How to pitch journalists
This guide explains how to find the right reporters, write a pitch they will open, and handle the follow-up. It is written for a technical founder or marketing lead who has been ignored before.
- Length
- 7 min read · 1,545 words
- Sections
- 9
- Questions
- 4 answered
On this page9 sections
What you need before you start
You need a specific piece of news. A product launch, a significant funding round, a proprietary study with a clear finding, or a expert opinion on a breaking news event are all valid. 'We exist and we are great' is not news. Your goal is to provide a reporter with a story their audience will want.
You also need a clear understanding of your own narrative. What is the one sentence you want a reader to remember? If you are a database company announcing a new feature, the news is not 'faster queries'. It is 'eliminating the trade off between speed and cost for real time analytics'. Frame the benefit to the user, not the specification.
Finding the right journalist
Search for recent articles about your competitors or the problem you solve. Use search operators. For a company making project management software for architects, you would search Google for 'site:techcrunch.com "project management" architects' and look at the bylines. The journalist who wrote that article six months ago is a better target than the generic tech editor.
Examine the publication's beat page or the journalist's own bio. A reporter who covers 'enterprise SaaS' is a broad target. One whose bio says 'I cover how software is changing the construction industry' is precise. The latter is your target. If you cannot find a recent, relevant article from a reporter, they are not a good fit. Do not pitch them.
What disqualifies a target
Some signals mean you should not send the pitch. If the journalist's Twitter bio or recent articles express clear frustration with pitches in your category, skip them. If their last article on your subject was more than eighteen months ago, they may have changed beats. If the publication has a formal submissions process documented on a 'write for us' page, use that process instead of a direct email.
The most common disqualifier is relevance. A tech reporter at a general news outlet might cover large platform companies. Pitching them your niche B2B tool is a waste of their time and yours. Be brutally honest about whether your story fits the publication's content and the reporter's documented interests.
Writing the subject line
The subject line must be specific and honest. It should signal the story's relevance to the reporter's beat. 'Pitch: [Your Company] launches X to solve Y for [Audience]' is a functional template. For the architect software example, it could be 'Pitch: Bricklayer PM launches cost tracking tool for small architecture firms'. Avoid words like 'amazing', 'groundbreaking', or 'exclusive' unless you have a genuine exclusive.
Test the subject line by asking if a colleague could guess the reporter's beat from it. 'News from Bricklayer' fails. 'A new tool for architect project budgets' passes. Keep it under ten words. The goal is to get the email opened, not to tell the whole story.
Structuring the email body
Open with a single sentence that shows you read their work. 'I saw your article on the adoption of BIM software in small practices and thought you might be interested in a new tool addressing the cost overruns you mentioned.' This establishes relevance immediately.
The next paragraph states your news plainly. 'Today we launched BudgetTrack, a module within Bricklayer PM that automatically forecasts project costs against original estimates. It flags discrepancies the moment a material order is logged.' Explain what it is and why it matters.
Offer a concrete next step. 'I can arrange a brief demo with our founder, who is a licensed architect. We also have a one page summary and three small firm owners who are beta testers available for interview.' Make it easy for them to say yes. Close with a standard signature. The entire email should be readable without scrolling on a mobile phone.
What not to include
Do not attach press releases, PDFs, or images. Link to a press page on your website if you must. Do not write 'I know you are busy'. Do not use hyperbolic language. Do not make the email about your company's journey. Do not include more than one link. Do not hide the ask in the third paragraph. The core news must be in the first screen of text.
Never send a pitch that requires the journalist to understand your industry jargon. Translate every term. 'Our new idempotent write API' becomes 'a new way for developers to send data that prevents accidental duplicates'. If you cannot explain it simply, you are not ready to pitch it.
Realistic response rates and follow up
A good, targeted pitch to a well researched journalist might get a 5 to 10 percent response rate. A response can be a 'not for me', a request for more information, or an interview booking. If you send twenty pitches and get one positive response, that is a successful campaign. Volume is not the goal. Precision is.
If you hear nothing after five business days, you may send one follow up email. Forward your original pitch and add a single line at the top. 'Wanted to bump this to the top of your inbox in case it was buried.' Do not add new information or ask if they received it. If there is no reply to the follow up, the answer is no. Remove that journalist from your list for this story.
When nobody replies
If you send fifty pitches and get zero replies, the problem is not the follow up. The problem is the list, the news, or the pitch. Go back to the first step. Is your news actually news? Did you target reporters with proven recent interest? Does your subject line clearly connect to their beat? Is the email body about their readers' problems?
Sometimes the story is not ready for external coverage. In that case, shift your effort to other channels, like contributed articles or speaking at industry conferences. You can return to media pitching when you have a stronger narrative or a new data point.
How software can assist
The most time consuming part of this process is the research. Finding every journalist who has written about your competitors in the last year is a manual search task. Some tools automate this discovery. For example, Mentionry runs an engine that finds reporters who have covered your competitors and drafts a personalized pitch based on the specific article they wrote. The draft is written into your Gmail and sent from there. The tool sends it from your own connected mailbox.
Using a tool changes the workflow from 'search, evaluate, write' to 'evaluate, edit'. You still must judge each journalist for fit and rewrite the draft to match your voice. The software handles the repetitive finding and the first draft of the personalization line, which is the most tedious part to write manually.
Questions people actually ask
How long should a media pitch email be?
A pitch should be as short as it can be while still containing the necessary information. In practice, this is almost always between 100 and 200 words. The entire message should be visible without scrolling on a smartphone screen. If you need more space, you are trying to say too much in the initial contact. Put the details in a linked press page or offer to provide them in a follow up.
Is it better to pitch a journalist or the publication's general editorial email?
Always pitch a specific journalist. The general inbox is for press releases and announcements that anyone can use. A pitch is a story suggestion tailored to one person's expertise. A journalist who gets a pitch that shows knowledge of their work is far more likely to engage. The only exception is if the publication's guidelines explicitly state to use a general form for story submissions.
What is the best day and time to send a pitch?
There is no universally perfect time. A common strategy is to send pitches early in the morning on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, avoiding Monday mornings and Friday afternoons. The more important factor is relevance. A perfectly timed irrelevant pitch is still spam. A relevant pitch sent at an odd hour will still be seen when the journalist clears their inbox.
Should I call a journalist to follow up on my email pitch?
No. Do not call a journalist unless you have an existing relationship or they have explicitly invited you to call. The standard channel is email. A phone call is an interruption and is rarely welcomed. Your follow up should also be a single email, sent once, if you receive no reply to your initial pitch.
Run this against your own domain
Give it a domain and it works out who you compete with, mines the pages that link to them and not to you, judges every opening one at a time, and writes the email, the form or the reply. It sends them from your own mailbox, so the replies come to you.
Find out what your domain is missing
Qualifying a domain is free and it is the honest first question: some sites have a pool worth mining and some have nothing to mine and everything to earn. Run that first.
One plan. There is no cheaper rung with things taken out of it.
- Both engines, all fourteen channels
- Every opening judged one at a time, with the reason kept
- The email, the form or the reply drafted for each one
- Sent from your own mailbox, so the replies come to you
- Nine connectors that need no key and no account of yours
- Marketplaces and paid placements filtered out, twice