Creating a Media List: Best Practices and Examples

Many companies assume that their announcements—whether they be product releases, new hires, or data reports—are newsworthy. But a press release alone doesn’t guarantee coverage from a reporter.

People considering investing in or buying from a company are much more likely to be enticed by an earned piece written by a journalist than a statement put out by an organization. That means pitching your organization’s news to the right people. But how do you know who the right people are?

This is where a media list comes in. Before beginning to pitch, it’s essential for PR professionals to do their research and build a list of reporters relevant to their goals. Targeting reporters who have written about similar topics in the past (and thereby would most likely be interested in the story you are sending them) is the foundation of building such a list. 

With a well-constructed media list in hand, companies can focus their communication strategy for greater efficiency and wider media coverage.

Understanding Your Target Audience

Before building a list of media contacts, companies need to know who they are trying to reach with their news. Who this target audience is differs from business to business, and there can also be multiple differing target audiences for each goal within a single business.

For example, if a fintech company releases an open banking solution, its main goal will most likely be to reach banks and markets that could benefit from the new product. 

To do this, the media list developed will consist of outlets and reporters who either write for banking trade magazines, fintech trade magazines, or larger business outlets with a specific concentration on banking or fintech. 

This is because the executives making decisions on what tech to invest in will be researching and reading articles in that specific outlet niche (or at least, their employees will be). 

If that same fintech company releases news of a Series B funding round, the target audience will be focused on the investor community and the fintech market as a whole. While banking and fintech trades would still be targeted, attention would also shift to contacting reporters who write frequently about venture capital and funding rounds. The goal herein would be to demonstrate company growth, entice investors, and demonstrate competitive leadership.

Creating Your Media Contact List from Scratch

Once the target area and ‘beat’ are established, PR professionals will commence research on which reporters would be best to reach out to and gather their contact information. Though there are a variety of methods, when it comes to getting started, one of the best ways to find reporters is simply by searching for reporting similar to your target. 

Let’s go back to the previous open banking solution example. To find reporters who would be interested in a story like this, PR professionals can search key terms like ‘open banking solution,’ ‘banking technology,’ or ‘digital transformation.’ You can also examine the press releases of industry competitors, noting the reporters who covered those releases.

This contact list, even in its early stages, provides an excellent baseline. It’s a way of ‘surveying the landscape’ and developing an understanding of what reporters are writing—what interests, drives and engages them. Yet, while doing this kind of research, keep in mind these three key reminders:

Trends change rapidly. Note when the article was written

When reaching out to reporters, it’s best to reference articles that have been released somewhat frequently. If the contact you are reaching out to wrote an article on the topic you are pitching over a year ago, it’s possible they are no longer interested in writing about the subject or have completely switched beats. In other words, professional trends and interests—as well as the interests of the audience you are trying to reach—can vary significantly and often.

Track reporters’ current titles and places of work

It’s essential you do some extra research on the reporters themselves before adding them to a list for your pitch. The media landscape is constantly changing and reporters switch concentrations or take jobs at other outlets on a frequent basis.

Muck Rack is a great platform to collect this information, tracking a reporter’s current place of work, title, beats, and recent articles all in one place. This media database is the perfect one-stop shop to vet a reporter after finding a relevant article, as well as the place to go to find their contact information. You can also conduct follow-ups with reporters yourself, especially if you have done the work to build a relationship with them.

Be aware of ghostwriting

It may sound obvious, but not all articles that may come up in a Google search are written by reporters per se. Bylines, an article written by an executive (or, more likely, ghostwritten for them) and featured in a publication are common, covering similar or even identical topics to press releases as part of a broader media strategy. Forbes Contributors are sometimes an exception. Many Forbes Contributors are both executives at a company as well as a reporter for Forbes Magazine.

Utilizing Tools to Build Out Your Media Contact List

In addition to using Muck Rack as a means to vet journalists as mentioned above, the tool can also be used to find other relevant reporters. Muck Rack has search functions as well as filters that help narrow down a search such as article publish date range, location of reporter, beat of reporter, and title of reporter.

For example, if a PR professional was looking to pull a list of reporters for the open banking pitch but wanted to focus on New York City, their search may resemble the screenshot below:

Other platforms that can be used to find reporters include databases like Cision or social media platforms such as Twitter (X), LinkedIn or even TikTok depending on your goals.

Example Media Lists

Once reporters and their contact information have been established, PR professionals need to keep track of who they are reaching out to in a way that is organized, accessible, and easy to comprehend.

Media lists are usually organized into the following columns:

• Media Outlet
  This is the publication the reporter writes for.
  
• Reporter First Name
  
• Reporter Last Name
  
• Reporter Title
  While some titles are as simple as “editor” or “reporter”, others call out the specific beat a reporter covers which is important to note.
  
• Reporter Contact Information
  This can include both emails and phone numbers.
  
• Relevant Article Link
  The relevant link referenced in a media list should be the article that a PR professional uses to personalize their note to the reporter.
  

The example below utilizes Google Sheets; the outlets are based on the open banking example:

When organizing your media contacts, put the list in alphabetical order by publication, or otherwise make sure that your columns are set up such that you can organize by differing priorities or alphabetical orders as needed (e.g., last name vs. publication, or sort by focus area, etc.). From crisis management to product launches, new leadership, events and everything in between, it is important to be ready to spring into a targeted strategy.

Final Tips for Building a Media List

Media lists aren’t meant to be one-size-fits-all. While it’s a good practice to have a master media list with all the reporters who have once been relevant to a client, lists specific to certain goals, topics, or targets should also be maintained if your PR operation is sufficiently complex.

Each announcement is a new opportunity to generate awareness, and a media list should reflect that by ensuring your efforts are as targeted and efficient as possible.

Identifying the right reporter is just the first step in successfully garnering impactful media coverage. To read more about how a company can go from having news to being in the news visit CVM’s media relations strategy page here.