A 2021 survey of nearly 2,500 reporters shared their preferences for working with PR pros. The average reporter covers three or more beats and nearly two-thirds (60%) have been journalists for 10 or more years.
Pitch Preferences
When asked about working with PR people:
- 91% want pitches of less than 200 words
- Monday is their favorite day to receive them
- 86% are OK with a follow-up email within one week
Respondents to the MuckRack survey included 62% who were fulltime editorial writers or bloggers and 19% who were freelancers. The largest group (42%) wrote for online-only, 30% primarily report in print; 10% TV, 8% radio, 2% newsletter and 1% podcast.
These journalists are productive: 50% write five or more stories a week, while 31% write two to four stories/week. On the plus side, more than 60 percent reported writing 25% of their stories from pitches.
Reasons for Rejection
Their biggest reasons for rejecting “otherwise relevant” pitches in 2020 were:
- Bad timing
- Lack of personalization
- Other
Those saying “other” wrote in comments including “irrelevant”, random and not localized, “which could be considered sub-sets of “Lack of Personalization,” the study authors wrote.
Two-thirds of respondents preferred to receive pitches between 5 am and 12 noon Eastern Time (34% from 5am to 9 am and 34% from 9 am to noon). Of course, Colorado journalists would be working in Mountain Time zone.
Sources of Information
More than half of journalists get their news from online newspapers or magazines, while 16% get their news from Twitter (down from 22% in last year’s survey.) A majority of respondents (58%) consult company’s social media:
- Usually 45%
- Always 13%
- Sometimes 28%
- Rarely 8%
- Never 6%
Social Shares of Stories
It is clear journalists are under the gun to produce clicks, with many working online and others needing to show engagement: 62% track how many times their stories are shared on social media.
When asked, “what makes a story more shareable – select all that apply”:
- 70% subject connects to a trending story
- 64% contains an image or infographic
- 59% exclusive and/or surprising data
- 54% easily localized/made relevant to your target audience
- 24% contains a video
- 20% brevity
- 9 % quotes from a company spokesperson
Credible Sources of Information
Journalists consider academics the most credible source of information, followed by CEOs. Considerably more reporters consider PR people working for a company (55%) to be credible than those working for PR firms (34%), presumably because the in-house pros are closer to the information.
The number of pitches the journalists received seemed small to me, compared to my experience with TV news assignment desks. In a communications audit I conducted in the 90s for a client, TV assignment editors reported receiving 150 pitches a day! These primarily print and online journalists reported receiving 1-5 pitches a day (43%) which equates to 5 to 25 pitches a week. Many probably work for trade or business publications which generally do not receive as many pitches, in my experience.
Encouragingly, 59% of these seasoned journalists reported their relationship to PR teams and PR agencies as “mutually beneficial, not quite a partnership,” 18% described as “antagonistic, but not bad” and 17% considered PR pros a “necessary evil.”
To download the report: “The State of Journalism 2021: Reporting, Social Media Habits and Preferences for Working with PR in the Year of Covid-19,” visit https://muckrack.com/research and register.
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