Why good pitches don't get used
...And what you need to know to ensure yours do
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There are lots of reasons I might decide not to pick up a relevant PR pitch I’ve received as a journalist and, in all honesty, it’s rarely because there is anything wrong with the pitch.
Perfectly good pitches get missed or left unused every day, for a whole load of reasons - many of which are nothing to do with the quality of the pitch.
One major reason is that when you’re sending a pitch to a journalist, you’re not sending it in isolation. Not only are you up against whatever else is landing in their inbox, but you’re competing for their attention alongside breaking news, on-diary stories (like the publication of major reports or research, or big scheduled events like conferences or the Budget), the topics suddenly trending on social media - and whatever mad idea their editor has decided they absolutely must drop everything else to work on that week.
But there’s more going on under the surface in newsrooms too…
Newsrooms are often quite chaotic places - and this makes pitching to them incredibly unpredictable.
Good pitches can get overlooked for lots of systemic reasons that are beyond your control: journalists might change roles; an editor may pick up or drop an obsession with a topic; there might be a secret ban on journalists writing about a topic before the publication launches a big campaign on it… (these have all happened to me when pitching stories as a freelance journalist).
But there are some things you can do to reduce the risk of your pitch falling victim to the whims of newsroom politics.
As a freelance journalist who pitches to editors (as well as being pitched to by PRs), here’s what I do, to help my pitches survive any newsroom-related turbulence:
Shifting roles
The problem:
Back when I worked in one national newsroom, I was called into my news editor’s office with no notice and told my entire role was changing on at least four separate occasions. The shock and confusion from the PRs who emailed me thinking I wrote about art gallery openings to find I was now mainly covering murder trials was… real.
This is just one example but, having worked in or closely with most of the UK’s national newsrooms, I am pretty confident in saying that most of them produce great work in an atmosphere of loosely-organised chaos.
Add in the very real threat of redundancy rounds, and it is now not unusual to find your best journalist contact has suddenly moved their beat, role and/or publication.
How to tackle it:
You obviously can’t stop anyone from moving or being cut from a role, but you can prepare for this situation by:
Checking and double-checking who you are pitching to: In a world where roles change rapidly, media lists are inevitably going to contain lots of outdated contacts. Look up the social media bios and recent posts of journalists you’re aiming to pitch to, to make sure they’re still in the role. If they’re not, ChatGPT is getting pretty good at hunting down the right journalist for your niche if you ask it specifically “who would report on this pitch” - but double-check its results against the publication’s latest bylines and journalists’ socials.
Keeping your eye on the industry: Keep tabs on which publications are announcing redundancy rounds via industry press (Press Gazette and Private Eye are helpful, but just following lots of journalists on LinkedIn can give you a good sense of what’s going on). It is always a bad time to pitch when cuts are announced, as no journalists wants to take on work for a job they might be losing (and they’ve got bigger things to worry about than your pitch).
Staying in touch, even when you don’t need anything: Regularly catch up with staff journalists and editors you have good relationships with, whether or not you have a story to offer, will give you an insight into what the mood is like in the newsroom and who is thinking of moving on. Maintaining strong relationships with journalists means that when they do move jobs, they will take you with them as a contact but also, where possible, may introduce you to the new person coming in behind them - meaning one contact turns into two.
Limited time and resources
The problem:
The single biggest reason I turn down perfectly good pitches every day is: time.
As a solo journalist, I am working on anywhere between two and 10 stories at any one time but I simply don’t have the capacity to take on lots of big stories simultaneously - no matter how strong they are.
But it’s not just freelancers who have this problem. If anything, staff journalists are even more stretched. When you’re under pressure to keep on top of an increasingly busy breaking news cycle - and are now being asked to take on extra responsibilities (the beat of your colleague who’s just been made redundant, that newsletter launch, a podcast series, filming a video for socials, etc, etc) - your time to accept additional pitches is very limited.
This has led to a phenomenon one of my editors calls “Kill Mode”: where journalists will always have more ideas pitched to them than they can ever take on, so they’re constantly looking for reasons to say no and “kill” pitches.
How to tackle it:
Pitch well in advance: Pitch at least a couple of days ahead of an embargo to allow a journalist enough time to plan for the story breaking and to write it up. If you do send a pitch on the same day an embargo lifts (or without an embargo) then send it as early in the morning as possible - see my Get Featured guide to press deadlines for the best times to target each publication.
Allow for researching time: If it’s a big exclusive, you can pitch several weeks in advance (for a daily publication) to allow for the work the journalist may need to do, such as extra research, interviewing experts and finding case studies. This also gives you time to pitch elsewhere if they don’t want it.
Reduce the journalist’s workload: It is always easier for me to say “yes” to a pitch when a PR has already lined up a case study, an independent expert to comment and pulled out all the links I might need to up-to-date research to go with it. The admin involved in lining this stuff up takes time - and that is time journalists often don’t have. It’s much harder to justifying “killing” a story when these steps are done for you. (And yes, we will still double-check the veracity of everything supplied, but we’ll be grateful you saved us time having to dig out this info in the first place).
Tough competition for space
The problem:
WIth fewer brands placing ads in newspapers, the number of physical pages has reduced - and that means news stories have to compete harder for the available space.
And although online publications theoretically have unlimited space, they don’t have unlimited staff - and they are having to cover an increasingly complicated world of global news, so competition for their time is high too.
All of this means that it can now be much harder to get quality coverage for things which used to be easy to place in national publications (I’m looking at you, survey stories…).
How to tackle it:
Don’t set yourself up against the competition: A national news outlet has to publish a spread of articles on different topics to keep its audience engaged. That means it won’t publish lots of stories about the same thing at the same time - only the few strongest ideas will get picked up. This is why I am always sceptical about pitching around awareness days, because too many pitches on the same topic usually results in good stories getting overlooked. Pitching at a quieter time could help your pitch cut through the noise.
Avoid pitching against big events: This sounds obvious, but if something massive is happening in the news, it generally isn’t a good time to pitch a general news story. Whether that’s something scheduled like a Budget, or something unexpected, like a terrorist attack or major celeb death, if you can be flexible and wait until a quieter time, you’re more likely to have success. The simple maths is that big stories take up lots of space in publications, leaving less space for everything else = much steeper competition. On quieter days, there is literally more space for more stories.
Target the best days for your type of story: Daily publications work to an unofficial weekly cycle which sees them prioritise certain types of stories on different days. In short: Tuesday-Thursdays prioritise breaking news (competition is typically tougher on these days), Fridays & Saturdays are best for light-hearted and upbeat news, Sundays for longer-term exclusives and Mondays for serious stuff.*
*I’ll explain more about why this is and how you can use this theory to maximise your pitching success in a separate post soon!
And finally…
If you’re struggling to get good pitches to land, then it’s probably not you, it’s the crazy system we’re working in at the moment.
If you’re in PR, I completely appreciate clients don’t always understand this and that can be tough - although you’re welcome to point them in the direction of this post if it helps get that message across!
And remember: A good story is a good story. Don’t give up on it - there’s will always be a way of getting in it. Wait for a better time, find a new news hook, try a different contact: repackage it and try again.
Want to know how you should pitch to journalists in 2026?
Join me on January 14th for a lunchtime webinar, where we’ll delve behind the scenes to uncover how and why the UK’s national newsroom are changing - and why you’ll need to adapt your pitching techniques to get coverage.
Tickets go on sale next week - all subscribers will get first dibs on tickets, with paid subscribers getting special discounts.
Ready to send out your next story idea? Check out these Get Featured guides first to boost your pitch:
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