Why Do Journalists Ignore PR Pitches and Press Releases?
By Jordan Baker, Founder of Fair Public Relations and former UK national journalist
One of the most frustrating parts of doing your own PR is sending what looks like a perfectly good pitch to a journalist and hearing absolutely nothing back.
You have written the email carefully. You have found somebody who seems relevant. You have explained your business, attached the press release and waited. A day passes, then another, and eventually you start wondering whether the journalist even opened it.
Sometimes they did.
Sometimes they read the first line, realised it was not relevant and moved on. Sometimes the story was decent but the actual point was buried halfway down the email. Sometimes the journalist already had enough material for the article. Sometimes a huge breaking story landed that morning and everything else disappeared from their agenda. Sometimes the pitch simply was not good enough.
And sometimes there was absolutely nothing wrong with your email at all.
That last point matters because PR is not a simple system where a good pitch automatically receives a reply and a bad pitch gets ignored. Journalists have limited time, limited editorial space and far more material than they can ever use. Silence can therefore mean several very different things.
When I worked as a journalist, one of the quickest ways for a PR email to lose me was if I could not immediately understand what the person wanted me to do with it. Was this a story? Were they offering somebody for interview? Was there an expert who could comment on something I was covering? Was this a product I could review? Was it a venue invitation?
If I had to read through several paragraphs of marketing material before discovering the actual proposition, the sender was already making my job unnecessarily difficult.
That is really what this article is about. Not a list of magic phrases that make journalists reply, but how to diagnose why a pitch may not be working and what you can realistically change.
Why don't journalists reply to PR emails?
The blunt answer is that journalists do not have to reply.
A PR pitch is an invitation to consider something editorially. It is not a customer-service enquiry requiring acknowledgement.
If a journalist receives a story that fits what they are working on, they may respond very quickly. If it is irrelevant, they may delete it. If it looks interesting but is not useful today, they may save it and never reply. If another pitch gives them everything they need faster, they may simply use that instead.
Businesses sometimes interpret silence as a personal judgement.
"The journalist doesn't like us."
"The PR person clearly does not have the right contacts."
"Our business must not be interesting."
None of those conclusions necessarily follows.
The correct question is much more useful:
What are the plausible reasons this particular pitch did not generate a response?
That is where PR becomes a process of editorial judgement rather than repeated emailing.
What happens when your pitch lands in a journalist's inbox?
The journalist is trying to work out very quickly whether the material helps them.
The first test may happen before the email is even opened.
Does the subject line tell them what this is?
If it does not, you are already asking for extra attention.
Once they open the email, I think they should be able to understand the proposition from the first paragraph.
If you are offering an expert, I want to know who that person is, what their relevant credentials are, what they can discuss and why their expertise matters to what I cover.
If you are pitching a product, I want the essentials. What is it? What does it cost? What makes it different? Can I review it? Where is it available?
If you are offering a venue, hotel, restaurant or experience for review, geography becomes immediately important. Where is it? What exactly are you offering? If travel is required, who is covering it? Is accommodation part of the review opportunity?
If you are pitching a story, tell me what the story is.
This is where brochure-style PR material often fails. The business wants to communicate absolutely everything it believes is important about itself. The journalist is trying to determine whether there is anything useful for their audience.
Those are different objectives.
The first question is always: what are you actually pitching?
This sounds incredibly basic, but a surprising amount of PR material never answers it clearly.
Imagine an email beginning:
We are delighted to introduce ABC Group, an innovative, award-winning company that is transforming the future of customer experience through its unique and people-first approach.
What am I supposed to do with that?
Is there an announcement?
Can I interview somebody?
Is there research?
Does the company have a product?
Has something happened?
The journalist should not have to interpret marketing language and reverse-engineer the editorial proposition.
A much stronger opening might be:
We have a retail expert available to explain why independent shops are seeing an increase in customers abandoning online baskets before major seasonal sales. She has 15 years' experience advising consumer brands and can speak today.
Now I know what is being offered.
Whether I use it is another question, but at least the decision is easy.
That is what good pitching should do.
Are you contacting the right journalist?
