Journalist requests

A journalist request is an open call for sources. A reporter writing a story needs an expert quote, a case study, or specific data. They publish the request on a platform like HARO or SourceBottle, and sources who can answer it pitch themselves. If the journalist chooses your pitch, you get quoted in the article, and that article links back to your site.

This is a way to earn a backlink from a publication that has editorial standards. The link is given because you provided value to a story, not because you paid for it. The value of the link depends entirely on the publication's authority and relevance to your field.

You do this to get links from publications you cannot buy ads on. A link in a news article or a trade publication carries a different kind of authority than a directory listing. It is also a way to get your name and your business's perspective in front of a new audience.

The work is in reading the requests, which arrive as a daily digest, and deciding which ones you are qualified to answer. Most requests are not a fit. A request for a cybersecurity expert is not for a marketing consultant. A request for case studies about enterprise software deployments is not for a solopreneur. The filtering is the entire task.

Mentionry reads two public feeds of journalist requests: SourceBottle and Help a B2B Writer. For every request it finds, it runs a judgment. The model reads your business description and the request details. It decides whether you can honestly provide what is asked for. It is allowed to say no. When it says yes, it drafts a reply email for you to send.

The email is drafted into your own connected mailbox. You review it, edit it if you want, and send it from your own address. Replies land in your inbox, in a thread you own. Mentionry sends the pitch, but it cannot place the link. Whether a link appears is the journalist's decision.

The channel reads the two feeds named above. It does not read HARO or Source of Sources automatically. Those services email their queries directly to people who have subscribed. No tool can pull them from a public feed because no public feed exists. You can copy a query from your HARO email and paste it into Mentionry. It will be judged and drafted like any other opening.

The judgment model refuses requests your business cannot answer. It will not draft a pitch for a cybersecurity request if you run a bakery. It also refuses to draft pitches that offer payment for a link. If a request implies payment is expected, the draft will decline and state why paying for links that pass ranking signals violates search engine guidelines.

Mentionry will not place, publish, or guarantee a link. It sends a pitch from your mailbox. The outcome is not promised. It does not have a database of journalist contacts. It reads the bylines on articles about your subject to find reporters who already cover it, but that is a separate channel called earned coverage.

It does not replace HARO, Source of Sources, or Connectively. Those are separate platforms with their own user bases. HARO is still operating and is free for sources. Mentionry is a tool that reads some of the same public information those platforms use, judges it, and helps you reply. It is one channel of several, not a replacement for a dedicated request service.

Look at the competitors. HARO is free but requires you to read a digest. Qwoted's free plan allows two pitches a month with a two hour delay, so its real starting price is $149 per month. Featured.com covers journalist requests and more for $79 per month, but it does not find the links your competitors already have.

If you only want journalist requests and you want them cheap, use Featured.com or HARO directly. If you want journalist requests as part of a strategy that also finds resource pages, podcasts, and the links your competitors have, then this channel inside Mentionry is worth your time. In a measured run for one domain, Mentionry judged 40 opportunities from all channels and kept 14. The filtering is the product, not the volume.