are now asking ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity the questions they used to type into a search bar, and those tools don't crawl your website or read your press release. They synthesize answers from published, credible, third-party coverage — which is earned media, and it's now the raw material AI uses to describe you to the world. T.J. calls it GEO: generative engine optimization.\nFrom there, he opens the reporter's playbook from the other side of the desk — why a story that can't answer \"why should anyone care?\" in the first ten seconds dies on the spot, how to build a hook reporters can't ignore, and why authenticity beats polish every time. We get into the crisis case study at the heart of his book — the employee fired for using a weapon against a robber — and what it takes to turn a story like that around without spinning. We close on how any founder can become a genuine thought leader, and exactly how to vet and hire the right PR partner.\nIn this episode:\nWhy AI search made earned media more valuable, not less (GEO explained)\nThe client who moved a $20K/month Google Ads budget into PR — and why\nHow reporters actually choose stories in the...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/OiGNDWoL6ey5RaVnyCK3tOz2QkGk_QMUaVIV05K9nf4/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS83OGUz/NWJhMzc2NTJiMzU5/NGQxOWJkNTA3MWE4/NmQyNy5qcGVn.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}