Why Do Some Businesses Get Covered — and Others Never Do?
It's rarely about who has the better story. It's about who understood what a journalist actually needed.
The One-Sentence Difference That Changes Everything
Paid media is space you buy. Earned media is trust you build — one journalist, one story, one relationship at a time.
That difference is the entire reason media relations works when advertising doesn't: nobody has to be told a news story is credible. They just believe it is.
Most Pitches Fail for the Same Boring Reason
They're not bad ideas. They're just not news yet.
Aleah Hordges spent over a decade as a TV journalist and was formerly a morning news anchor at Good Morning Cincinnati — which means she's read thousands of pitches from the other side of the desk, and can tell within a sentence which ones were written by someone who understood that difference.
Most PR firms send the same generic pitch to fifty outlets and hope one sticks. It rarely does — and worse, it burns the relationship for the next pitch too.
Here’s what actually works:
Finding the story angle that’s specific to the outlet, not a mass blast
Pitching the right department, not just the right publication
Building the relationship before you need it — not scrambling for one mid-pitch
Staying ready, so you’re not starting from scratch every time news breaks
Journalists aren't hard to reach. They're hard to interest. That's a very different problem — and it's the one we actually solve.
Thinking Like a Journalist
Picture pitching a story about a new VP of Marketing hire to a journalist. They'd pass in about three seconds — and they'd be right to. Nobody outside your office cares.
The story is never really the announcement. It's what the announcement means to someone who isn't you..
Finding that newsworthy angle requires outside-the-box thinking. Each media outlet, TV show, journal, podcast, and radio station has its audience, priorities, and editorial values. Therefore, we need to target them strategically.
What does it mean to pitch strategically?
A lifestyle program might feature a chef from a local restaurant during International Food Month
An evening newscast may want to hear how inflation is impacting your business
A digital journalist could interview you about how a new labor law affects your business
A podcast might want a FemTech business to break down a new reproductive health technology for everyday listeners
A radio show may want a luxury travel agency to discuss a new scholarship geared toward first-gen travelers
Media relations is about understanding the news cycle, current events, and trends locally and nationally, and finding the right times to pitch relevant and impactful stories to specific outlets and journalists. This is how you position yourself as an industry thought leader, someone the press considers a go-to expert, dominating the media space over your competitors.
Reading the Room
Frequency and timing matter as well. Never pitch the same journalist relentlessly, and hold off when breaking news (like a natural disaster) dominates local headlines. These are a few tricks of our trade.
the coverage gap nobody officially admits to
Most newsroom bias isn't intentional. It's structural — a beat reporter defaults to the story they already know how to tell, and marginalized communities end up covered twice a year: once for a heritage month, once when something goes wrong.
Latino, Black, Asian, and Indigenous entrepreneurs make up 38% of the country's non-employer firms. Women now own 39% of U.S. businesses. The coverage hasn't caught up to those numbers — not because the stories don't exist, but because most newsrooms haven't been pitched them the right way.
That gap is exactly where we work.
It’s time to shift the narrative. It’s time to empower our communities by telling our story that often goes unnoticed and accurately reflects the work we’re doing, along with the contributions we’re making.
Let’s Elevate Your Voice