From Classroom to Agency: My Summer Internship at PR News and the Journey Beyond
My name is Anna, and I am a fourth-year student in the "Advertising and Public Relations" program, specializing in marketing. For students like me, the words "summer internship" are often met with a mix of excitement and trepidation. It’s the first real chance to step out of the theoretical world of textbooks and into the dynamic, fast-paced arena where communication strategies are built and brands are shaped. In the summer of 2025, I took that step, and my destination was one of Russia's leading communications agencies – PR News. For three intensive weeks, I was a junior researcher, an interviewer, and an analyst, immersed in a project that would extend far beyond the summer and teach me the true meaning of data-driven PR.
But first, what is PR News? A quick dive into their world reveals an organization that is a cornerstone of the Russian communications landscape. It’s not just an agency, it's an industry hub. Renowned for its professional awards, influential conferences, and expert publications, PR News sets the bar for PR excellence. However, the part that became the centerpiece of my internship is their educational brainchild: the PR News Academy. This is a platform offering online courses crafted by top-tier industry experts. The Academy delves into sophisticated, niche topics that practicing professionals crave: "The Art of Reputational Audit," "PR Mathematics," and "Finding Insights and KPI in PR." My mission was to be the bridge between the Academy and its students, to listen, to learn, and to help chart its future course.
My journey began with a significant responsibility: the development of a guide for in-depth interviews. My task was to create a conversation blueprint that would unlock the genuine experiences of the Academy's alumni. What was the real value they derived from a course on "PR Mathematics"? How did the lessons on reputational audit translate into their daily work? I crafted questions designed to go beyond simple "satisfaction" ratings, probing for transformative learning moments, unexpected insights, and, crucially, honest feedback on what could be improved. This was my first lesson: before you can communicate effectively with the outside world, you must learn to listen intently to your own community.
The next phase was the most challenging and, ultimately, the most rewarding: conducting the interviews themselves. I was given access to a database of graduates – a list filled with names of seasoned PR specialists, communications directors, and industry experts. Reaching out to them as a student intern was a humbling experience. The response rate was low, these are incredibly busy people, and finding a spare hour in their schedules was like searching for a needle in a haystack. But persistence paid off. I managed to secure and conduct seven full-length, in-depth interviews.
Each conversation was a masterclass in itself. I spoke with professionals who had decades of experience, who were applying the Academy's advanced frameworks to complex, real-world problems. Hearing them dissect a course on "searching for insights" and then illustrate it with a case study from their own practice was more enlightening than any textbook chapter. They were passionate, articulate, and generous with their time once I had their attention. The challenge of securing these interviews taught me a fundamental truth of PR and research: your target audience is not always readily available, and earning their attention is the first and most critical step.
With a treasure trove of qualitative data recorded, I moved to the analytical stage: transcription and analysis. Hours were spent meticulously transcribing every word, every pause, every nuance of these conversations. This painstaking process transformed audio files into a raw, textual landscape of feedback. I immersed myself in this data, coding responses, identifying recurring themes, and pinpointing unique suggestions. Was there a common pain point in the platform's user experience? A unanimous praise for a particular lecturer's methodology? A repeated suggestion for a new course topic? Patterns began to emerge from the individual stories. I synthesized these findings into a comprehensive report for the agency – a document that presented not just raw data, but a narrative of the Academy's strengths and opportunities for growth from its most valuable stakeholders.
This report then became the foundation for the next step: creating a quantitative survey. Using the rich, qualitative insights from the interviews, I designed a structured questionnaire for Yandex Forms. The goal was to validate our initial findings and gather feedback from a broader audience. We programmed the form with logic and precision, ensuring it was user-friendly and could capture the nuanced data we needed. The link was then distributed through the Academy's official mailing list, and we settled in for the long process of data collection – a waiting game that stretched beyond the end of my formal internship in July.
Just as I was settling into the new academic year in October, I received an unexpected but thrilling email from PR News. Impressed with the summer work, they offered me a freelance contract to complete the project. The data collection phase was over, and the survey had garnered a significant number of responses. My new task was to dive into this fresh dataset, analyze the quantitative results, and synthesize them with my earlier qualitative findings to produce a final set of strategic recommendations for the Academy's further development.
Returning to the project in October felt like reuniting with an old friend. I analyzed the survey data, cross-referencing percentages and statistics with the powerful quotes and stories from my interviews. The numbers gave weight to the anecdotes, and the stories gave soul to the numbers. My final deliverable was a presentation deck outlining concrete, actionable recommendations: potential new course topics suggested by the data, improvements to the learning platform's functionality, and insights into the marketing and communication strategies that would most resonate with their audience of busy professionals.
What made this experience truly invaluable was the environment at PR News. The management and my supervisors treated me not as an intern fetching coffee, but as a junior colleague with a valuable perspective. My opinions were heard, my analyses were taken seriously, and my contributions had a visible impact on a real, ongoing project. The communication was always professional, yet open and supportive. This culture of respect and mentorship is something I will carry with me throughout my career.
This journey from a summer intern to a freelance analyst was more than just a line on my CV. It was a practical immersion into the world of marketing research, a field that sits at the very heart of strategic communications. I learned how to build a research instrument from scratch, navigate the challenges of respondent engagement, and transform raw, chaotic human feedback into a clear, strategic roadmap. I saw firsthand how data – both the stories from interviews and the statistics from surveys – becomes the compass that guides development. My three weeks at PR News launched a professional relationship and provided me with a portfolio piece and a confidence that I am on the right path.
This foundational experience at PR News became the cornerstone of my professional confidence. It equipped me with a robust toolkit of research and analytical skills that I could proudly present to future employers. In fact, the very success of this project was a key talking point in my next application. Shortly after concluding my work with the Academy, I secured a highly competitive internship at VK, specifically within their Mail Cloud team. Now, I am directly applying the lessons I learned about audience insights and strategic communication to promote the new Mail Space subscription. It's a dynamic, real-world marketing challenge, and I am thriving. To all my fellow students hesitating, I urge you: actively seek out these opportunities. Be proactive, be curious, and embrace the challenge. An internship is more than a line on a resume, it's a supercharged leap into your future career, providing invaluable experience and a tangible sense of what you can truly achieve.
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