There are four legitimate routes to getting press coverage — journalists writing articles about you: respond to journalist requests on source platforms like Qwoted, SourceBottle, ProfNet, and Featured.com (free, 5-15% response rate for substantive answers); pitch journalists directly with a tightly matched story angle (free, sub-5% acceptance for cold pitches to mainstream outlets); build a media-ready press kit and findable public profile that lets journalists discover you when they need a source; or engage a specialist agency such as Baden Bower with established journalist relationships, where editorial placement starts at $990 per article and is delivered under a contractual money-back guarantee.

Newsworthiness

Why journalists write about people: the newsworthiness test

Journalists write articles about people who meet at least one of five criteria: a concrete data point or finding their audience cares about; a verifiable expert position relevant to a story; a specific recent action (funding raised, product launched, award won, research published); membership in a category or trend the journalist is already covering; or usefulness as a source for a story the journalist has already started. People who get ignored almost universally share one trait: they pitch themselves instead of offering a story.

This is the upstream question every other section in this guide assumes. If you do not pass the newsworthiness test, no platform, pitch template, press kit, or agency will fix that. Tactics amplify a real story; they do not manufacture one.

The five things that make a journalist write about you

1. You have a finding. A number, a result, a pattern. "We surveyed 1,200 fintech founders and 73% expect a regulatory crackdown in 2026" is a finding. "Our company is growing fast" is not. Findings are journalism's hardest currency.

2. You hold a verifiable expert position. You are the head of trauma surgery at a major hospital. You ran AML compliance at a Tier 1 bank. You have published peer-reviewed research on the topic. The credential makes your quote citable. Without verification, the quote is worthless to the journalist.

3. You did something specific and recent. Closed a Series B led by a notable firm. Launched a product that solves a documented problem. Won an award judged by a recognised body. The action is verifiable, dated, and external.

4. You represent a category or trend. The journalist is writing about the rise of AI-native law firms, and you run one. They are covering the post-IPO performance of 2024 fintech listings, and you are the CEO of one of them. Your relevance is the story's relevance.

5. You are useful for a story already in motion. The journalist needs a primary source for a story they have already pitched to their editor. You can provide one. This is what HARO-type platforms exploit: journalists posting "I need a source on X" are visibly seeking exactly this.

The single mistake that kills most attempts

The most common failure pattern across every route in this guide is asking the journalist to write about you rather than offering them a story. Journalists do not publish company profiles unless the company is genuinely newsworthy at scale. They publish stories that happen to feature people. The reframe (from "please write about me" to "here is a story your readers care about, and I am the source") is the single biggest unlock most people miss.

Four routes

The four routes, side by side

Route	Direct cost	Time investment	Response rate	Best for
Source platforms (Qwoted, SourceBottle, ProfNet, Featured)	Free to $99/month	30 min/day reading queries	5-15% for substantive responses	Subject-matter experts who can answer specific questions well
Direct pitching	Free	20+ hours per pitch attempt	Under 5% for cold pitches; under 1% for Tier 1	Genuine newsworthy stories, founders with media-ready angles
Inbound (press kit + findable profile)	$0-$5,000 setup	One-time build, ongoing maintenance	Compounds over time; no per-attempt rate	Established experts and recognised category leaders
Specialist agency (Baden Bower)	From $990 per placement	14 business days from intake	Contractual delivery, placement or refund	Founders, executives, visa applicants on a deadline

The four routes are complementary, not exclusive. Most successful PR strategies combine them: an active source-platform presence, occasional direct pitches when you have a genuine angle, a maintained press kit, and selective agency support for high-stakes placements.

Route 1

Source platforms: Qwoted, SourceBottle, ProfNet, and what happened to HARO

Source platforms connect journalists who need expert quotes with sources who can provide them. HARO (Help A Reporter Out) was the original. Cision rebranded it as Connectively in 2024 and shut it down in late 2024. The category continues with active alternatives: Qwoted, SourceBottle (especially strong in Australia and the UK), ProfNet (Cision's premium B2B platform), Featured.com, and JournoRequests on Twitter/X. Substantive responses on these platforms produce 5-15% pickup rates.

