There was a time when a well-written press release was enough to fill the cultural pages of a newspaper. Editorial staffs were numerous, information speeds were slower, and journalists had the opportunity to transform that material into a story, seeking insights, interviewing key figures, and verifying sources. Today, that scenario no longer exists. Every day, dozens, sometimes hundreds, of press releases arrive in editorial offices. They are carefully crafted, impeccable, packed with quotes, adjectives, and photographs. They tell of "unmissable" exhibitions, "extraordinary" artists, and "innovative" projects. The names change, the exhibition venues change, but often the language remains the same. The paradox is that, in an age where we have more tools to communicate than ever before, we risk all reporting the same things in the same way. The advent of artificial intelligence has made this contradiction even more evident. A press release can be summarized, edited, translated, and transformed into an article in a matter of seconds. If journalism is limited to this, the question becomes inevitable: what is its added value? The answer can't be speed. Nor the quantity of news published. The value of journalism has always been different: making sense of the facts.
In the art world this need is even more evident.
An exhibition isn't just an opening. It's the result of years of research, curatorial decisions, restorations, investments, international relations, and cultural visions. Behind an exhibition are stories, conflicts, insights, failures, and strategies. Yet all of this often disappears behind a few pages of press releases, crafted to promote an event rather than explain it. The risk is twofold. On the one hand, journalism abandons its critical role, limiting itself to relaunching prepackaged information. On the other, communication also ends up impoverished, because it measures its success by counting the articles published rather than the quality of the debate it generates. Perhaps the time has come to change perspective. For decades, we've been talking about Media Relations, that is, the ability to build relationships with the media. It was an effective model when the problem was getting news to journalists. Today, the problem is different. News arrives everywhere, in real time. What's missing is the context. There's no time to interpret it. There's no possibility of understanding its meaning. This is why communication should evolve towards what we might call a Knowledge RelationA relationship not based on the simple distribution of content, but on building knowledge. This doesn't mean sending more material to editorial offices. It means completely changing approach. A press office shouldn't simply send out a press release and wait for it to be published. It should offer journalists tools to truly understand what they're reporting: access to artists and curators, data, archives, research, documents, meetings, and opportunities for discussion. It should fuel journalistic work, not replace it. The difference may seem subtle, but it's crucial. Media Relations the goal is to get people talking about an event. In Knowledge Relation The goal is to make people understand why that event matters. Communication thus ceases to be a simple promotional activity and becomes a cultural infrastructure. It doesn't seek immediate consensus, but rather builds trust. It doesn't chase visibility, but builds authority.
Journalism, of course, is also called upon to do its part.
It must return to exercising doubt, to asking questions, to seeking out what isn't included in press releases. It must reclaim that critical function that distinguishes it from communication and that no technology can replace. Perhaps this is precisely the great challenge of the age of artificial intelligence. Not producing more information, but producing greater understanding. Because news is now everywhere. What's starting to be lacking is the ability to connect it, interpret it, and transform it into knowledge. And this is where communication and journalism can rediscover common ground. Not that of promotion, but that of cultural responsibility. Because a society is truly informed not when it receives more press releases, but when it has the tools to understand the world those press releases seek to describe.
