How to pitch a journalist when nobody has heard of your startup

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By Saroj Jha · September 23, 2026 · 7 min read

The first press pitches I ever sent went nowhere, and looking at them now I understand why. They were announcements. They told a reporter that something had happened at my company and quietly assumed that was interesting to somebody other than me.

A reporter does not need news about you. They need a story their readers will finish. Once I started writing pitches that way, the replies began — not many, but enough, and from the right people.

Short answer: pick three reporters who already cover your buyer's problem, read their recent work, and send each of them a short, specific email that offers a story they could write without you. Say what you can bring to it — data, a customer, a contrarian view — and make the ask small.

Why "we just launched" is not a story

Funding, launches and new hires are company events. They become stories only when they illustrate something a reader cares about: a market shifting, a practice changing, a number that contradicts what everyone assumes.

If you strip your company's name out of the pitch and there is nothing left, there was never a story. That single test has killed more of my drafts than any editor.

Find three reporters, not three hundred

A list you bought is a list everyone else bought. Work the other way round: start from the articles your buyers already read, and find the bylines behind them.

• Search for the problem your product solves, in the words your customers use, and note who wrote the three best pieces.
• Read their last five articles. A reporter who covered your topic a week ago is unlikely to want it again immediately; one who covered it three months ago may.
• Check what they complain about publicly. Reporters are candid about bad pitches, and they usually say exactly what they want instead.
• Keep it to three names per story. A pitch sent to thirty people reads like one sent to thirty people.

What goes in the opening lines

Assume your email is read on a phone, between two other things, and that the reader decides in seconds. Everything that matters goes above the fold.

• The subject line states the story, not your company name.
• The first sentence says why it matters now.
• The second says what you have that they cannot get elsewhere: a dataset, a customer who will talk on record, a practitioner view.
• The third makes the ask small — fifteen minutes, or permission to send the data.

Then stop. A pitch that runs past two hundred words is a press release wearing a jacket.

A worked example

Here is an illustrative example — invented company, invented numbers — for a startup selling onboarding software to mid-market HR teams. The company is unknown; the story is not about the company.

The version that gets ignored (illustrative):

Subject: Acme raises $4M to reinvent employee onboarding

Hi — I wanted to share that Acme has raised $4M in seed funding to reinvent onboarding with AI. Our platform helps companies onboard faster and better. Would you be interested in covering the news? Happy to set up a call with our CEO.

Every sentence is about the company. There is no reader in it.

The version that gets a reply (illustrative):

Subject: HR teams are quietly rebuilding onboarding around the first 30 days

Hi Priya — your piece on manager overload in March stayed with me, particularly the line about handover being the weakest point in the whole employee lifecycle.

We work with about forty mid-market HR teams, and in the last two quarters most of them have moved their onboarding programme from ninety days to thirty, mainly because managers cannot sustain the longer version. Two of them will talk on record about what broke and what they replaced it with, and I can share the anonymised programme data behind the shift.

Worth fifteen minutes? If it is easier, I can just send the data and you can decide.

— Saroj

The difference is not the writing. It is that the second one proposes a story about the reader's world, and the company is only the access route to it.

Two constraints matter more than style. Every number you offer must be one you can actually produce, and every customer you name must have agreed beforehand. A reporter who asks for the data and receives an estimate will never open your email again.

What to do when nobody replies

Silence is the normal outcome, and it usually means the story was not right for that person at that time. Send one short follow-up after four or five days and then stop.

• If two of three say it is not for them, the story is wrong, not the list. Rewrite it around a different tension.
• If nobody answers at all, the subject line probably read like an announcement.
• If a reporter replies with a different angle, take it. Their angle is better informed about their readers than yours is.

Meanwhile, publish the material yourself. The data and the customer story work as a post, a talk or a LinkedIn thread regardless of whether a journalist ever uses them — and published work is what makes the next pitch credible.

How I judge whether it is working

Coverage is the outcome, not the measure, because it is largely outside your control. I track what I can influence:

• Reply rate to pitches, which tells me whether the story and the targeting are right.
• Relationships that continue — a reporter who comes back with a question months later is worth more than a single article.
• Whether the story gets used at all, including by us, since the work is not wasted if we publish it ourselves.

One thing is worth saying plainly: earned media is slow, and it is a poor substitute for demand you can create on purpose. It compounds credibility rather than filling a pipeline this quarter. Treat it as the second or third channel, never the first.

Sources & further reading

This article describes AAJ's own method and contains no external statistics. The worked example is illustrative and uses invented figures.

• Earned Media Playbook — AAJ. The full process behind this post, including the story angles worth pitching.
• Partner Co-Marketing Playbook — AAJ. Borrowing someone else's audience when you have none.
• How to run a webinar that creates pipeline, not just registrants — AAJ. What to do with a story once you have one.