A strong pitch sent to the wrong journalist is still the wrong pitch.
Beat matters.
Publication matters.
Audience matters.
Geography matters.
Format matters.
A journalist who writes about workplace trends may not cover business funding. A beauty editor may not want a general entrepreneurship story. A local journalist in Manchester is unlikely to care that your company has opened a small office in Bristol unless there is some wider relevance.
One of my favourite examples of how badly targeting can go comes from a journalist friend of mine who was pitched men's razor blades to review.
She was not the obvious person to test them.
It sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud, but versions of that happen all the time. Brands get so focused on securing coverage that they stop thinking about whether the individual receiving the email can realistically use what they are offering.
Before you worry about your wording, check the target.
What does this journalist actually write?
Who reads the publication?
Does your pitch fit their geography?
Does it suit the type of content they produce?
If the answer is no, rewriting the subject line twenty times is unlikely to solve the problem.
Is the story genuinely interesting outside your company?
Businesses naturally attach importance to their own developments.
You hired a new director.
You reached an anniversary.
You won an award.
You launched a service.
You moved office.
You signed a partnership.
All of those things may matter commercially and internally.
The journalist's question is different:
Why would my reader care?
That does not mean routine business developments can never become editorial stories. They may have a very natural home in trade, local or specialist media.
The mistake is assuming that the importance of an event inside the company automatically creates the same importance outside it.
If your announcement is relatively ordinary, look for the wider story.
Does the office opening create substantial jobs in a particular area?
Does the new service respond to a change in regulation?
Does the partnership solve a recognised problem in the sector?
Is the appointment significant because the person has an unusual background or is moving from a major competitor?
Sometimes there is a story hiding inside the announcement.
Sometimes there is not.
Knowing the difference is part of PR.
Does the subject line make the story obvious?
I prefer clarity over cleverness.
The journalist's inbox is not an advertising competition where the winner is whoever creates the most mysterious subject line.
A good subject line helps the recipient understand why they might want to open the email.
If you are offering an expert, say enough to make the expertise and subject obvious.
If there is a review opportunity, make that clear.
If you have a genuine story, lead with the story rather than the company name.
Avoid vague lines such as:
"Exciting opportunity"
"News from ABC"
"Thought you might like this"
"Big announcement"
They tell the journalist almost nothing.
Likewise, I would avoid clickbait that overpromises what is actually inside the email.
If your subject line suggests a huge exclusive and the content is a routine product launch, you have not made the pitch stronger. You have made the sender less credible.
Are you making the journalist work too hard?
I think this is one of the biggest pitching problems.
The actual useful material is somewhere in the email, but the journalist has to dig for it.
There may be a three-paragraph introduction.
Then a company history.
Then a description of the founder.
Then a generic statement about the industry.
Then eventually, halfway down, the story appears.
Start with the useful bit.
The same principle applies to attachments.
I was not enthusiastic about opening huge PDFs full of marketing material when I was a journalist. A glossy brochure may be useful for sales, but it is often a poor substitute for a clear pitch.
Attachments can also create practical problems. They may be large, awkward on mobile or unnecessary to understanding the story.
If a journalist needs more information, you can provide it.
Do not make them download ten megabytes before they can work out what you are offering.
Why overly promotional pitches are easy to ignore
Journalists are not an extension of your marketing department.
That is one of the most important principles in earned media.
A pitch becomes weak when its primary purpose is obviously to communicate sales messages rather than give the journalist something editorially useful.
Phrases such as "market-leading", "revolutionary", "best-in-class", "game-changing" and "innovative" may appear all over a company's marketing materials.
They do not prove that something is interesting.
If you are pitching a product, tell me what makes it different.
If you are pitching an expert, tell me what they know.
If you are pitching a story, tell me what happened.
Let the journalist decide whether it is impressive.
The strange thing is that businesses often gain more useful exposure when they stop trying so hard to insert promotional language into every sentence.
A journalist may identify the expert by name and company. A product feature may include the brand, price and purchase information. A founder interview naturally mentions the business.
That is where the exposure comes from.
