Score Your Own Pitch Before a Journalist Does
Every pitch you send gets scored. Not formally, but in the three seconds a journalist spends deciding whether to keep reading or hit delete. They're evaluating relevance, credibility, timing, and whether you've made their job easier or harder. And most of the time, they've decided before they reach your second sentence.
The good news is that you can run that same evaluation yourself, before you ever hit send. After 13 years and more than 12,000 placements, I can tell you that most rejected pitches fail on things the sender could have caught in advance. So here's the audit. Run your next pitch through these six questions honestly, and fix what doesn't pass.
1. Is there a story, or just an announcement?
Read your first two sentences and ask: would anyone who doesn't work for your company care about this?
If your pitch leads with a product feature, a company milestone, or "we're excited to announce," you have an announcement, not a story. Journalists cover stories like tension, change, a human at the center, a reason this matters to their readers. Announcements they delete.
How to fix it: Strip out your brand name and your product. Is there still something worth writing about — a problem, a shift, a person, a surprising truth? If yes, lead with that and let the product come in later as the proof. If there's nothing left once the product is gone, you don't have a pitch yet. Journalists "aren't looking for convenient packaging. They're looking for substance. A real story, real sources, and something their readers will care about."
2. Does this matter right now?
Journalists work on today's news cycle, not your launch calendar. A pitch that could have been sent any week of the year usually gets sent to the trash.
Ask yourself: why would a journalist run this this week rather than never? If you can't answer that, you're missing a hook.
How to fix it: Tie your story to something already in motion such as a trend, a news event your expertise speaks to, a seasonal moment, a national awareness day, or a cultural conversation. Give the journalist the "why now" before they have to ask for it.
3. Is this the right journalist or just a big one?
Sending your pitch to the most famous reporter you can find is one of the most common mistakes founders make. If they don't cover your beat, your pitch is irrelevant no matter how good it is and relevance is the number one reason pitches get rejected. The 2026 Muck Rack State of Journalism report found that 88% of journalists immediately delete pitches that don't match their coverage area, nearly nine in ten pitches never get a fair read, not because the story is bad, but because it went to the wrong person.
How to fix it: Confirm this specific journalist has actually written about your space recently. Reference a piece they've done. If you can't find evidence they cover what you do, they're the wrong contact. Find the one who does, even if their outlet is smaller. The right journalist at a mid-size outlet beats the wrong one at a major one every time.
4. Would you look credible if the journalist Googled you?
Because they will. The moment a pitch catches a journalist's interest, they look you up. What they find in the next thirty seconds determines whether you get a reply.
If a search turns up a bare website and nothing else. There’s no prior coverage, no third-party mentions, no evidence anyone credible has taken you seriously, you've given them a reason to pass.
How to fix it: Build a credibility layer they can find such as a LinkedIn presence that signals real expertise, a few smaller placements, a contributed article, an active professional footprint. This is also what AI tools check when someone researches you, so it does double duty. If your online presence is thin, start smaller and build up before reaching for the top.
5. Is the pitch about them, or about you?
Reread your pitch and count how many sentences are about your brand versus how many are about the journalist's audience and the value they'd get. If it's mostly about you, that's a problem.
Journalists aren't a distribution channel for your news. They're trying to serve their readers. A pitch that makes their job easier. That means a ready angle, a genuine insight, a strong quote they can use gets a response. A pitch that just asks them to amplify you gets ignored.
How to fix it: Rewrite it from the journalist's side of the desk. Lead with the story their readers would care about. Offer something usable such as data, a perspective, access, a clear quote. Make it obvious you understand who they write for.
6. Is it short enough to actually get read?
Journalists get hundreds of pitches a day. A long, dense pitch signals work they don't have time for. If yours takes more than a few short paragraphs to make its point, it's too long. Padilla's 2026 State of the U.S. Media report found nearly all journalists prefer short pitches of roughly 150 to 250 words that clearly explain why the story matters now.
How to fix it: Cut it to the essentials like who you are, why this matters now, what you're offering, and why it fits their beat. Three or four tight paragraphs. If they want more, they'll ask. The goal of a pitch isn't to tell the whole story; it's to make them want it.
Run the audit before you reach out
Here's the truth about most pitches that never get a reply: they were losing before they were ever sent. The story wasn't there, the timing was off, the journalist was wrong, or the credibility wasn't built yet. All of it is fixable, but only if you catch it before you hit send, not after the silence.
Run your next pitch through these seven questions. Be honest about what doesn't pass. Fix it first. A pitch that clears all seven isn't guaranteed to get covered but it earns the one thing every pitch is really competing for: a journalist who keeps reading.
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