How to Find the Right Reporter for Your Story

.prose p { margin: 0 0 1.5rem; line-height: 1.9; font-size: 1.125rem; } .prose h2 { margin-top: 4rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; font-size: 2.5rem; font-weight: 800; } .prose ul { margin: 2rem 0; padding-left: 1.5rem; } .prose img { border-radius: 20px; margin: 2rem auto; box-shadow: 0 20px 40px rgba(0,0,0,0.08); } HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT REPORTER FOR YOUR STORY TL;DR (for exhausted founders who just want the truth) Hello, so I spent seven draining years building and selling a startup. PR worked, but figuring it out took months and months of wasted time, stress, and second-guessing (I sold my startup and I share the whole story here: https://blog.acquire.com/how-i-got-acquired-when-success-gets-in-way-exit/ ) So I built https://contactjournalists.com to fix that. The hardest part of PR isn’t writing the pitch. It’s literally finding the right reporter. Googling journalists and scrolling Twitter burns so much time that, quite frankly, you just don’t have. The right press builds trust, credibility, and revenue much faster than ads. People come to you. You don’t have to come to them. You don’t need a PR agency. You need relevance and speed. ContactJournalists.com gives you journalists, bloggers, podcasters, and live press requests all in one place. There’s a 7-day free trial so you can take a look around and start getting PR for your business right now. If you’re trying to figure out how to find the right reporter for your story, you’re not alone. Most founders struggle to get press because they pitch the wrong journalists, waste time on outdated media lists, or don’t know where to start. This guide breaks down how to find journalists who actually want your story, how to respond to journalist requests quickly, and how to get press without a PR agency. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT REPORTER FOR YOUR STORY Hello, I’m Fortuna. I’m the founder of ContactJournalists.com. If you’re here because you’re trying to work out how to get press without losing your mind, your time, or your self-belief, you’re exactly where I hoped you’d land. If you want to shortcut months of trial and error, there’s a 7-day free trial on ContactJournalists.com so you can take a look around and start getting PR for your business right now. I spent seven exhausting years building a startup, figuring PR out the long, slow, deeply inefficient way, and then decided that whole process needed fixing. If I’d had something like ContactJournalists.com back then, I would have used it immediately. I would have loved journalist requests to come directly to me so I could simply hit reply, rather than me scouring the internet for hours on end to no avail. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ JUNE 2026 UPDATE: USING MY OWN TOOL IS ACTUALLY WORKING Can I just say... It’s actually really cool using my own tool to get publicity for my own startup. I’ve been using ContactJournalists.com myself and I’m already starting to see the results. I’ve recently been featured in Jobs & Careers Magazine, and I’ve also lined up appearances on not one, but two podcasts: • Zunesty • TryLaunchAI All through doing exactly what I encourage our users to do every single day. Responding to relevant opportunities. Putting yourself out there. Using free publicity to build trust. What’s been really exciting is seeing the impact beyond the publicity itself. Our brand new domain has gone from a Domain Authority of 0 to 5. Our Page Authority is now 19. [INSERT DOMAIN AUTHORITY IMAGE HERE] Exciting to see our Domain Authority grow from 0 to 5, with our Page Authority now at 19. We’re also now ranking for 25 keywords, which feels pretty surreal considering how early we are. [INSERT KEYWORD IMAGE HERE] ContactJournalists.com is now ranking for 25 keywords. Some of the keywords we’re already showing up for include: • contact journalists • contact journalist • journalists requests • contact a journalist • contacting journalists for free • journalist contacts • how to contact journalists And seeing ContactJournalists.com featured in Jobs & Careers Magazine was one of those lovely little founder moments where I thought: "Hang on... this is exactly why I built this." [INSERT JOBS & CAREERS MAGAZINE IMAGE HERE] One of our recent pieces of press coverage in Jobs & Careers Magazine. It’s still very early days, and I’m sure there will be plenty more lessons, mistakes, pivots and caffeine-fuelled moments ahead. But I genuinely can’t wait to keep sharing the reality of building ContactJournalists.com from the ground up. If there’s one thing I’ve learned already, it’s that free publicity really is powerful. It doesn’t just bring brand awareness. It can boost your SEO. Strengthen your domain authority. Improve your visibility. Build trust. Put your business in front of people who may never have found you otherwise. And honestly? For a brand new startup... That’s pretty exciting. