Many businesses approach press coverage the wrong way. They write a press release about something lacking news value, blast it to a list of journalists they have never interacted with, and wonder why nobody covers them. Getting real press coverage requires understanding what journalists need and making yourself useful to them.
We help clients secure placements in publications ranging from local newspapers to national outlets. Here is what we have learned about what works, starting with the most effective strategy we use.
The journalist newsletter strategy
This is the approach we recommend to clients. It consistently produces strong results over time. Build an email newsletter list of journalists who cover your industry.
Identify 20 to 50 journalists who regularly write about your industry, your market, or topics related to your business. Read their work. Understand what they cover and what angles interest them. Subscribe to their newsletters if they have them. Follow them on social media. Get to know their beat. Tools like Muck Rack and Cision maintain searchable databases of journalists organized by beat, outlet, and recent article history.
Then start a simple email newsletter. Avoid company newsletters full of product updates and self-congratulation. Instead, share genuinely useful insights about your industry. Include original data, contrarian takes, and expert analysis of trends they are likely covering. Provide things a journalist would find valuable when they are researching their next story.
When your business or industry is in the news, drop a note to your journalist list with a quote and a take. Provide value rather than a pitch or an ask for coverage. Try something like "I saw the news about [industry development]. Here is our take on what it means for [relevant stakeholders]. If you are interested in more, hit reply." That is it.
Lead with value. The journalists who find your insights useful will start to see you as a source. They will reply. They will ask for quotes on future stories. They will reach out when they are working on something in your space. This builds real media relationships, and real media relationships produce real press coverage. This approach aligns with guidance published in Columbia Journalism Review and Poynter. Both publications note that journalists prioritize sources who demonstrate sustained subject-matter expertise.
How this works in practice. A business owner who starts a twice-monthly newsletter with commentary on local development trends might catch the attention of a regional reporter. A single quote on a zoning change can turn into a full profile. That profile can lead to inbound calls from other reporters over the next year. This happens without pitching anyone. When you write useful material, the relationships build themselves.
This strategy turns business owners who have zero media presence into go-to sources for reporters in their industry. It takes time, but the coverage it produces is genuine, editorial, and highly valuable.
What actually makes news
Before you pitch anyone, you need to understand what journalists consider newsworthy. Many businesses struggle here. A new product launch, company anniversary, or new VP hire rarely makes news on its own.
Relevance to a broader story makes news. If your new product solves a problem currently in the public conversation, you have an angle. If your company data reveals a trend affecting an industry or consumer group, you have a story. If your expertise explains something complicated happening in the news right now, you offer value. Pew Research Center's newspaper industry fact sheet documents that U.S. newsroom employment fell significantly between 2008 and 2020. The trend continues. Fewer reporters covering more beats means journalists depend heavily on external sources for expertise and data. This presents an opportunity for businesses willing to provide it.
Journalists look for stories their readers care about. Instead of trying to convince them to care about your company, show them how your data or expertise connects to something their readers already care about.
How to pitch effectively
When you pitch a journalist, keep it short. Use three to four sentences maximum for the initial email. The subject line should communicate the story angle rather than your company name. The body should explain why this story matters to their audience, what makes it different, and what you can offer them.
Personalize every pitch. Reference something the journalist has recently written. Show that you read their work and that your pitch is relevant to what they cover. A generic pitch sent to 200 journalists usually gets ignored. A personalized pitch sent to 10 journalists who actually cover your space has a much better chance of getting a response. Cision's annual State of the Media survey repeatedly finds that relevance to the reporter's beat is the most important factor in determining whether a pitch gets engagement. Academic research backs this up. A 2016 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly study on source selection found that journalists weight topical relevance and established expertise heavily.
Time your pitches around news cycles. If something relevant is happening in your industry right now, reach out. Journalists working on a breaking story actively look for sources and angles. If you can be useful to them in that moment, you improve your chances of getting coverage.
Using HARO, Connectively, and response platforms
If you lack relationships with journalists in your space, responsive platforms like Connectively (formerly HARO) and Qwoted offer a way to get quoted. Journalists post queries looking for sources. You respond with a concise, on-topic quote and your credentials. The response rate is low, but the queries are real and the quotes often appear in national outlets.
The discipline to make these work involves responding only to queries directly relevant to your expertise. Keep responses under 200 words. Lead with the quote itself rather than a company pitch. Include a one-line credential. Include a working cell phone number if the journalist needs to verify on deadline. Many responses get ignored because people pitch their company instead of answering the question the journalist asked.
