If you work in PR, you’re likely among the 50,000+ subscribe to Ragan.com’s PR Daily e-mail newsletter (and if you aren’t, you should be). Editor Michael Sebastian and his team put together the best links to PR-related articles and blog posts from around the web each day — with plenty of fun and snarky commentary added, free of charge. I’ve often wondered how he does it, and Michael agreed to give me the inside scoop on how PR Daily happens:

Tell me a little bit about your background and how you got involved in PR.

I worked in journalism—newspapers, magazines, book research—and took a job with Ragan in January 2007 to be part of its maiden Web editorial staff. So, I started covering the corporate communications industry—PR, marketing, internal comms, speechwriting, and the emerging world of social media. (I wrote a weekly column for Ragan about the corporate blogosphere called Blog Dogger—not my choice for the name. I wanted to call it Bloggy Style, but the powers-that-be nixed it.)

I digress.

At nearly the same time, we launched MyRagan.com, which at the time was pretty groundbreaking. It was the first social network for the industry. I was—and continue to be—the managing editor of the site.

In 2008, I started writing Ragan’s PR Junkie blog and the success of that spawned PR Daily, which we began developing in December 2008. It launched in March 2009. The audience is a mix of PR professionals—corporate, agency (big and small), and independent or freelance pros—marketing pros, internal communicators, members of the media professionals, and social media enthusiasts. It’s grown, steadily. We also saw a spike in traffic when we incorporated the share buttons below each item.

How do you go about curating articles for inclusion in PR Daily?

I wouldn’t say it’s a process, more like controlled chaos!

Currently, the site is updated twice daily—at midnight Central Time (when the page turns over from the previous day) and around 9 or 10 a.m. CT. The stuff that goes live at midnight is the previous day’s late breaking news and the evergreen how-to items. The morning update is meant to reflect what’s in the morning papers.

Of course, this news is directly or indirectly related to the PR industry. So, first thing I do each morning is check my e-mail, and I go right for the dozen or so e-mail newsletters I receive. These e-newsletters cover PR and advertising, general news, and gossip. Then I see what the PR Daily contributors have sent. That’s where I start. From there I check The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, then I head over to Twitter to see what’s going on.

The e-mail alerts, the write-ups and heads-ups (is that the plural of “heads-up”? Sounds weird.) from the PR Daily contributors, and what’s in the NYT, WSJ, and on Twitter give me a pretty good feeling for what’s going on. After that I’ll visit some blogs to see their take on things and check if there’s under-the-radar stuff I’ve missed.

As a side note, people often ask if I subscribe to RSS feeds. I do, but I hardly use them. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to remember my RSS passwords. Do they even take passwords? See, that’s how removed I am from RSS. Twitter is my new RSS reader.

What do you look for when determining whether or not an article/post should be included in PR Daily?

The items must have some connection to PR. Of course, one could argue that almost everything has to do with PR—and it’s a valid argument—but if you subscribe to that too closely—as an editor, at least—then next thing you know you’re just scraping the top headlines from the Times and giving it a little topspin. PR Daily readers don’t want that.

In addition to being PR-related, stories should be useful (and by that I’m mainly referring to tip sheets and how-tos), interesting (survey results fit this bill), sexy (company X gets into a PR mess—that kind of thing), or just bizarre—a plum, as we call them—such as, “11 notes written to thieves.” True, that has nothing to do with PR, but damn that one was funny.

You’ve been adding team members recently. What are their roles and how do you manage this growing team?

They [the team] are all remote, so they send me stuff throughout the day, though usually the stuff comes in late at night or early in the morning. If it’s timely, I make sure it runs that day; if they send an evergreen item—you know, 10 tips for Facebook, or something—then I might hold it if things are getting tight that morning.

I’ll also say that when contributors join the PR Daily roster they often grow into more than just writers for the website. For instance, Jackson Wightman—the first PR Daily contributor, and a very funny French Canadian (don’t hold it against him)—just took part in a webinar for PR Daily and he’ll be doing more in the future.

Susan Young, a veteran reporter and PR pro in Dallas, is developing a super-top-secret project for Ragan. Matthew Royse, a man bursting with knowledge and enthusiasm about PR and social media (seriously, this guy loves talking about social media), has worked with Ragan on other projects, too. Recently, we just added Claire Celsi, a PR pro in Des Moines, Iowa, to the roster. She’s a great writer—and prolific, knowledgeable, talented.

Clearly, I’m a fan of the contributors.

The fulltime editorial staff at Ragan is wonderful, too. Roula Amire, the managing editor of Ragan.com, is my rock; Rob Reinalda, the executive editor at Ragan, is my guru; Jessica Levco, Ragan’s healthcare editor, is my comic relief.

All great people to work with.

There are several PR-related daily newsletters (PRSA, SmartBrief on Social Media, etc.). How do you differentiate PR Daily and make it valuable to your audience?

My boss, Mark Ragan, gave me carte blanche to create PR Daily. He trusted my vision and my voice for the project, and he’s supported me in that ever since.

I look at PR Daily as the bastard child of Gawker and Open Forum. News, advice, oddities, trends, humor, and most of all, VOICE. Beside the content, PR Daily has voice.

Reading industry publications—online or off—is important, but it can also feel tedious, like it’s part of your job, like you’d much rather be reading that US Weekly, Elle, or Esquire, but you have to read this industry pub first.

I know PR Daily will never compete with a mainstream pub or gossip blog in terms of peoples’ attentions, but I also want them to look forward to PR—to learn something useful and interesting, laugh, and share it with their friends or network. I also hope it attracts people to an industry publication who may have never read one in the past.

And really, what I’m doing is an extension of the Ragan brand; it’s been approaching industry publications in this manner since the company launched in 1969.

The future is all about growth! We’re expanding to Europe; we’re going to continue to grow staff; we’re going to increase the frequency of the updates on the site; and we’re developing Smartphone and iPad apps.

What big changes do you see on the horizon for PR practitioners in 2010? What is the biggest challenge they will face?

Content. Creation.

This is something my boss, Mark Ragan, was talking about years ago and you’re really seeing it happen now, particularly at larger agencies. The gaping hole left by newsroom cuts–and the new ethos of online journalism (key words, gossip, et cetera)–has given companies a chance to produce news and content.

If the reporters covering an industry are getting laid off–or getting shuffled to other parts of the newsroom–then companies should create their own content. And I don’t mean in press release form. I mean in the same way you’d see an article appear on The Huffington Post, with art, video maybe, and, most of all, voice—and not the stuffy corporate kind. If the content is good, people will visit, say, General Electric’s sponsored news page to read news and opinion. It creates another point of contact with consumers.

And don’t get me wrong, I know critics might toss around the word Orwellian. That’s a valid concern. Last thing we want is for companies to report on news without an independent media validating that stuff. I suppose I see it more in the way professional sports teams kick out content. Head over to any professional team’s website and you’ll find a professional writer/reporter–usually a very talented one–writing articles and curating content about the team.

Anyway, someone’s going to need fill that gap for companies and brands. Why not PR?