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ MY FIRST BUSINESS IS WHY THIS EXISTS Before ContactJournalists.com, I founded It Really Works Vitamins. I built this supplement brand from scratch (totally bootstrapped, woohoo!) over seven years where anything that saved time, stress or emotional bandwidth would have been a lifeline. If you’re in need of an easy way to contact journalists and get publicity for your startup, start your 7-day free trial at ContactJournalists.com. Back to my story... In the early days, I grew It Really Works Vitamins through Instagram. I scaled up the brand through influencer marketing before it became completely oversaturated. I built relationships. Sent products. Worked closely with creators. And for a long time, it worked brilliantly. When that channel worked, I didn’t think much about PR, which is exactly where many founders are before they end up on ContactJournalists.com. Sales grew. The brand grew. Life was fab. Then the Instagram algorithm started tightening its grip. All the reach that we took for granted dropped unless you started running ads on Instagram and Facebook. Ads also became more expensive. Suddenly, a platform I didn’t own was deciding how visible my business could be. That moment is exactly why ContactJournalists.com exists. WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED ONCE PRESS LANDED We eventually landed features in Forbes, Coach Magazine, and Men's Health. Yay. This Forbes feature was a really nice turning point for us: https://www.forbes.com/sites/leebelltech/2019/04/27/best-nutrition-innovation-2019/ Nothing fundamental about the business changed overnight. Adding those logos to our website, emails, packaging and social profiles made a noticeable difference. Trust came quicker. People were more comfortable buying. Retail conversations moved faster. Revenue followed. Yay. This effect isn't anecdotal. Edelman's Trust Barometer shows that people trust brands more when they are validated by third-party sources they already believe in: https://www.edelman.com/trust/trust-barometer That's why PR compounds. One good feature makes the next easier. Everything downstream works harder. I really went through a lot of stress. It was totally time-consuming and, quite frankly, painful getting these features. And so this is how ContactJournalists.com came about. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE PART NOBODY SEES What doesn't show up when people see press logos on a homepage is how long it took to get them. It wasn't a good week of pitching. It was months. My brain was a whole series of tabs open everywhere. Twitter running in the background. Drafts rewritten because maybe the angle wasn't quite right. Remembering to follow up. Waiting. Following up. Wondering whether silence meant disinterest or bad timing. Arrrrghhh. That waiting drains you. Not just time, but mental energy. Muck Rack's State of Journalism report shows that journalists receive huge volumes of pitches and that relevance is the primary factor in whether an email is opened: https://muckrack.com/state-of-journalism This is the stage ContactJournalists.com removes. Not the act of pitching itself. But the fog before it. Knowing who actually covers your space changes the entire experience. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE MISTAKE I MADE FOR FAR TOO LONG For a long time, I chased publications instead of people. I wanted recognisable names. Forbes. Men's Health. Big logos I could put on the website. So I started with the outlet and tried to work backwards. Clicking bylines. Guessing who might be relevant. Hoping I'd landed on the right person. It feels logical. It's also slow. What actually worked was identifying journalists who were already deep in the space. People who had written about similar topics more than once. People who were actively publishing. People who were already asking the kinds of questions our business could help answer. When the fit was right, the conversation felt natural from the very first line. That's exactly how ContactJournalists.com is structured. Instead of starting with logos, you start with journalists who: • Regularly cover your niche, not just once in the past. • Are actively writing and publishing right now. • Are open to sources, commentary and story ideas. • Already understand the space you're operating in. And crucially, ContactJournalists.com makes this practical, not theoretical. You can: • Filter journalists by niche and topic, so you're not guessing relevance. • See live press requests from journalists actively looking for sources. • Access a large, up-to-date database of journalists, bloggers, podcasters and YouTubers. • Respond quickly when timing actually matters. When you pitch from that place, you're not convincing someone to care. You're stepping into a conversation that's already happening. That shift is what makes PR stop feeling like guesswork and start feeling manageable. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHY GOOGLE AND TWITTER WEREN'T ENOUGH I spent an unreasonable amount of time doing what most founders do when they decide they want press. Googling journalists. Clicking author names. Opening multiple tabs. Searching Twitter. Telling myself this counted as progress. It was exhausting. And most of it didn't move anything forward. The core issue with Google is that it gives you history, not intent. You're looking at articles someone wrote in the past and trying to guess whether they still cover that topic. Whether they still work there. Whether they're even open to pitches. You're doing detective work instead of outreach. Twitter feels more "live", but it has its own problems. Journalist requests move fast. Timelines refresh constantly. If you're running a business and not glued to it