Why pay-to-play is usually a waste
An entire industry exists around selling press coverage that is actually paid placement. This includes sponsored posts, contributed articles on sites that publish anyone who pays, and press release distribution services that put your announcement on hundreds of websites.
There are situations where a strategically placed contributed article provides value. You should understand what you are buying. Paid placements lack the weight of earned media. They do not help with Wikipedia notability because they are not independent sources per Wikipedia's reliable source guidelines. They do not build real relationships with journalists. Search engines and AI systems are getting better at distinguishing earned coverage from paid content. Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines specifically flag sites that exist primarily to publish sponsored or low-quality content as signals of reduced trustworthiness.
If you spend money on press coverage, spend it on building the relationships and creating the stories that lead to real editorial coverage. This provides lasting value. Real editorial coverage also feeds your AI search visibility and helps you rank in Google.
The long game
Getting meaningful press coverage requires sustained effort that compounds over time. Each piece of genuine coverage makes the next one easier. Journalists who quote you once are more likely to come back. Publications that cover you develop familiarity with your story. The backlog of real coverage you build becomes an asset that supports everything else you do, from SEO to investor relations to Wikipedia page creation.
The compounding effect. A founder who spends six months answering two or three Connectively queries a week with short, useful quotes might see nothing for the first few months. Eventually, those efforts can generate placements in trade publications and business sites. Over time, reporters start reaching out directly. The compounding effect of editorial coverage is real, and it takes time to materialize.
Businesses that start with zero press coverage can eventually get inbound requests from journalists. This happens when they commit to being useful to the media over time and build real relationships with the people who cover their industry.
Getting started
If you are starting from zero, here is what to do this week. Make a list of 20 journalists who cover your industry. Read their last five articles each. Set up a simple spreadsheet with their names, outlets, beats, and contact information. Start thinking about what you know that they would find useful.
If you want professional help building a press coverage strategy, our press placement service covers everything from journalist identification and relationship building to pitch development and ongoing media outreach. You may also find our guides on writing a press release and press release distribution useful as you develop your approach.
Related resources
- How to write a press release, Create compelling press materials journalists will cover
- Startup PR strategy, DIY press approach for early-stage companies
- Press release distribution, Get your announcements to the right outlets
- Wikipedia notability, Press coverage builds your credibility foundation
By the numbers: what the data says about press coverage today
The structural reality facing journalists makes your timing as a potential source better than it has been in decades. According to the Pew Research Center journalism portal, U.S. newsroom employment has dropped significantly over the past two decades. Fewer reporters are now responsible for more beats, more platforms, and faster publication cycles. That compression means a reporter covering commercial real estate is also expected to post on social media, file for the website, and appear on a podcast. They lack the time to find expert sources from scratch. If you have already built a relationship and demonstrated expertise, you fill a gap they genuinely need filled.
The Muck Rack State of Journalism report notes that most journalists prefer email contact. Personalized pitches referencing specific past work are rated significantly more effective than mass-distributed press releases. The same report indicates that the average journalist receives dozens of pitches per week and responds to very few of them. This highlights a targeting problem. Businesses that spend six months building a relationship through a useful newsletter avoid pitching into a cold inbox. They send a note to someone who already reads their work. The response rate in that context improves. The Cision State of the Media Report corroborates this, noting that a vast majority of journalists say the most important thing a source can do is understand their beat and tailor outreach accordingly. Relevant outreach works best.
Beyond volume and targeting, credibility signals matter. The Poynter Institute's reporting and editing resources emphasize that journalists are trained to verify sources before quoting them. A findable, consistent digital footprint lowers the friction of that verification. A business owner whose name appears in previous articles, whose LinkedIn profile is current, and whose website contains genuine thought leadership on their industry will be quoted faster than a source a reporter cannot easily confirm. Press coverage compounds. Each placement makes the next one easier to get because it adds to a verifiable public record.
All of this data points to the same conclusion. Getting press coverage requires being the most useful, credible, and accessible expert in your space when a reporter needs one. Businesses that build that position systematically consistently outperform those that treat media relations as a one-off campaign. The data and the experience of reporters back this up.
How sustained outreach works in practice
Consider how this works for a regional business. A local service provider with deep knowledge of industry policy and practical realities can frame that knowledge for journalists. By launching a plain-text email newsletter sent to reporters covering their sector, they share data-backed commentary. They avoid product promotions and calls to action. Instead, they offer insights from someone who sees the numbers firsthand. Over time, reporters reach out for background on industry stories. The business owner provides detailed context, gets quoted prominently, and becomes identified as a local expert. This often leads to more regional and national placements. None of these placements require pitching. The inbound leads attributed to press coverage eventually increase, showing the value of sustained media relationships.