The state of the source-platform market in 2026

HARO ran for 16 years before Cision merged it into Connectively in early 2024 and then announced its shutdown in late 2024. The shutdown left a gap that several platforms expanded to fill:

• Qwoted. Strong in technology, finance, and B2B. Free tier with limited daily queries; paid tier (~$149/month) for unlimited access. Vetting is tighter than HARO; the journalist quality is generally higher.
• SourceBottle. Strongest in Australia, the UK, and lifestyle/consumer beats. Free for sources; queries arrive in daily digest emails. High volume of pitches per query, so response speed matters.
• ProfNet. Cision's premium B2B-focused platform, included with PR Newswire subscriptions. Higher journalist credibility, lower volume, more selective.
• Featured.com (formerly Terkel). Question-and-answer style; sources contribute expert answers that get compiled into roundup articles. Faster placement cycle than traditional pitching.
• JournoRequests on X (formerly Twitter). Hashtag-based discovery (#journorequest, #PRrequest). Free, real-time, but signal-to-noise has degraded since 2023. UK journalists use it most actively.
• Help a B2B Writer. Niche B2B focus; smaller volume, higher quality.
• Muck Rack and Cision Communications Cloud. Premium tools used by PR professionals; not source-pitching platforms in the HARO sense, but databases of journalists by beat with direct outreach features.

How to actually win on these platforms

Volume is not the strategy. Specificity is. Most sources who fail on these platforms fail by responding to too many queries with generic answers. The sources who succeed share a pattern:

1. Filter ruthlessly. Respond only to queries where you have direct, verifiable expertise. The journalist will pick the response that reads as authentic; generic answers get ignored.
2. Speed matters. Most journalists post a query, get 30+ responses within an hour, and choose from the first 10 they read. Respond within the first hour or skip the query.
3. Lead with the answer, not the credential. The journalist's question is the brief. Answer it directly in the first sentence. Add your credential in the second sentence.
4. Be quotable. Write in complete sentences the journalist can paste into the article without editing. Specific numbers, concrete examples, declarative claims.
5. Provide the proof. Link to your bio page, press kit, or LinkedIn profile so the journalist can verify your credential without asking.
6. Do not pitch. Do not include a marketing paragraph about your company. Do not ask for a follow-up call. Do not request to see the article before publication. Answer the question, sign off, move on.

Realistic expectations

A well-targeted, well-written source-platform response gets used in approximately 5-15% of cases for genuinely substantive answers in your area of expertise. The published rate goes higher with platform tenure: once a journalist has used you once and the quote landed, your subsequent responses get prioritised. The first three months of platform use typically produce the lowest pickup rates; the strategy compounds.

Route 2

Direct pitching: the structure that works

Cold-pitching journalists has a sub-5% success rate at most outlets and under 1% at Tier 1 publications. The pitches that succeed share six structural traits: tight match to the journalist's specific beat, a 6-9 word concrete subject line, a first sentence that states a finding (not a request), three sentences of context maximum, an explicit offer of value to the journalist (data, source, exclusive), and one disciplined follow-up after 5-7 business days.

The anatomy of a pitch that has any chance of working

Identify the right journalist. Read their last 30-60 days of bylines. Pitch only journalists whose recent coverage overlaps with your story. Pitching the wrong journalist is the most common failure mode and it is entirely preventable.

The subject line. 6-9 words. Concrete. Names the data or insight. "23% of fintech IPOs share this prospectus pattern" works. "Story idea for you" gets deleted.

The first sentence. The story, stated as a finding. Not "I would love to share." Not "I think your readers would be interested in." The finding itself: "Three of the four largest US healthcare data breaches in 2025 originated from the same vendor."

The middle. Three sentences maximum. The angle. Why now. What is at stake.

The offer. What you are giving the journalist that they do not already have. Exclusive data. Named-source access. An interview with someone they cannot easily reach. Embargoed information they can break.

The sign-off. One sentence. Your name, role, contact. Link to a press kit or bio page. No paragraph about your company.

The follow-up. One follow-up after 5-7 business days. If no response, move on. Two follow-ups is the upper limit before you damage the relationship.

Why most pitches fail

Across the pitches we see fail repeatedly, the structural patterns are consistent: subject lines that read as marketing ("revolutionary," "innovative," "must-read"), generic openers that betray a mass blast, no specific story angle, requests for "a feature" rather than offers of a story, and aggressive follow-up cadence. None of these are subtle. The journalist filtering inbound pitches recognises them in under five seconds and deletes accordingly.

