Emilia Winter Rowland, 31, defended her encrypted influencer chats by attacking “legacy press” and wealthy media owners in a Friday X post, even as her own family fortune traces back to a major PR dynasty.
Rowland, who serves as Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s director of new media and cultural communications, fired off the broadside from her government post while drawing a $175,000 city salary. Her grandfather Herb Rowland founded The Rowland Company, which grew into the fifth-largest independent PR firm before its 1985 sale to London advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi, according to the outlet report. Both her parents work in media and consulting: father Daryl Rowland, a former TV writer for NBC’s “Mad About You” and the outlet blogger, now runs Rowland Consulting; mother Lisa DeBenedictis also works in consulting and writing per her LinkedIn. Her grandmother Joan Rowland, 100, occupies a $32 million condo on Central Park South near Billionaires’ Row.
“At a moment of profound distrust in politics, our job is not to preserve decades-old communications norms or protect the gatekeepers who once controlled access to public information,” Rowland wrote on X.
“The monopolization of the media has resulted in legacy press hemorrhaging readers and viewers, essential reporting often locked behind paywalls, and ownership increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of wealthy corporations and billionaires who exert their own editorial agendas over the news.”
The remarks came as the Times published fresh details about Rowland’s “NYC Creators Announcements” Signal group, first exposed by Columbia Journalism Review earlier in the week. The encrypted chat distributes press releases and talking points to roughly 250 influencers, who then flood social media with matching pro-Mamdani content. Rowland also runs smaller targeted chats, including one aimed at parenting influencers, the Times reported.
At least one chat was configured to auto-delete messages, a potential breach of state records laws requiring preservation of taxpayer-funded officials’ communications. City Hall has stonewalled repeated questions about the creator roster, selection criteria, and whether public funds paid influencers directly.
Press Secretary Dora Pekec took to X to dismiss what she called the “absurdity of this faux-scandal,” insisting the office merely shared press releases and pointing to one release distributed to both traditional journalists and influencers. She ignored multiple direct inquiries from a Post reporter, including a Friday request on social media itself, about who made the influencer list, how they were vetted, why messages were deleted, who approved unarchived Signal use, whether the city compensated creators, and how many other encrypted chats exist.
Anna Bahr, the mayor’s communications director and Rowland’s supervisor, also backed the influencer strategy while ducking transparency questions. “The way people get their news has changed! Government comms has to reflect that,” she posted on X. “Anything else would be irresponsible.”
The defense drew pushback from at least one journalist. “Look I like Mamdani but the contention that they’re more interested in working with influencers than journalists because the corporate media is too monopolized and paywalled or whatever is just obviously bad faith and presumes the public are idiots,” reporter Jacob Fuller posted on X.
Rowland joined Mamdani’s administration after managing influencers for his 2025 mayoral campaign, building on earlier stints at the Democratic National Committee and as press secretary for Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman’s 2022 campaign, per her LinkedIn. Her role now appears central to maintaining Mamdani’s social media presence as his administration faces sustained scrutiny over its backchannel communications operation.
Rowland did not return calls from The Post on Friday.