The editorial contribution does not need to sound like advertising.
Does your spokesperson actually have credibility?
Another reason pitches fail is that the person being offered does not obviously have the authority required.
If you tell a journalist that somebody is an expert, they are entitled to ask why.
What is their professional experience?
Do they have relevant qualifications?
Have they spent significant time working with the issue?
Do they have credible first-hand knowledge?
The required standard varies depending on the subject.
A founder may be perfectly qualified to discuss how they built their company.
They may not be qualified to give medical advice because their company sells a health-related product.
Likewise, a business owner can comment on their own hiring experience without necessarily becoming an employment-law expert.
Good PR positioning is partly about knowing where credibility starts and stops.
Why evidence matters
Claims become stronger when there is something behind them.
If a company tells me that a major shift is happening across its industry, I want to know how it knows.
Is there data?
Are there repeated customer experiences?
Is there research?
Has the business seen the same problem across dozens of clients?
Can the expert explain what evidence supports the view?
Evidence does not need to mean producing a huge academic study for every quote.
But the stronger the claim, the stronger the supporting material should generally be.
This also applies to AI-generated expertise.
If the person supposedly giving the comment did not actually form the opinion, what exactly is the journalist citing them for?
AI can help organise genuine thinking.
It should not be used to manufacture authority somebody does not possess.
Could the timing simply be wrong?
Absolutely.
This is why no response does not automatically prove the pitch is bad.
You may send a perfectly relevant story on the same morning a major news event completely changes the publication's priorities.
The journalist could be on deadline.
They may be off work.
They may have covered a very similar story last week.
The article you hoped to contribute to may already be full.
Seasonal timing matters too.
A Christmas gift pitch can be excellent and still arrive after a print publication has already finalised its festive pages.
A topical comment may become useless several hours after the relevant news event.
Timing is one of the things PR cannot fully control.
You can improve your odds by understanding publications, planning ahead where possible and reacting quickly when a story is time-sensitive.
But sometimes you simply get unlucky.
That is why I would not rewrite an entire campaign after one unanswered email.
Does having a relationship with the journalist matter?
My answer is probably more controversial than the standard PR-industry answer.
I do not think it matters one jot compared with having something the journalist genuinely wants.
PR agencies are often sold on the idea of the "little black book". They know all the journalists, have special relationships and can supposedly open doors nobody else can.
Relationships can certainly be useful.
If I know a journalist, I may have a better idea of what they are working on. They may be more forthcoming about what they need. If I send something I genuinely think they will like, I can occasionally message and say, "I sent you something yesterday that I thought might be useful."
They may reply that they missed it and take another look.
That is useful.
But it does not make a bad story good.
A journalist is not going to write an article about a client simply because they like the PR person.
And journalists will happily deal with PR people they do not particularly like if those people control access to something they genuinely want.
Celebrity PR is an obvious example. Celebrity publicists can be extremely protective and difficult because their job is to protect valuable clients. Journalists still deal with them because access to an A-list interview is worth dealing with them for.
Content wins.
If you are a business doing your own PR and you have strong editorial judgement, understand what makes a good story and know how to pitch useful material, I think that is a far more important skill than trying to become socially friendly with every journalist.
How much personalisation actually helps?
Again, I disagree with quite a lot of standard pitching advice.
There are countless blogs telling PR people to begin an email by mentioning the journalist's last article, asking how their weekend was or commenting on something they shared on social media.
I do not think most of that is particularly useful.
If you genuinely have a relationship with somebody, normal human conversation is obviously fine.
But artificial friendliness is not what makes a pitch relevant.
The useful personalisation is editorial.
Spell the journalist's name correctly.
Know what they cover.
Understand the publication.
Explain why this particular pitch is relevant to them.
If somebody covers consumer technology and you are pitching a genuinely relevant consumer-technology story, that is far more meaningful personalisation than telling them you loved an article they wrote eight months ago.
The story is still the thing they need.
Do not waste half the email proving you have looked at their Instagram.
Should you follow up on an unanswered pitch?
Our approach at Fair PR is very simple.
We do not follow up on an unanswered initial pitch.
