Media relations is the practice of building and maintaining working relationships with journalists so that your organisation gets covered accurately and gets called when a reporter needs a source. It is the core of public relations and it is mostly unglamorous: verifying that somebody still covers a beat, writing a short email, being available at short notice, and being useful when there is nothing in it for you. Between December 2025 and August 2026 most of our pitches got no reply, but 63% of graded replies were positive — which tells you the constraint is attention, not persuasion.
What the job actually consists of
Research, which is most of it. Working out which forty journalists could plausibly care and confirming they still cover the subject. Unglamorous, and where programmes are won or lost.
"Most of what people call a PR failure is a targeting failure. The pitch went to someone who stopped covering that beat 18 months ago. That's not bad luck, that's nobody checking."
Justin Mauldin, Founder, Salient PR
Writing short emails. Under 150 words, news first, offering something the reporter cannot get from your website.
Being available. A reporter asks for a quote at 10am for a 2pm deadline. Everything upstream is wasted if you cannot answer.
Being useful without asking. Sending a journalist something genuinely relevant when you want nothing is what makes them answer later.
"The reporters who answer fastest are the ones we've sent something useful to before without asking for anything. That's not a tactic you can start the week you need coverage."
Kayla Haines, Media Relations, Salient PR
Maintaining the list. It decays continuously.
"We keep 1,750 reporters in the database and the maintenance never stops. People move outlets, change beats, leave the industry. A list that hasn't been touched in six months is mostly wrong."
Kristin Kaplan, Operations, Salient PR
What to expect from it
| Measure | Ours |
|---|---|
| Positive share of replies | 63% |
| Declines | 19% |
| Bounce rate | 1.0% |
| Unsubscribes | 0 |
A working programme in most B2B categories sits between 8% and 11%. On a verified list of forty names, three or four real conversations is a good month.
The number that reframes the work: when reporters reply, nearly two in three are positive. Nobody is refusing you. Most never read the email.
"When a reporter does reply, 63% of the time it's a yes. The hard part was never convincing them. It's getting read at all."
Justin Mauldin, Founder, Salient PR
The first email does the work
| Sequence step | Delivered | Open rate | Reply rate | Replies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First email | 2,063 | 47.6% | 6.0% | 124 |
| Follow-up 1 | 1,576 | 37.4% | 3.7% | 59 |
| Follow-up 2 | 69 | 40.6% | 4.3% | 3 |
Two-thirds of every reply came from the first email. Most media relations advice recommends persistence. The data recommends getting the first one right and sending at most one follow-up that adds something.
What separates good media relations from bad
Specificity. A pitch that could go to any journalist will work on none of them.
Restraint about volume. More sending to a worse list is actively negative — it trains recipients to ignore your address.
"Volume doesn't fix a bad list. Sending 200 pitches to people who don't cover you gets you the same result as sending 20, except now you're on more block lists."
Kayla Haines, Media Relations, Salient PR
Willingness to say a story is not interesting. Internally, before it goes out. This is the most valuable thing a media relations person does and the hardest to do politically.
Speed on the client side. If quote approval takes two days, the rest does not matter.
Recording what failed. Twelve of our 522 reply messages were classified "confused" — the reporter could not tell what was being pitched. Small number, most actionable one in the set.
Media relations versus adjacent functions
Versus public relations. Media relations is the journalist-facing part. PR also covers analyst relations, awards, speaking, messaging and crisis.
Versus communications. Communications includes internal, executive and marketing communications. Media relations is one function within it.
Versus content marketing. Content is controlled — you decide the words and the timing. Media relations is earned, which is exactly what makes it credible and exactly what makes it harder.
How to get started with no relationships
Find the five best articles written about your category in the last three months. Note who wrote them. That is your first list, and it is better than anything a database filter produces.
Read four or five of each person's pieces properly. You are looking for the angle they return to.
Send one genuinely useful thing with no ask. A number they would find interesting, a correction to something everyone gets wrong, a source they would want.
Then pitch, once, specifically.
Record everything, including the failures. A programme that only logs wins cannot improve.
Does AI search change media relations?
It changes what the coverage is for. Referral traffic from a placement has fallen — our own tracking of 180 keywords shows click-through about 10% lower on queries carrying an AI Overview.
But AI answers about your category are assembled from published journalism. Being quoted in publications those systems trust is now how you appear in the answer a buyer sees before they reach your website.
Media relations got less measurable and more important at the same time, which is an uncomfortable combination for anyone reporting on it.
The short version
- Media relations is mostly research and availability, not writing.
- Expect 8–11% reply rates. Of our graded replies, 63% are a yes.
- Nobody is refusing you. Most never read the email.
- Two-thirds of replies come from the first email. Persistence is oversold.
- Volume against a bad list is worse than doing nothing.
- Start by finding who wrote the five best articles in your category this quarter.
- Coverage got harder to measure and more valuable at the same time.
Salient PR runs earned media programmes for technology companies. All figures come from our own outreach database covering December 2025 to August 2026 and are updated quarterly.
Sources
- Salient PR outreach database, Dec 2025 – Aug 2026
- Salient PR / Google Search Console + Ahrefs, 180-keyword AI Overview analysis, Aug 2026
If you want a media relations programme run this way — Salient PR is a technology PR agency working with technology companies. See how we work or start a conversation.
We also publish what a yes actually turns into — nine pitches traced from the reporter's reply to the published piece, with the dates.
Related reading
About Salient PR
Salient is a B2B tech PR agency. We help startups become the story — landing tier-one coverage, building executive visibility, and turning attention into pipeline.
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What media relations actually involves day to day, what reply rates to expect, and why targeting matters more than writing. With data from our own outreach.
