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Summer brain is real.

We're busy planning vacations, reapplying SPF for the third time today, and wondering if we really need to answer that email before Monday.

Meanwhile, journalists are...still journalist-ing.

The news doesn’t stop because there’s a heat wave and someone brought popsicles to the office. And a recent Pitch Report is a good reminder that better PR starts by seeing the world from their side of the inbox and going back to the basics.

All that stuff you learned in kindergarten? Yeah, it still applies.

Be kind and build trust.

Pay attention and communicate authentically.

Don’t copy your neighbor’s work (or a robot’s).

Or enjoy watching your pitch get sent straight into the digital graveyard.

💡 Stat: 81% of journalists say they almost always open pitches from contacts they have established relationships with. 

No amount of “Just following up!” subject lines can compete with trust. It’s not rocket science – familiar names carry credibility. 

Don’t think of it as networking…more like being on someone’s Close Friends list. 

They already know you. They know you get what they cover. They don’t have to brace themselves for a pitch about prebiotic protein oat milk when they actually cover tech culture and start-ups. 

Building relationships can’t happen five minutes before you need coverage. 

Read the room. Better yet, read their last five articles. Then keep showing up with

✅ Thoughtful check-ins, 

✅ Genuine engagement, 

✅ An understanding of a journalist’s work 

To make future outreach effective.

Trust is the original inbox hack. Speaking of inboxes…

💡 Stat: 67% say they’ve missed stories simply because their inboxes were too full to catch them.

Not because the story was bad or the pitch was irrelevant. Just because there are only so many hours in the day. 

The world is quite loud right now, moving at the speed of “Wait…that happened too?”

Who knows what fresh, new existential crisis is hitting their desk before breakfast. 🫠

If your entire job revolves around consuming the news, you don’t really get to stick your fingers in your ears and sing “la la la la” and hide from it like we all do sometimes. (Yes, you do. Don’t lie.)

With an inbox full of thirsty “pay attention to meeeeee” messages, their attention isn’t just valuable – it’s scarce. Meaning even great stories get lost in the shuffle. 

That’s why relevance matters more than ever. The more relevant, the better odds it survives the landfill that is a corporate inbox. 

Because guess what?! You thought we could avoid it…but AI, everyone. 

💡 Stat: 71% say they can identify AI-generated pitches.

Just like most of us can. 

Generic language, vague compliments, overly polished transitions, and the unmistakable energy of "I hope this email finds you well!" are easy to spot.

Journalists don’t want personalization just because it’s ~nice~. They want proof that a human is on the other side who actually knows what they cover 🤦‍♀️ and why this story belongs in their inbox instead of 239,234 journalists on your media list. 

Not to be a broken record. But authenticity 👏 is 👏 what 👏 wins 👏

See? Kindergarten wasn’t just preparing you for finger painting. 

We don’t need to reinvent the PR wheel to successfully work with journalists.

We’ve just gotta make their job a bit easier.

So, here’s today’s homework:

✔️ Build relationships before pitching

✔️ Personalize outreach when you can

✔️ Keep pitches concise and scannable

✔️ Relevance > volume

✔️ Respect journalists' time and preferences

✔️ Quality outreach > quantity

Gold stars aren’t included, but a better open rate may be. 😉

Ash & Lizzy

Who's going where and why it matters. Not just job shifts - power dynamics, layoffs, and who's headed out.

😓 Om Malik, founder of GigaOm, and one of the most beloved tech writers of our time, died at Stanford Hospital.

🧳 Sean O’Kane is now a Senior Reporter, Special Projects at TechCrunch. This means he’s going deeper and getting meatier with his tech stories about founders and funders.

🧳 Katie Roof is now the Editor-at-Large at Business Insider, covering VCs, IPOs, and more. She will also contribute to Politico and The Telegraph.

🧳 Kevin Roose is leaving The New York Times to start a new company with his friend and Hard Fork co-host, Casey Newton.

🫱🏼‍🫲🏽 Kara Swisher is taking her tech influence into politics, announcing plans to interview more political candidates on her highly popular podcasts.

Get to know Ashley and Lizzy, learn more about The Colab, or pass The Brief along to a friend who should be reading this too.