What Is a Press Clip in PR? Definition, Examples & Why It’s Essential in 2025

What Is a Press Clip in PR? Definition, Examples & Why It’s Essential in 2025

In public relations, results matter. Clients want to see proof that their investment is generating buzz, and that’s where press clips come in. But what exactly is a press clip, and why is it such a cornerstone of PR reporting today?

Press Clip Definition

A press clip is a record of media coverage that a brand, product, or spokesperson receives. Traditionally, this meant physically cutting out newspaper and magazine articles, literally “clipping” them.

Today, press clips are digital and can include:

• Online articles

• Print scans

• Broadcast mentions

• Podcast features

• Social media coverage

At its core, a press clip is tangible proof that your PR efforts landed, and it’s the foundation of how agencies and brands measure visibility.

Why Press Clips Still Matter

Even as PR evolves with AI and real-time analytics, clips remain essential because they:

• Archive Coverage: If an article is ever taken down or a link breaks, a clip preserves the story permanently.

• Deliver Visibility to Clients: Clean, branded PDFs with only the relevant parts of a story keep the spotlight on the client and make results easy to share internally or externally.

• Demonstrate ROI: They show clients exactly where and how they were featured.

• Measure Reputation: Positive, neutral, or negative mentions all shape public perception.

• Guide Strategy: Analyzing clips reveals which narratives resonate and where competitors are gaining ground.

• Build Credibility: For new brands, a strong clip portfolio establishes legitimacy.

• Support Reporting: Clips serve as a visual representation of secured press in weekly, monthly, or end-of-year reports, making it easy to showcase PR performance at a glance.

• Provide Proof of Work: They show the publicist’s direct impact by documenting every secured placement.

Without clips, PR wins are invisible.

Examples of Press Clips in Modern PR

Press clips go beyond glossy magazine features. Today’s PR coverage often includes:

• Digital News Outlets — Online articles on sites like Vogue, TechCrunch, or CNBC.

• Print Media — Scans of newspapers, trade publications, or specialty magazines.

• Broadcast — Mentions on TV or radio segments.

• Podcasts & Newsletters — Growing channels of influence.

• Social Media Mentions — Tweets from journalists, LinkedIn shoutouts, Instagram tags.

Each type of clip helps paint a complete picture of how a brand shows up in culture.

Traditional vs. Modern Clipping Methods

In the past, PR teams manually screenshotted press placements, dragging the elements into documents, scaling them, and saving as a PDF. Some teams would instead download the clip by “printing” the page, but the result was often messy, the clip included tabs, ads, and irrelevant page elements. Others even hired professional graphic designers to create visual clips. All of these methods were time-consuming, prone to errors, and frequently missed coverage.

Today, automated tools instantly capture, tag, and organize clips across multiple channels. This gives PR pros more time to focus on strategy and storytelling instead of spending hours tracking and formatting links.

How to Streamline Press Clipping in 2025

If you’re still piecing together clips manually, you’re losing hours each week. Modern PR requires a smarter approach.

That’s where Trace comes in.

• Instantly captures every mention of your brand.

• Generates both text-only and PDF clippings.

• Produces clean, client-ready PDFs highlighting only the relevant story sections.

• Organizes clips in shareable formats for quick visibility.

• Saves you hours of manual work every single week.

Whether you’re a solo publicist or part of an agency team, Trace ensures your hard-earned PR results are archived, packaged, and ready to impress. Imagine replacing the dreaded Friday afternoon ritual of screenshots and formatting: with Trace, you can generate a full weekly or monthly report in minutes, complete with clean visuals and ready-to-share PDFs.

Final Thoughts

Press clips may have started as literal cutouts, but in 2025 they remain the heartbeat of PR measurement. They validate your work, protect coverage from disappearing, and deliver polished visibility to clients.

And with automation tools like Trace, clipping is no longer a tedious chore, it’s a streamlined, effortless process.

Ready to save time and never miss a mention? Try Trace today and see how easy press clipping can be.