all day, you miss opportunities. Or you see them too late. And being on Twitter really drains you of your energy. There's also a bigger timing issue founders underestimate. Research from the Reuters Institute shows that journalists are under increasing pressure to publish quickly, often working across multiple beats at once: https://www.digitalnewsreport.org/ In that environment, relevance and speed matter far more than a perfectly polished pitch. Which is why ContactJournalists.com is here to bring you live requests from journalists. If your message doesn't land at the right moment, it doesn't matter how good your story is. This is why PR can feel so frustrating. You're putting effort in, but you're doing it without visibility into who's actively writing. Who's open to sources. Who's actually looking for stories right now. Pulling journalists, bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters and live press requests into one place isn't about convenience. It's about removing friction. It means you're not just guessing. Not chasing outdated leads. Not relying on luck. That's the gap ContactJournalists.com was built to close. We bring live requests to you. When a journalist in your niche posts a request, we send this directly to you. Just imagine the sheer amount of time saved. We have a 7-day free trial so you can check us out and start replying to news requests. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PR WORKS BEST AS PART OF GROWTH, NOT A ONE-OFF One thing I didn't fully appreciate early on is how effective PR is when it's treated as part of growth, not a one-time campaign. Good press supports sales. It shortens trust cycles. It makes partnerships easier. It helps everything else work harder. I go into this in more depth here: https://contactjournalists.com/blog/how-founders-can-use-pr-to-explode-early-stage-growth-without-a-pr-agency Strategy only matters if execution doesn't drain you. ContactJournalists.com was brought into existence because I was totally drained from running around chasing publicity when founders really need publicity to come to them. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT CONTACTJOURNALISTS.COM ACTUALLY DOES ContactJournalists.com brings live press requests from journalists actively looking for sources together with a constantly updated database that brings the right journalists and creators to you. Rather than sending you down internet rabbit holes. Or spending evenings hunting people down online. You can see what journalists are asking for. Respond quickly using the AI response writer. Tweak the draft if needed. Add in your latest news. And send, without overthinking. The real benefit isn't more PR. It's less wasted time. If you want more practical, founder-level PR thinking, the rest of the blog lives here: https://contactjournalists.com/#blog The platform and the content are designed to work together. Since you've landed here, I know you're already serious about using PR as part of your growth strategy. If you've got the time, I'd really recommend catching up on the rest of the guides on the ContactJournalists blog here: https://contactjournalists.com/#blog They're all written by me, Fortuna. Hi 👋 I share lessons I've picked up the hard way while building and selling a business. The annoying real-life experiences from one drained founder to another. And also our free trial is there when you're ready 🙂 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHY THIS PROBLEM FOLLOWED ME AFTER SELLING I sold It Really Works Vitamins after seven intense years. Even after stepping away, this problem stuck with me. PR shouldn't take months just to work out who to speak to. It shouldn't feel like a second job. Founders shouldn't need agencies or endless spare hours just to get a reply. That frustration is what eventually became ContactJournalists.com. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ A FINAL WORD, FOUNDER TO FOUNDER If you're weighing it up, here's what I want you to take away. You don't need a perfect press pitch. You don't need to be "PR ready". You don't need to be very polished. And best of all... You don't need a PR agency. Or a massive budget. What most founders actually need is a simpler way to find the right reporter for their story. Understand which journalists are relevant to their business. And respond to journalist requests without it becoming another full-time job. Once you have clarity on who to pitch, when to pitch and how to respond, getting press stops feeling intimidating. It becomes part of your growth strategy. Not a constant source of stress. That's when PR starts supporting sales, credibility, partnerships and long-term visibility instead of draining your time. That's exactly why ContactJournalists.com exists. I built it after years of trying to get press the hard way. Pitching the wrong journalists. Wasting evenings on Google and Twitter. Wondering why something so important felt so unnecessarily difficult. It's designed to help founders get press without a PR agency. Find journalists who actually want their story. And respond quickly when opportunities appear. Take your time. Read through the guides. Get familiar with how journalists think. And when you're ready to start getting press for your business in a way that feels manageable, you'll know exactly where to go. See you soon. Fortuna Founder, ContactJournalists.com