Don’t take my word for it. This is what 2,700 journalists said about how to attract their attention

My articles about how to share your news with the media are mostly based on my own observations from 30 years in the business.

They are the advice of one person – albeit one person who has seen many thousands of press releases and written more stories I care to contemplate.

My conversations with fellow journalists tell me that I’m not often alone in my opinions. But I still appreciate any opportunity to check my own findings against wider research. So I was interested to see a survey of some 2,700 journalists in 15 countries about the kind of stories they are looking for.

The Cision State of the Media Study

I’m grateful to the excellent Australian podcaster, author and marketer Trevor Young for alerting me to Cision's 12th annual Global State of the Media report*.

Cision’s research covered a lot of ground – and it reminded me that many journalists worldwide face much more severe problems than an inbox overflowing with spammy press releases. Censorship, post-truth, accusations of bias, the challenges of responding to societal changes and the Covid pandemic were among those.

But about those overflowing inboxes…

Cision found journalists were doing a lot of work. Nearly a third said they file 10 or more stories a week – and I was surprised that figure wasn’t higher. (In regional UK newspapers, you’d have to be writing a lot more than that to be carrying your weight. And you’d be uploading the stories, promoting them online and quite often taking pictures and putting the text on the printed page.)

But the survey found that the public relations industry was not always helping as much as it might.

The key takeaways

There are a lot of good insights in the Cision report. You can download the whole thing here in return for leaving some personal details.

Here are the key points that chimed with me.

1. There’s a lot of spam out there

“Journalists are both overwhelmed and underwhelmed by pitches. PR pros need to build highly targeted media lists. More than 1 in 4 journalists receive over 100 pitches per week with most ending up in the virtual trash due to irrelevance.”

I hate to say it, but this rings true to me.

Fortunately, I receive material regularly from PR people who know me, know the publications I write for, and who even talk to me on the phone on a regular basis. Their material rarely misses the mark.

But outside this network are the senders of poorly targeted news which is being sent out in identical form to journalists all over the UK or all over the world.

Yet if a lot of the material journalists receive is uninspired or irrelevant, that means a reporter is all the more likely to seize on the good stuff when they spot it.

2. Journalists know what people are reading

I wrote here about how online metrics were giving journalists detailed, real-time information about what kind of stories the public likes.

Cision says:

“Fifty-nine per cent of journalists agree that the availability of detailed audience metrics … has changed the way they evaluate stories. Many are focusing on stories that will generate the most traffic and shares across social media and other distribution channels...

Would your story give people pause when scrolling through their social feeds? Is there a compelling data point, a strong point of view, interesting commentary?”

3. Journalists need relevant material

Cision was told by 61 per cent of its respondents that PR people could help by understanding what was relevant to them.

“Ninety-nine per cent of those emailing me have never even read a story I wrote. I don’t expect every single pitch to be relevant, but if you have no idea of my beat, you’re just spamming me,” one journalist said.

There’s an opportunity here. With so much irrelevant or uninspiring material coming at them, journalist will bite your hand off for a genuinely relevant story that is likely to appeal to significant numbers of readers.

That could come from a PR agency, it could come from the in-house person doing your marketing, or it could come from a sole trader with a flair for communicating their views. As the report says:

“With fragmented news consumption and increased competition for eyeballs, journalists are closely evaluating whether a story idea has the ‘it factor’ that will translate into traffic and social shares (and ultimately ad revenue).”

That echoes something I wrote previously about finding your “crikey”.

And I do think just about everyone can find a “crikey” story if they look hard enough.

* Trevor Young had me onto his excellent podcast Reputation Revolution recently and, by coincidence, I was finishing his book Content Marketing for PR at the time. Quite a bit of Content Marketing for PR chimes with the sort of advice I share here, so I will probably raid it for inspiration soon.