Media Relations

What a reporter actually wants from a pitch

Marcus Voss

4 min read

Sep 8, 2026

A handwritten pitch outline with a pen, a sticky note and a folded newspaper

Not a press release rewritten as an email. A specific angle they couldn’t get anywhere else.

Before Halloran, I ran communications in-house at two public companies, which meant I spent a lot of time on the phone with the reporters our agencies were pitching. They were candid about what landed. On a typical day, a business reporter gets somewhere between 50 and 200 pitches. They open a handful. They reply to one or two.

The pitches that get replies are rarely the ones with the biggest news. They’re the ones that make the reporter’s job easier.

Start with their story, not yours

Every reporter has a beat, a set of running stories they’re following, and an editor asking what’s next. The best pitch connects your news to something they’re already working on.

“We raised a Series C” is your story. “Payment data from 40,000 small businesses shows cash-flow gaps widening in three sectors, and here’s the company that can see it” is theirs. It gives them an angle, a data point and a reason to call you rather than cover it in two lines.

Before pitching anyone, we read their last ten pieces. If we can’t explain in one sentence why our story belongs next to those, we don’t send it.

Specific beats general, every time

Reporters can spot a mass email in the first line. Mail merge, a generic greeting, a subject line that could apply to anyone: all of these tell them the sender didn’t think about them specifically.

A good pitch is short and specific:

One sentence on why this matters to their readers
The news, stated plainly
What you can offer that nobody else can: data, access, a named source, an exclusive
When it’s embargoed until, if it is

That’s usually under 150 words. Anything longer belongs in a follow-up, if they ask.

Access is worth more than adjectives

Reporters don’t need to be told something is “innovative” or “industry-leading”. They need someone who can explain it on the record, with real numbers, before their deadline.

The most valuable thing you can offer is a senior person who will answer questions directly. The second most valuable is data they can’t get elsewhere. Neither costs anything except preparation.

Offer the reporter something they’d be annoyed to miss, and then make it easy to use.

Timing is part of the pitch

A good story sent at the wrong moment is a bad pitch. Reporters work to predictable rhythms: weekly features are planned days ahead, daily news is decided that morning, and big set-piece weeks, like results season or a major conference, crowd everything else out.

Before sending anything, ask when this reporter would actually have room for it. A trend piece pitched on the Friday before a quiet week will often do better than a stronger story pitched into a crowded Tuesday. And if your news is tied to a date you control, such as a launch or an announcement, give the reporters you care about most enough notice to plan, not just to react.

Make the follow-up useful

One follow-up is fine. Three is not. The follow-up that works adds something: a new data point, a customer who’s agreed to talk, a reason the story matters more this week than last. “Just checking you saw my email” adds nothing, and reporters notice.

If there’s no reply after one useful follow-up, move on. Silence usually means not now, rather than never, and the reporter will remember that you respected their inbox.

Respect the relationship after the story

What happens after publication matters as much as the pitch. Don’t ask for changes to a fair piece because you’d have phrased it differently. Correct factual errors quickly and politely. Say thank you. And don’t disappear until your next announcement.

The reporters we work with most closely are the ones we’ve helped when we had nothing to sell: pointing them to a source, explaining a technical point, or telling them honestly when a story isn’t one.