Every media database is a snapshot of where reporters stood the last time someone updated it, and good media relations depends on knowing where they stand today.
Say the database lists a reporter who covers energy at The Washington Post. You spend a couple of minutes on her byline page and find she moved to Bloomberg in the spring and now writes about policy, which means the pitch you were about to send is aimed at a beat she left months ago.
Databases save a lot of research time, and nobody should apologize for using one. But every record in them is just a starting point that needs checking, and reporters can tell when that step got skipped. Cision found that 86% of journalists say they reject pitches that don’t match their beat or audience, so the best use of technology in PR is to speed up the human judgment that decides who gets a pitch in the first place.
The hidden work behind a good media list
Anything that comes out of a database should be treated as a list of leads, and before anyone gets a pitch, someone must confirm the reporter is still at that outlet and pull up the reporter’s byline page to see their current title and beat. The step people tend to skip comes next. It involves sitting down with a handful of recent stories, since a bio can easily be two years out of date.
As you read, look at the kind of stories the reporter writes, whether that’s breaking news, longer features, data stories or executive commentary, and ask yourself whether the story you are pitching gives that journalist’s readers something worth their time.
This work happens long before anyone writes a subject line, and it’s where personalization starts. Good outreach depends on knowing whether this specific reporter, writing this kind of story right now, has a reason to care about the interview and story you’re proposing. You only get there by doing the research.
How big should the list be?
When clients hear us say “targeted,” some of them picture a short list, so we like to explain how list size follows the company’s situation. A newer company with little online presence often does better with a wide, carefully built mix of vertical, trade, regional and business outlets, since people need to discover it first. An established company going after category leadership or a sharper narrative may benefit from a shorter list of priority outlets.
In both cases, every outlet and every reporter on the list needs a specific reason to be there. Broad outreach works when each name has been chosen on purpose. That’s what separates a wide program from spray and pray.
We start by asking clients what kind of visibility will achieve the business goal they have right now. Their answer shapes how wide we go. From there, we track results against credibility, message pull-through, search visibility, outlet reach and executive positioning.
The human advantage in a faster PR world
Good tools take a lot of repetitive work off a team’s plate. Media monitoring, trend spotting, list discovery, coverage tracking and research organization all move faster than they used to, and good tools provide the opportunity to identify and react to the news cycle while a story is still developing. That’s why we use these tools every day and plan to keep doing so.
The part software can’t supply is judgment, since no tool can tell you whether an executive has a perspective worth printing or is repeating what everyone else says. A tool also won’t tell you whether a news hook is timely or forced, or how a reporter’s interests have shifted since their last big story.
The hardest call of all is knowing when to hold off on pitching, and making that call well probably saves more relationships than any software does. That thinking drives our data-centric pitching and category leadership work. It matters most in newsjacking, where a strong angle comes from someone who has read both the breaking story and the reporter covering it. The hours our tools save go straight back into developing stories and timing them for the right reporter.
Make each pitch earn its place
No technology will turn an outdated or generic contact list into a media program.
Before you approve outreach, ask your team why this reporter would want this story right now. If they can answer quickly, send it. If they can’t, the list needs more work.
