Media and PR outreach

Applies to any media or PR outreach to a journalist for coverage. Produces a short pitch anchored to the reporter's recent work, weighted toward their readers, and closed on a specific give and one clear ask.

Most cold pitches to reporters fail the same three ways: they lead with the company, they are not anchored to anything the reporter actually wrote, and they open with "happy to be a source" and give no reason to reply. This skill fixes all three, then routes the draft through a review gate before it sends.

The four pitch types

Pick the type before drafting - each has a different structure and length, detailed in references/pitch-types.md.

• First contact - get on the reporter's radar before there is news. No pitch, no ask beyond "useful to be a resource".
• News pitch - a specific announcement worth their readers' attention.
• Byline pitch - a contributed article from an exec, backed by a real existing point of view.
• Reactive pitch - a story just broke on the beat and there is a fast, specific expert take to offer. Speed is the whole point.

The play

1. Qualify the reporter against a recent, on-beat byline. Find a specific piece they published recently that the company can genuinely comment on, and confirm it is actually recent at the source - a contact list goes stale, and a byline from last quarter is not an anchor. Record the anchor's title, date, and link. No live anchor means the reporter is not ready for first contact or a pitch yet. (A reactive pitch is the exception: its anchor is the story that just broke, so speed replaces the byline check.)
2. Pick the type and draft to its structure. Use the matching structure from references/pitch-types.md. Keep it short - first contact under five sentences, a news pitch under 150 words, a reactive pitch under 100.
3. Lead with their readers, not the company. Open on the news value or the beat. One line of company relevance, not three. The anchor rule, the them:us ratio, and the give-plus-ask close - the three levers that decide reply rate - are worked through with examples in references/anchor-ratio-and-close.md.
4. Run the copy pass. Strip AI tells, then add enough plain human voice that it reads as one person emailing another, not a template. No jargon, no "circling back", no press-release voice.
5. Clear the review gate. Before it sends, one independent read confirms: anchored (to the reporter's recent byline, or for a reactive pitch to the breaking story), passes the them:us ratio, closes on a real give-plus-ask (first contact excepted - it makes no ask), and reads clean. One revision round.
6. Human approves, then send, log, and follow up once. A person reviews and approves the final email and sends it from the right inbox - nothing goes out automatically. Log the reporter, outlet, date, type, and anchor. Follow up once after five to seven business days, one sentence, no pressure. Log every response, including a decline - a "not now" is a relationship.

What good looks like

• What the best operator notices first: the anchor is doing more work than the pitch. A reporter decides whether to keep reading based on whether the first line proves you actually read their work. A specific, recent, correctly-attributed anchor earns the next sentence; a generic "I love your coverage of ad tech" gets deleted. Get the anchor right and the rest is easy.
• The common mistake: leading with the company and its product, and closing with "would love to be a source" - a ratio of mostly-us and an ask with no give. The mediocre pitch is also a mass send: the same paragraph to five reporters, which every reporter can smell. One reporter per outlet per story, every pitch specific to that person.
• How you know it's ready: count sentences about their readers versus about the company - three to one, minimum. The close names a concrete give (a specific quote, a data point, an exclusive angle, a ready draft) and one low-effort ask (first contact excepted - it makes no ask, it just offers to be a resource). And it would read, to the reporter, like an email from a person who knows their beat.

Rules

• MUST anchor first contact, news pitches, and byline pitches to a specific, verified-recent article the reporter published, with a link. A reactive pitch is the exception: it anchors to the breaking story it responds to, not the reporter's own byline.
• MUST keep the them:us sentence ratio at three-to-one or better.
• MUST close a news, byline, or reactive pitch on a concrete give-plus-ask, and never open or close a pitch with "happy to be a source". First contact is the deliberate exception: it makes no ask and only offers to be a resource later.
• MUST hold to one reporter per outlet per story.
• NEVER send a mass or templated pitch, and NEVER send the press release as the pitch - the release is supporting material.
• NEVER follow up more than once on the same pitch.