If the journalist has already shown interest, that is completely different. If they asked for information and then went quiet, or an interview has been discussed, there may be a perfectly legitimate reason to continue that conversation.
But if we send a cold pitch and receive no response, we do not send another email asking, "Did you see this?"
We do not call them to ask whether they received it either.
They received the email.
If they want it, they can respond.
Journalists already have a huge volume of email. Sending the same thing again simply adds more noise.
There are occasional exceptions in natural conversation. If we are already speaking to the journalist about something else and genuinely believe they may have missed a relevant pitch, we might mention it informally.
That is different from a formal chase.
What do you do instead of following up?
Give them something new.
That might mean pitching a fresh expert opportunity the following week.
A product can be repackaged around a new seasonal angle.
A Mother's Day pitch can become a Father's Day angle later where the product genuinely fits both.
A story might be reframed.
The headline can change.
Another part of the information can become the lead.
Sometimes the first pitch teaches you that the angle itself is not strong enough.
This is where good PR becomes iterative.
The answer to silence is not always "send the same email again".
It may be "find a better reason for the journalist to care".
A real example of changing the angle
I have seen tiny changes completely alter the response to a story.
We once worked around an event at Gardenia, a Mediterranean restaurant in New York. The restaurant was holding a seaside or beach-themed party.
We initially pitched the basic beach-party concept.
It went nowhere.
The event itself had not changed, but there was a more interesting detail sitting inside it: the party had a beachwear dress code.
We reframed the pitch around that.
Suddenly it was much more interesting editorially and the story was picked up much more widely.
That is a great example of why a failed pitch does not always mean the underlying material is useless.
Sometimes you simply have not found the most interesting version of it yet.
The job of PR is partly to find that version.
What does a weak pitch look like?
Here is an illustrative example.
Subject: Exciting news from BrightWell
Hi Sarah,
I hope you're well. I wanted to introduce you to BrightWell, an innovative and award-winning wellness company that is revolutionising the way consumers think about wellbeing. Founded by entrepreneur Jane Smith, the company is passionate about empowering customers to live their best lives through its market-leading range of products.
BrightWell is delighted to announce the launch of its latest product, the BrightWell Sleep Spray, which forms part of its mission to transform the wellness industry.
Please find our press release attached. Let me know if you would like any more information.
There are lots of problems here.
What does the journalist actually do with it?
Is this a product for review?
What does it cost?
What is different about it?
Where is it available?
What makes the founder relevant?
Why this journalist?
The copy is filled with positive adjectives without giving the recipient much substance.
A stronger version might be:
Subject: Review opportunity: £24 sleep spray developed for frequent travellers
Hi Sarah,
I thought this might suit your upcoming travel-wellness coverage. BrightWell has launched a £24 pillow and body spray designed specifically for frequent travellers dealing with disrupted sleep routines.
The formula was developed with [relevant substantiated detail], and samples are available for review. It launches in the UK on 15th November and will be available from [retailer/link].
Images and full product information are available here. Happy to send a sample if useful.
The second version does not guarantee coverage.
But the journalist understands the proposition almost immediately.
That is the goal.
How do you diagnose why nobody replied?
This is where I would avoid making assumptions.
Several different problems can produce exactly the same result: silence.
| Problem | Possible reason | What to change |
|---|---|---|
| Nobody responds | Wrong journalists | Review beats, geography, audience and publication fit |
| Nobody responds | Story is not strong enough | Find a sharper hook, broader relevance or different angle |
| Nobody responds | Pitch is unclear | Make the ask obvious in the subject line and first paragraph |
| Opens but no replies | Too promotional or not useful | Remove sales language and foreground editorial value |
| Relevant journalists show no interest | Weak evidence or spokesperson | Strengthen proof, credentials or source suitability |
| Some interest but no publication | Editorial timing or competing stories | Keep the relationship warm and develop fresh material |
| Product pitch fails | Poor imagery, stock or availability | Improve practical media assets before repitching |
| Initial angle fails | Headline or framing is weak | Repackage the same underlying material around a stronger hook |
None of these rows proves why an individual journalist ignored you.
