At META Advisory, we work every day to ensure our clients receive the best possible advice and support – and behind that is always our people. Over the coming months, we’ll introduce our consultants more closely: what they do, what they’ve done, and how they think.
Teele Tammeorg
You worked in journalism for six years and have spent the past ten years in communications. What has been the biggest change in the media landscape during that time? What no longer works, even though it did in journalism two years ago or vice versa?
I started out as a young reporter at Eesti Päevaleht in the summer of 2008. In some ways, it was still the heyday of print journalism: newspapers still published substantial weekend editions. At the same time, more experienced colleagues were having to accept unprecedented pay cuts, as we were in the middle of an unprecedented financial crisis. Back then, we talked about the recession constantly – it was the word on everyone’s lips. It is funny how completely that term has since faded from everyday use. People worried about the future of journalism then, as they had before and naturally still do today. Technically, a great deal has changed: far fewer print newspapers are published now, and most of us follow the news on our phones. I am not sure this development should be mourned too deeply. To be honest, not every story was worthy of paper and ink even then. Today, we are dealing with “AI slop”, but we also used to write plenty of poor-quality – and, in hindsight, rather absurd – stories ourselves. Producing content simply for the sake of producing more content has always been a problem. This is the pointless cycle we should try to break: we should favour quality and meaningful experiences over volume. That is hardly a new idea – it has been discussed for years, but it remains relevant.
One clear change over the past decade is the sheer number of communications channels and the even fiercer competition for attention. Each channel has its own logic, distinct audiences, and fairly clear rules for what kind of content works and what success looks like. Many things compete for people’s attention, and they are not limited to media outlets in the traditional sense. A shopping app can send us just as many updates as a news organisation, if we have allowed it to.
You can describe these developments in a very bleak way, predicting that no one will be able to focus anymore, manage their own lives, or maintain social cohesion and mutual understanding. But there is also a more optimistic view. Human beings are naturally curious: we experiment, explore and push boundaries. Socially, every strong movement in one direction tends to be followed by a correction in the other. If we grow tired of AI slop and pushy shopping platforms, we may begin to avoid them and leave them behind. We may remember what genuinely brings us joy and what we actually want to spend our time on. Both time and attention are limited, exhaustible resources.
Journalism tends to attract people who are curious, creative and motivated to make the world better. Storytelling and making sense of the world around us are still at the core of journalism. We need to get better at distinguishing what matters from what does not. In communications, we should stop chasing volume and focus on achieving impact instead. How? By identifying what matters, putting real effort into it, and avoiding both AI-generated and human-made slop. Unlike in the past, one of the key risks today is fatigue: there is simply too much content, and too much of it feels repetitive. In the attention economy, we need to work more carefully and sustainably, rather than wasting resources without achieving results.
“Producing content simply for the sake of producing more content has always been a problem. This is the pointless cycle we should try to break: we should favour quality and meaningful experiences over volume.”
What is your greatest strength? If someone looks at Meta Advisory today and thinks “I need a professional’s help with this one particular area,” what would be the area in which you are completely in your element?
I believe that in communications, it is important to be curious, to notice things, and to make observations about life and society. The next step is to connect those observations with knowledge and to work iteratively. It is also important to keep your skills sharp by continuing to write, draft, develop ideas and discuss them – not simply by becoming better at writing prompts. I see these as my strengths, and I work continuously to develop them further. One practical area in which I have supported dozens of clients is preparing spokespeople for public appearances and media interviews.
Looking ahead: there is a lot of speculation about whether Gen Z and younger generations will consume traditional media at all in the future. What do you think? If the role of a communications agency today is largely based on media relations, what will become of PR agencies in the future?
I am not sure it is useful anymore to draw a sharp distinction between “traditional” media and everything else. What matters more is having the basic skills to read and understand all kinds of text, visual content and iconography. This includes source criticism – and, presumably, prompting skills as well. Prompting can quite reasonably be understood as the ability to formulate research questions and delegate tasks thoroughly.
If we are talking about high-quality news media and journalism, it can function and thrive across different platforms. In the current attention economy, that is certainly not easy. But journalism has never been especially profitable. It is worth remembering that the earliest newspapers, centuries ago, were primarily paid advertisements and notices; texts later emerged to fill the gaps, and those texts eventually came to be seen as essential to the functioning of democracy.
Public and community debate can take place on social media too – why not? At times, it resembles the ancient Greek agora, where people show up in public under their own names and faces. What concerns me is the consumerist, overly individualistic content that thrives on social media, as well as the endless stream of mindless content that does nothing to make people better informed, wiser or more fulfilled.
I would not want to place the entire burden on schools, as we often do, but I believe Estonian schools do a very good job of broadening children’s and young people’s horizons and diversifying their media choices. I think many parents consider these issues too, and hopefully discuss them with their children. In my view, Estonians cannot really be accused of lacking traditions.
In communications, we should certainly avoid becoming too medium-specific. The point is to support a company, institution or organisation in its role in society more broadly. At different times, this may mean using different media and channels skilfully. It may mean organising events, working in government relations, or creating all kinds of tailored solutions – things that should no longer seem particularly “special” to us. Perhaps every new development is, in some sense, a forgotten old one. For example, AI-generated search summaries and our new habit of asking everything from “the chat” may make it more important than ever to invest in high-quality content on owned channels, to nurture and involve your core community on social media, and to avoid relying too heavily on chatbots.
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