The most common mistake in media relations isn’t a bad pitch — it’s the timing. Most founders and communications teams only reach out to a journalist the moment they have news to announce, which means the very first interaction a reporter has with the company is a request for something. That’s a hard way to start any relationship.
Journalists, like anyone else, respond better to people they already have some context on. A reporter who’s seen a founder’s name a few times — replying thoughtfully to their published work, sharing a genuinely useful data point unprompted, or showing up as a knowledgeable source in their broader beat — is far more likely to open an email from that same person when real news arrives.
This doesn’t require a large time investment. Following the handful of reporters who actually cover your industry, reading their recent work before ever pitching them, and referencing something specific from it in the first outreach message signals, immediately, that this isn’t a mass blast. Most PR emails clearly weren’t read by anyone at the company before being sent to fifty journalists at once — a pitch that mentions a specific recent article stands out by simply not doing that.
Offering value with no immediate ask attached is one of the most underused tactics available. Sending a reporter a genuinely useful data point, a heads-up about a trend before it’s widely known, or an introduction to another useful source — with no request for coverage attached — builds real goodwill that a cold pitch never can.
Being a reliable source matters more over time than any single pitch. A founder who responds quickly and honestly when a reporter reaches out for a quick comment on a trend story, even when it’s not about their own company, becomes someone that reporter thinks of the next time they need a source in that space.
None of this guarantees coverage when news actually breaks — earned media never works that way. But it means the pitch lands in an inbox that already has some context for who’s sending it, which is a meaningfully better starting position than a cold email from a stranger.