That is important.
You normally have to infer the problem from a pattern of responses over time.
When should you tweak an angle?
Earlier than some businesses think.
There is no virtue in repeatedly pitching something journalists are clearly not responding to.
If the underlying material still feels promising, change the presentation.
Try a different headline.
Lead with a stronger fact.
Pitch another aspect of the story.
Change the target publication.
Offer an interview rather than a generic release.
Turn a broad story into expert commentary.
Move from national to trade media if that is where the subject genuinely belongs.
This is where agency experience can help because you begin to recognise patterns.
It does not mean we know exactly what every journalist will do.
Nobody does.
It means we can look at the response and make informed changes rather than endlessly repeating the same activity.
When should you abandon an angle entirely?
Sometimes the story simply is not going to work.
That is okay.
PR is not a commitment to prove every idea brilliant.
If the business development has no wider relevance, the supporting evidence is weak and several sensible attempts have generated no interest, it may be better to move on.
There is always another story.
There may be another expert angle.
A product may become relevant seasonally.
A founder may have a much stronger personal story.
An upcoming development could create new material.
What I would avoid is spending months trying to force journalists to care about something simply because the company wants it covered.
Businesses hire PR agencies for editorial judgement, not endless optimism.
Why failed pitches are still useful
I think businesses sometimes see unsuccessful pitches as wasted work.
They are not always wasted.
They generate information.
You learn whether a particular angle produces interest.
You learn which journalists are relevant.
You find out whether a headline is working.
You may discover that an expert is much more interesting to journalists on one topic than another.
You begin to understand the market.
You are also gradually introducing the client to journalists.
The process is not perfectly linear.
It is rarely:
Pitch → reply → publication.
PR is much more often:
Pitch → silence → adjust → new pitch → journalist asks a question → another angle → interview → article → journalist remembers the client three months later.
That is normal.
Can journalists start recognising a client even when early pitches fail?
Yes.
This is one of the reasons consistency matters.
A journalist may not use the first thing we send.
But they begin understanding what the client does.
Another pitch shows them what the spokesperson can talk about.
A reactive opportunity demonstrates how quickly the person responds.
Eventually the journalist may think of them independently.
This does not mean sending somebody irrelevant pitches every week in the hope that familiarity creates coverage.
That would do the opposite.
It means repeatedly offering relevant, useful material establishes a professional context around the source.
PR is a process.
I sometimes describe it as a journey rather than a destination because there is constant learning involved.
How many journalists should receive a press release?
There is no magic number.
I would rather send a strong story to a smaller group of genuinely relevant journalists than send it indiscriminately to thousands of people.
For a broad national consumer story, the suitable media list may naturally be larger.
For a highly specialist B2B subject, there may only be a relatively small number of journalists worth contacting.
Volume should follow relevance.
Do not decide you need 500 recipients and then search for enough names to fill the quota.
Start with the story and identify who might genuinely care about it.
Is it better to pitch a named journalist or the general news desk?
Usually a relevant named journalist is preferable where you can identify one.
You know what they cover and can make a more informed judgement about relevance.
General news desks can still be appropriate, particularly where the publication routes certain material centrally or the story is broad breaking news.
The important thing is understanding how that particular outlet works rather than applying one rule to every newsroom.
Again, editorial fit matters more than the appearance of personalisation.
Does having media contacts guarantee coverage?
Absolutely not.
Contacts may give you insight.
They may help you understand what the publication currently needs.
A journalist may recognise your name and pay slightly more attention because previous material has been useful.
That is all valuable.
But no credible journalist is going to publish a weak story simply because a PR contact is friendly.
And no PR agency should imply that its relationships remove editorial independence.
The publication still decides.
What should you change before your next pitch?
Start with the fundamentals rather than immediately rewriting every sentence.
Ask whether you are targeting the right journalist.
Then ask whether the story itself is strong enough.
Make sure the subject line communicates what you are actually offering.
Bring the useful information forward.
Remove unnecessary marketing language.
Check that the spokesperson has the right credentials.
Make sure the evidence supports the claims.
