What’s Your Success Rate Pitching to Journalists?

As a Comms or PR professional, what is your success rate at pitching stories to journalists? A study by Muck Rack on the State of Journalism 2023 provides insight into the criteria for pitching stories to journalists and getting them produced and published.

When asked ‘Why do you immediately reject otherwise relevant pitches?’ journalists indicated the following reasons: lack of personalisation (24%), bad timing (22%), other (21%), confusing subject line (17%), too lengthy (13%) and large attachments (3%).

Lack of personalisation could mean that the Comms or PR professionals have not spent enough time to get personal and relevant beat information before making their pitches. Sometimes, reporters have changed their beats, but still receive pitches related to their previous beats. In fact, about a quarter of “other” responses indicate receiving pitches unrelated to their beats. I still get news releases in my emails although I have not worked directly in media for 10 years.

Bad timing can also spoil the chances of a story pitch being accepted by a journalist. How can Comms or PR gauge the timing? Based on a journalist’s beat, it is obvious when the season is busy or the time is inopportune. Don’t try to pitch a local sports story in the middle of The Olympic Games or World Cup Soccer. Or don’t try to pitch a local environmental story while a major hurricane is in progress. Of course, viewed differently, such ordinary story ideas can gain news value if properly located in the wider events or news.

 Are journalists utilising the pitches?

Most of the 2,226 journalists surveyed across the world receives up to five pitches per day, and one in four journalists indicate half or more of their stories are derived from pitches. Further, a majority say they produce a quarter of their stories from pitches. Only about one in four journalists say none of their stories come from pitches, according to the Muck Rack study.

 What makes a story shareable?

Journalists responded to this survey questions as follows:

Subject connected to a trending story -69%

Contains an image or infographic -63%

Exclusive and/or surprising data -54%

Easily localised/made relevant to your target audience -47%

Contains a video -24%

Brevity -20%

Involves a relevant social media influencer -12%

Quotes from a company spokesperson -10%

The researchers noted that localisation (47%) was less important for shareability compared to the finding for last year (54%).

The State of Journalism 2023 study also sheds light on the preferred sources for journalists. Academic experts top the list of credible sources identified by journalists as follows:

Academic subject matter experts -80%

CEOs -62%

Company PR professionals -49%

Agency PR professionals -35%

Social media personalities/influencers -19%

Celebrity spokespeople -15%

Bloggers -14%

Self-appointed subject matter experts -12%

None of the above -7%

 Of note, CEOs, although second on the list of preferred news sources, are nearly 20 points below academicians.

 The survey of 2,226 journalists was conducted from January 4th to February 6th, 2023, with margin of error +/- 2.4%. Most responses came from U.S.-based journalists. Asia, Africa and Europe were well represented.

Preferred Sources for Journalists