Route 3

Building a press kit journalists actually use

A digital press kit is a dedicated page on your website (typically /press or /media) containing everything a journalist needs to write about you without emailing first. The complete kit includes a one-paragraph organisation boilerplate, a one-paragraph executive bio, downloadable high-resolution headshots in landscape and portrait crops, vector logo files in colour and white, brand guidelines, a list of past media coverage, recent press releases, contact information, and any third-party data you have published. Files should be downloadable individually and as a ZIP.

What goes in a complete digital press kit

The boilerplate. Your one-paragraph company description that journalists can paste verbatim. 60-80 words. States what the company is, what it does, who it serves, and any one or two key differentiators with verifiable claims. Update it quarterly.

Executive bios. 80-120 words for each leadership team member who might be quoted. Past roles, education, notable accomplishments, the angle that makes them quotable on specific topics.

Photography. Headshots at minimum 2,000 pixels on the long edge, in JPEG and PNG. Provide both portrait and landscape crops: landscape for article hero images, portrait for sidebars. Provide on-white-background versions for print outlets. File sizes above 1 MB; many publications reject anything smaller as too low-resolution.

Logos. SVG vector versions for any size, plus PNG versions with transparent backgrounds at 200, 600, and 1,200 pixels wide. Include both colour and reversed-out (white) versions. Brand guidelines specifying clear-space rules and colour codes (HEX, RGB, CMYK).

Past coverage. A reverse-chronological list of every notable article ever published about the organisation, with publication name, date, headline, and link. This serves two purposes: it credentials you to the journalist, and it shows them what has already been covered so they do not repeat someone else's angle.

Press releases. The last 6-12 months of press releases, each as a downloadable PDF and a web page. Include contact information for each release.

Data and research. Any third-party-citable data the organisation has published: surveys, original research, industry reports. Journalists return to organisations whose data they have cited before.

Media contact. A named human, with a real email address that gets answered within 24 hours. Not a generic info@ address. The name and email should be on every page of the press kit.

The bundled-ZIP advantage

Offer the entire press kit as a single ZIP download in addition to individual files. A journalist on deadline appreciates downloading one file rather than clicking ten. Updating the ZIP quarterly is a small operational task with disproportionate goodwill payoff.

The compounding effect

A press kit is the only PR asset that gets stronger with time. Every published article you add to the past-coverage section credentials you for the next journalist. Every press release builds your archive. Every data point you publish gets cited and recited. The press kit you build at year one is mediocre; at year five, it is a moat.

Route 4

Specialist agency placement

A specialist editorial-placement agency uses established journalist relationships to secure articles authored by named journalists in major publications, on a contractual delivery basis. Baden Bower's guaranteed editorial service starts at $990 per published article, delivers most stories within 72 hours of client approval, and operates under a written money-back guarantee: the placement happens or the client is refunded in full.

What separates a guaranteed editorial placement from a press release or sponsored content

A press release is content you write that journalists may or may not pick up. A sponsored content placement (Forbes BrandVoice, sponsored pieces in trade publications) is paid advertising labelled as such. Neither is what most people mean when they say "I want articles written about me."

A guaranteed editorial placement is a journalist-authored article published under that journalist's byline, written with editorial independence, formatted identically to any other editorial piece in the publication. The journalist controls the framing; the client reviews drafts for factual accuracy before publication. The "guarantee" is a contractual delivery commitment by the agency, backed by money-back terms, not a promise from the journalist or publication.

What to look for in a placement agency

• Named journalist bylines on every placement, not "guest contributor" or anonymous staff slots
• Editorial articles, not BrandVoice or sponsored content
• A written money-back guarantee, not a verbal assurance, with the refund clause visible in the client agreement
• Documented turnaround timelines
• Direct visibility of the publication outlet (specific .com, the actual edition URL) before payment
• References from prior clients in your industry, available on request

The Baden Bower model

Every placement is sold under a written money-back guarantee. If we do not deliver the agreed coverage in the agreed publication within the agreed timeframe, the client receives a full refund under the terms of the client agreement. We charge for confirmed, published coverage, never for effort, attempts, or pitch outreach. Pricing starts at $990 per single placement. Multi-publication retainers and 12-month builds are quoted on a free strategy call.