Think about timing.
If the angle is still not landing, change it.
Sometimes the smallest part of the story turns out to be the strongest hook, as it did with the Gardenia beachwear example.
Other times the right decision is to stop and create something genuinely better.
Would hiring a PR agency make journalists more likely to respond?
Not simply because the email comes from an agency.
That would contradict almost everything I have said above.
A good PR agency should improve the process around the pitch.
It should help identify stronger stories.
It should know when something is probably not newsworthy.
It should understand which journalists are relevant.
It should package information clearly.
It should help strengthen expert positioning.
It should recognise when an angle needs changing.
And it should maintain enough activity that the campaign is not emotionally dependent on one journalist replying to one email.
At Fair PR, that editorial judgement is a large part of what clients are paying for.
We cannot guarantee that a journalist will like the story.
We can make the work more informed.
So why did the journalist ignore your pitch?
Maybe it was bad.
Maybe the wrong person received it.
Maybe you buried the story.
Maybe it sounded like an advert.
Maybe your spokesperson did not have the necessary credibility.
Maybe the timing was terrible.
Maybe the journalist already had what they needed.
Maybe the story was good but the headline was not.
Maybe they simply never got to it.
The productive response is not to take the silence personally and not to blindly send the same email again.
Look at the material.
Look at the target.
Look at the packaging.
Look at the timing.
Then decide whether to tweak it, repackage it, pitch something else or abandon the angle.
That is how PR actually works.
There will be pitches that fail.
There will be ideas that seem brilliant internally and interest nobody externally.
There will also be stories that start slowly, get adjusted slightly and suddenly generate exactly the response you hoped for.
The skill is not avoiding every failure.
It is learning quickly enough that the failed pitches make the next ones better.
Frequently asked questions
How long should you wait before following up with a journalist?
Our approach at Fair PR is not to follow up on an unanswered initial pitch. If a journalist has already shown interest, continuing the conversation is appropriate. Otherwise, I would rather return with genuinely fresh material than send another email asking whether they received the first one.
Why do journalists open emails but not respond?
Opening an email simply means they looked at it. They may have decided it was not relevant, already had enough sources, saved it for later or been interrupted by another editorial priority. An open is not evidence that a journalist was close to using the story.
Should you resend the same pitch?
I generally would not. If the underlying material still has potential, rework the angle, headline, timing or editorial hook rather than simply sending the same message again.
How many journalists should receive a press release?
There is no correct universal number. The media list should be determined by who genuinely covers the subject and whose audience could reasonably care about it.
Is personalising every journalist email important?
Relevant personalisation is useful. Pitch the right person, spell their name correctly and make clear why the story suits their work. Artificial familiarity or lengthy praise of previous articles is much less important than editorial relevance.
Is it better to pitch a journalist directly or use a general inbox?
A relevant named journalist is often preferable where one exists, although some publications genuinely use central desks for certain stories. Understand how the particular outlet handles material.
Does having media contacts guarantee press coverage?
No. Relationships can provide useful insight and make communication easier, but journalists still need a story that serves their audience.
Should I abandon a pitch if nobody responds?
Not necessarily after one attempt. Assess whether the story, targeting, evidence, timing or packaging could be improved. If several sensible versions generate no interest, it may be time to move on.
Is Your PR Pitch Giving Journalists a Reason to Care?
Fair Public Relations helps small businesses, founders and experts identify stronger media angles, prepare clearer material and approach journalists who genuinely fit the story.
Our role is not to promise that every pitch becomes an article. It is to apply journalist-led judgement to the story, targeting and outreach, learn from what the media responds to and change direction when necessary.
You can explore our Small Business PR, see our Standard PR service, read our guide to getting press coverage for a small business, or get in touch if you would like us to assess whether your business has genuine media potential.
Written by Jordan Baker
Founder of Fair Public Relations and former UK national journalist
Jordan Baker is the founder of Fair Public Relations and a former UK national journalist with more than a decade of experience in PR and media relations. He writes about journalist outreach, press releases, earned media, founder visibility and how businesses can make their stories more useful to the media.
