As local news outlets dwindle and AI-driven search reshapes how audiences find information, Texas founders, mayors, and economic development leaders face a new challenge: making their content discoverable by both humans and machines. In the latest episode of The Building Texas Show, host Justin McKenzie speaks with Mark Willaman, co-founder of Newsworthy.ai, about a practical playbook for brand visibility in the AI era. The episode, published September 29, 2026, centers on why the press release is a near-perfect document for large language models (LLMs), traditional SEO, and generative engine optimization (GEO).
Willaman argues that the format itself provides a competitive advantage. "What's intriguing about the press release is it's kind of a perfect document for today's environment. It's current, it's factual, it's structured, it has name entities in it. Machines love that," he tells McKenzie. He offers a memorable frame: SEO gets you into the library, but AI retrieval decides whether you're pulled off the shelf. The distinction matters because AI training bots scraping a site does not guarantee that AI answers will cite it. Instead, retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and grounding techniques determine which sources are actually referenced.
The conversation also explores how a single press release can be curated into multiple formats to extend its reach. Willaman describes how Newsworthy.ai transforms source releases into 30-to-90-second audio snippets for Spotify and Apple Podcasts, AI-narrated video for Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, and zero-click social posts. This multi-format approach aligns with the updated marketing rule of seven touches across five platforms, pushing back on conversion-first thinking. McKenzie connects the framework to his own work with Texas mayors, noting how the show's mayor series has helped candidates in communities without a local newspaper reach constituents.
For Texas business owners and civic leaders, the implications are significant. As traditional local news coverage declines, the ability to structure content for machine consumption becomes essential for reaching audiences. Willaman and McKenzie discuss David McGinnis's 28-day news cycle and running press releases as six-piece campaigns, offering a systematic way to maintain visibility. They also point listeners to McGinnis's paint-by-numbers book, available free in digital form at newsworthy.ai. The episode is available now on The Building Texas Show, which releases new episodes weekly across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
By focusing on structured, factual content and multi-platform distribution, the discussion suggests that press releases are not just a legacy PR tool but a strategic asset for AI discoverability. As Willaman puts it, the format itself is the moat. For communities and businesses navigating an increasingly algorithmic landscape, that insight could mean the difference between being found and being overlooked.
