Most PR agencies still start the day the same way: newspapers, summaries, reactives, emails, approvals. It’s a ritual every PR learns in week one, but it’s one that simply can’t pace with modern media. The Romans has decided to change things up, and rebuild this model of the agency newsroom from scratch.

The result: Rome FM, a daily, two-minute broadcast delivering the biggest headlines, cultural commentary, journalist news, and sharp Romans’ PR insights, straight to people’s headphones before most have made their morning coffee. It’s quick, it’s opinionated, and it’s entirely built for how people are actually consuming content now.

The Rome FM vision

For Sophie Baker, director at The Romans and one of the senior leads behind Rome FM, there was one question in mind when creating Rome FM: why are agency newsrooms still operating like culture moves at print speed?

“At The Romans, we have this philosophy that our clients come to us when they want to say goodbye to boring PR,” Baker explains. “Really, that applies to Rome FM too. The old newsroom set up is close to many PRs hearts, but while it’s great for depth, it’s terrible for pace. By the time you’ve written up and approved a traditional round-up, the news agenda has moved on. We needed something faster, more easily digestible, and more useful for our clients and team.”

Rome FM delivers exactly that, and now has taken on a life of its own. What began as an internal broadcast channel has spread to clients, journalists, and PR-hopefuls. Other agencies have even admitted tuning in.

Reimagining the newsroom

Account manager Lily Abery is one of the key players helping to shape the stories that the Rome FM team put into their broadcasts.

“The point isn’t to tell our listeners everything that’s going on in the news,” she explains. “Instead, we want to highlight those cultural sparks that have an actual impact on our clients and their industries.”

The team spends the morning interrogating what’s shifting beneath the surface. Lily explains some of the questions on the team’s mind when looking at the day’s news agenda. “How can we step into the cultural zeitgeist? What are the early movements on socials today that will be in the news tomorrow? What are the trends our clients can authentically add to? It’s all about context,” she says. “Not just what happened, but why it matters for brands.”

Inside the broadcast studio

Every morning, senior account executive Rupert Cole is one of the team scanning the cultural landscape and deciding what makes the cut for the day.

“It’s fast,” he says. “You’re pulling stories, sense-checking tone, and cutting anything that’s slow or boring. And each week we switch hosts, so it’s always a fresh group with their own voices and dynamic. It’s been a brilliant thing to be part of from the outset.”

Rome FM is proof of what happens when a PR agency stops talking about modern media, and actually starts operating like it instead.

“It has to feel alive,” Cole adds. “It has to be authentically Romans, and it has to have that culturally reactive urgency, just in the format of a mate sending you a two-minute voice note.”

Rome FM isn’t a side project. It’s a signal of where agency newsrooms are heading: smaller, faster, sharper, and far more reflective of the culture they’re reporting on. For The Romans, it’s become a daily habit, a creative catalyst and a reminder that modern PR doesn’t just track culture. It keeps pace with it.

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