B2B vs B2C

B2B vs B2C: which approach fits your situation

B2B pitches target trade publications and industry analysts with angles built around operational data, business outcomes, and category trends; story timelines run 4 to 12 weeks. B2C pitches target consumer publications and lifestyle outlets with angles built around human interest, novelty, and visual hooks; story timelines run from same-day breaking news to 6+ months for feature placements. The most damaging mistake is pitching B2C-style stories (founder journey, inspirational arc) to B2B journalists, or B2B-style stories (operational data, market analysis) to B2C journalists.

The structural differences that matter

Dimension	B2B	B2C
Target outlets	Trade publications, industry analyst firms, business desks of national papers, vertical-specific blogs	Consumer magazines, lifestyle outlets, broadcast media, consumer-focused sections of national papers
Angle that wins	Operational data, business outcomes, category trends, expert insight, regulatory analysis	Human interest, novelty, seasonality, visual hooks, lifestyle aspiration
Story timeline	4 to 12 weeks from pitch to publication; longer for feature pieces	Same-day for breaking news; 6+ months for magazine features
Visual requirements	Optional (diagrams, charts, headshots)	Critical (high-quality photography is often the difference between yes and no)
Quote style	Operational, data-backed, declarative	Personal, narrative, accessible
Embargoes and exclusives	Common; trades often demand exclusivity for major announcements	Less common; consumer outlets prefer to be first but not always exclusive
Typical first publication	The trade outlet most read by your buyer's procurement committee	The consumer outlet most aligned with your target audience demographic

When the same company has both audiences

Many companies sell to both B2B and B2C audiences. A skincare brand sells to consumers (B2C) but also to wholesale retail buyers (B2B). A fintech sells to consumers but also to enterprise partners. The right move is two parallel media strategies, not one. The B2C strategy targets consumer outlets with consumer angles. The B2B strategy targets trade outlets with operational angles. The same founder can be quoted in both, but the angle, the publication, and the journalist are different.

For sector-specific guidance, see our industries we service page or the relevant vertical guide for your category.

AI for PR

Using AI to accelerate every part of this

AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) accelerate four parts of PR outreach: identifying the right journalist by analysing recent bylines for subject overlap, personalising pitches by referencing the journalist's specific recent angles, drafting press release variants with different framings to test, and building media lists at scale by extracting bylines and beats from publication archives. AI cannot replace story judgement, relationship building, or follow-up discipline.

Where AI actually helps

Journalist research. Paste the URLs of a journalist's last 10 bylines into Claude or ChatGPT and ask: "What patterns do you see in this journalist's coverage? What angles have they explored? What story types do they prefer?" In 30 seconds you get a beat profile that would have taken 90 minutes manually. Use it to determine whether your pitch is a fit before you write it.

Pitch personalisation. Once you have decided to pitch a specific journalist, ask the AI to summarise their three most recent pieces in 2 sentences each, then reference one specifically in your opener. The pitch immediately reads as targeted rather than templated. Do not have the AI write the pitch; it will produce template-shaped output. Use the AI to do the research; you write the pitch.

Press release variants. When drafting a release, ask the AI to generate three versions with different framings: one data-led, one narrative-led, one trend-led. Pick the one that best matches the journalist's beat. This is faster than writing one and iterating.

Media list building. For a sector you are new to, ask AI to identify the top 20 journalists covering that sector in a specific market. Cross-reference with publication archives to verify. AI is good for the discovery layer; verification still happens manually.

Subject line testing. AI is reasonable at predicting which subject lines will get opened and which will get filtered. Generate 10, eliminate the marketing-flagged ones (revolutionary, innovative, must-read, breakthrough), and pick from what is left.

Where AI does not help

AI cannot judge whether your story is genuinely newsworthy. It will tell you yes when the answer is no. Language models are trained to be agreeable, and your story always sounds compelling when described in a prompt. Real newsworthiness is judged by people who read 200 pitches a day and recognise the patterns.

AI cannot build relationships. The journalists who write about you most successfully are those who have used you as a source before. That is a function of you being useful repeatedly, not of any AI tool.

AI cannot replace follow-up discipline. The pitches that succeed often succeed because of one well-timed follow-up. The pitches that get blacklisted fail because of three poorly-timed follow-ups. AI does not know the difference.

The risk to watch

AI-generated pitches are now flagged by major journalist filtering tools. Pitches that read as machine-written get auto-deleted at higher rates than they did in 2024. The opposite trend has also emerged: pitches that obviously had AI-research input but human-written voice get higher response rates than fully manual pitches. The optimal use is AI as the research layer, human as the writer.

