Quick Read
According to Cision's latest State of the Media Report, press releases, pitches, and media kits are earning more attention than ever from busy newsrooms looking for new stories. However, this doesn't mean that coverage is any easier to earn:
Journos are drowning under inbox pressure, sorting through an average of 50+ pitches per week over email, phone calls, and social media, but most of these pitches won't hit the mark. For communications professionals working in the same media landscape, how do you cut through?
The first question asked to journalists by Cision's State of the Media Report was this:
"What do you believe were the biggest challenges for journalists in the last 12 months?"
Unsurprisingly, misinformation topped the list, with half of survey respondents aligned on this issue. Many major outlets have already established their own verification departments, or use third-party technology to authenticate story leads, images, and videos through metadata analysis, geolocation intelligence, and visualisation networks to see how erroneous claims disseminate across the internet.
While the primary source of its proliferation is social media, misinformation is also being spread in new ways that are difficult to get ahead of.
One recent phenomenon, coined 'pink-slime journalism,' involves fake, often AI-generated online mastheads. In May 2026, ABC Australia reported on a series of such outlets in regional Western Australia that used familiar site structures, made-up reporters, AI imagery of crime scenes and storm damage, and scraped, stolen content. An incident like this risks damaging trust in local journalism, the third most-trusted source of news in Australia, with trust in news also up in New Zealand for the first time since COVID in 2026.
| Rank | Survey Response | Challenge |
| 1 | 50% | Accuracy, fact-checking, and combating misinformation |
| 2 | 49% | Resource constraints (shrinking budgets, staff cuts, increased workload) |
| 3 | 43% | Navigating the rise and impact of AI in journalism |
| 4 | 42% | Adapting to evolving audience behaviour and consumption trends |
| 5 | 28% | Competition from nontraditional media and creators |
The task of combating misinformation now also has to involve increasing trust in the journalist's own outlet through transparent reporting that put real reporters in the limelight, showing behind-the-scenes processes, and being upfront about to what extent claims have been verified.
By calling out misinformation, journalists also face potentially being accused of bias depending on how trustworthy their new source of data is perceived to be by most audiences.
The scale of this work is enormous, and not helped by the second most-cited challenge on the list: resource constraints.
Even looking at the other survey responses, including AI's role in the newsroom, evolving audience behaviour and consumption trends, and competition with news creators on social platforms, there is a clear through line. Nontraditional news media sources and AI innovation are increasing the amount of work it takes to validate stories in time to stay relevant, while working with smaller teams and budgets.
The challenges and constraints faced by newsrooms today have contributed to a new system for earning media. PR material is sought after, but is being held to standards that have evolved to the current media landscape.
As a result, media outreach strategies need to evolve with these standards. Here are five practical pitching takeaways we took from Cision's report.
Combating misinformation and ensuring accuracy in their reporting is currently the leading challenge for journalists. What makes this task easier is when PR-provided material is backed up with the assets that make content credible.
When surveyed, 47% of the 1,800 journalists said they want to receive more data and research in pitches. This was the most sought-after resource, and it's clear why.
In a study from Reuters Institute, the top factor that 100,000 survey respondents cited as having most influence upon what news outlets they trust came down to those outlets "being transparent about how the news is made."
If a story can provide unique insights and credible sources to follow up with, they're more likely to be trusted.
For PR professionals, this may come in the form of primary and secondary data, or expert spokespeople who are readily available to be interviewed or quoted.
Cision calls today's journalist a “multi-platform content creator." Their simultaneous presence on digital sites, media-owned channels, personal channels, newsletters, and podcasts means that one story can need five different angles and groups of multimedia assets.
As news consumers have migrated to social media, news outlets have created pages and 'social-first' journalist positions, some of whom are entirely specialised in vertical video alone.
The potential for earned media amplification across traditional and social channels is fantastic for teams pitching to these news outlets. To increase your story's pick-up rate, providing multiple story angles for the different audiences that exist on different social media platforms, and having a variety of video and image formats, will increase your pitch's ease-of-use for busy newsrooms.
The leading reason that pitches ‘stand out,’ cited by 79% of respondents, is if they are curated to a journalist’s beat, audience, and coverage area. In the same vein, the top reason why a pitch will be ignored (82%), is because it is not relevant to these details.
In the words of one anonymous journalist from the report,
"At least 95% of PR pitches I get are useless because they're about events/people 300-plus miles away on the other side of the state... or they're happening in other states or regions of the nation."
Where ‘spray and pray’ PR increases may damages trust, locating journalists, outlets, and media influencers using the right search and filter tools can help you cut through and build relationships with key media contacts.
52% of journalists avoid pitches that sound too promotional. Even if a campaign is highly relevant to an outlet's audience, it still needs a newsworthy hook that's going to land, especially because audiences are already overwhelmed by people trying to sell things to them online and will be more sensitive to headlines that read like a marketing brochure.
The advice here is to write your pitch like the journalists you're trying to get in contact with would - with an objective and unbiased voice that avoids product buzzwords. Find an angle that starts with the 'so what,' informed by the context of what's already being talked about in the media, so the work is already done for them.
Embargoed or early access to information is the second most sought-after resource (45%) from journalists in pitches.
Providing this opportunity allows busy teams who might not have availability then and there with the time to conduct in-depth reporting that might include analysing complex data, securing interviews, shooting content, and overall, potentially adding more valuable detail to the story you've provided. It also means that each outlet you've pitched to will have this time without the constraint of competition to break the news first.
Considering the relevance of an embargo to your specific story is also key. Pitches that will benefit from these strategies might be involved in releasing information on new scientific and medical studies that would take time for a journalist to interpret, significant business updates like acquisitions or mergers, or global product launches that need synchronisation.
Journalists and communications teams both benefit when there is a positive working relationship between them.
These relationships are more important than ever. Shrinking newsrooms and overworked reporters are flooded with pitches each week. Having a real connection with a journalist that's been built before there was anything to pitch them is a far more effective way at earning coverage than sending an automated email.
| Rank | Survey Response | Best Way to Connect |
| 1 | 84% | Introduce yourself over email & tell me why you want to connect |
| 2 | 36% | Pitch me a new, relevant story idea |
| 3 | 34% | Invite me to an industry or networking event |
According to Cision's State of the Media Report, the best way to develop a working relationship with a journalist is to provide a brief self-introduction over email with a quick explanation of what you do and why you'd like to stay in touch.
New story ideas, and event invitations were the follow-up preferences to this method, each requiring a comprehensive understanding of who the person is that you're speaking to, what they care about, and therefore, what they're most likely to respond to.
Knowing what makes a pitch land is only half the battle. The other half to tackle is having the right processes in place to execute consistently. Here are four ways to sharpen your approach:
A well-structured, on-brand media release with rich supporting material like data, imagery, and ready-to-use quotes reduces the work a journalist needs to do to get a story over the line. Busy newsrooms are more likely to act on a pitch when the heavy lifting has already been done for them.
Focusing on your media release formats also functions as an effective AEO and GEO strategy using earned media, due to the fact that these clear structures are exactly what Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini prioritise when searching for reliable information.
Take the time to identify journalists and outlets whose beats, audiences, and coverage areas genuinely align with your story. Then, sort into meaningfully targeted lists. Filtering up front helps build productive relationships.
For the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Team, the Streem platform helped to "identify the leading journalists covering the festival and the types of stories they like to write about... identifying the leading sources supporting us and being able to compare different angles each outlet might take and how to spin a story."
Having that knowledge lined up internally, with targeted lists like the samples pictured below, meant being better prepared "when considering how [they] pitch and who [they] pitch to."
Building a clear picture of each journalist's recent coverage, preferred angles, and audience before reaching out, and letting that inform even small adjustments to your pitch, makes a material difference to response rates. Tools like AI Pitches within Streem's Outreach platform generate personalised email pitches at scale based on our human-curated global database with over 1 million contacts worldwide.
Monitoring metrics like open rates, click-throughs, and bounce-backs across your campaigns reveals what's resonating and what isn't. Treating each campaign as a feedback loop is how communications teams can build more effective strategies over time.
Outreach, Streem's media engagement solution, is built to help you locate the right journalists and outlets immediately, streamline the process of personalising your email pitches, and measure success so that you know what's working and what's not.
Book a free demo today to explore how Streem can make it easier to earn coverage.