Observed patterns

Patterns from 8 years of editorial placements

Since 2018, Baden Bower has placed editorial articles for 3,548 clients across 37 countries: over 25,000 articles in 700+ publications. The patterns below come from internal records, not third-party surveys.

None of this is marketing advice. It is what shows up when you have eight years of placement data on the same agency's books.

Pattern 1: The single biggest predictor of coverage is whether you have a finding, not whether you have a story

Across thousands of clients, the variable most correlated with whether journalists agree to cover them is whether they have a citable data point: a survey result, a market observation, a research finding. Clients with findings get covered roughly four times more often than clients with comparable stories but no underlying data, even when the rest of the pitch is equivalent.

Pattern 2: The first article is the hardest, the second is dramatically easier

Clients with one prior published article get their second placement in roughly half the time it took to get their first. By the third article, the cycle compresses further. Journalists are calibrated risk-averse. They prefer sources who have been quoted credibly elsewhere. The implication: building a press kit and getting one good article is a foundation that compounds, not a single transaction.

Pattern 3: Wrong-publication placements are worse than no placements

A B2B SaaS founder placed in a generalist consumer outlet typically gets less business value than the same founder placed in a smaller trade publication their actual buyers read. We have seen clients celebrate Forbes US placements that produced zero conversions because their buyers were enterprise procurement officers who read industry trade publications, not Forbes. Coverage in the right outlet for your audience consistently beats coverage in the more famous outlet. For those targeting that publication specifically, see our comprehensive Forbes route guide.

Pattern 4: Press-kit completeness correlates with placement frequency

Clients with a complete digital press kit (high-res headshots in multiple crops, vector logos, brand guidelines, past coverage list, downloadable boilerplate) get placed at noticeably higher rates than clients without. This is not because journalists prefer organised companies. It is because the journalist who has a deadline and three potential sources picks the source whose materials they can use immediately.

Pattern 5: The single best lead source for ongoing coverage is being quotable in one previous article

Across clients with sustained press coverage, the most common origin story is not a campaign or a viral moment. It is a single early article that established them as a source. The next journalist on the same beat finds that article, sees the quote, and reaches out. The client who responds quickly and quotably gets cited again. The cycle continues. Three years in, the client has 40 placements and most of them came from journalists who found them via earlier coverage.

Decision framework

Which route is right for you

Choose source platforms if:

• You have genuine subject-matter expertise you can articulate quotably
• You can spend 30 minutes a day reading and responding to queries
• You are patient with a 3-month ramp before pickups become consistent
• You are not on a deadline

Choose direct pitching if:

• You have a genuinely newsworthy story (data, finding, exclusive insight)
• You can invest 20+ hours per pitch attempt
• You are comfortable with sub-5% odds
• You can write a tight pitch and execute disciplined follow-up

Choose press-kit-led inbound if:

• You are an established expert or recognised category leader
• You have an existing public profile that can be optimised for journalist discovery
• You are playing a long game, measuring success in years, not months
• You are investing in compounding assets, not one-off placements

Choose specialist agency placement if:

• You need a confirmed editorial article, not a pitch attempt
• You have a deadline (visa filing, funding round, product launch, exit timeline)
• You want the money-back guarantee in writing
• Your story is real and substantiated, but you do not have 20 hours per pitch to spend

For most people, the answer is more than one. A founder might run an active source-platform presence, maintain a press kit, and engage Baden Bower for one or two strategic placements per year. Each route reinforces the others.

Pricing

Pricing

Baden Bower's guaranteed editorial placement starts at $990 per published article. Multi-publication retainers and visa-applicant packages are priced on a free strategy call. Full pricing across all Baden Bower services is on the main pricing page.

Package	Best for	Price	What is included
Single Placement	One confirmed article in a Tier 1 outlet	From $990	Editorial article by a named journalist. Money-back guarantee. 72-hour publication turnaround. Documentation pack for use as ongoing credential.
Multi-Publication Bundle	Founders building credibility across multiple outlets	Custom	3+ placements coordinated for spaced timing. Cross-outlet editorial diversity. Money-back guarantee on every story.
12-Month Retainer	Sustained ongoing coverage	From $1,950/month	Sustained publication cadence. Annual portfolio. Press-kit-grade documentation pack. Money-back guarantee on annual delivery.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions