Muck Rack’s Annual State of Journalism is out. For my money, it is the best annual look at the media relations landscape from the position of the gatekeepers, which is the journalists.

We all know that things are not always rosy between us and them. Some of it is natural and some of we (the pitchers) inflict on ourselves with sloppy, lazy and sometimes insulting outreach. In addition, in the world of Twitter, you open yourself up to ridicule from the journalist. No need to cover that more here, head over to Michael Smart’s page if you want to get the whole cringe-worthy scoop.

The Muck Rack research is always interesting and I encourage you to head here and download it. Here are some takeaways I saw. I’d be interested if you see anything differnet.

Companies/Pitchers are doing better

Last year, 61% of journalists said companies were “outdated” when sharing information. This year, it is only 44%, which is a remarkable gap but still room to grow.

There’s another implication, though. For a while, you could stand out from all the other pitches simply by your approach. As that percentage increases, it will become table stakes and those on the leading edge will need to find new ways to differentiate.

Journalists believe that trust in their coverage has increased over the past year.

This is an interesting one. It is belied by other data (such as from Edelman and Pew). One-third (32%) of journalists say trust has increased and 22% say it has decreased. So, the net is an 11% increase.

It does beat a steep decline.

The key point is this. One of our obstacles in getting people to invest in media relations is that distrust in media could negate any benefits. We were in it for the validation, what if the reader doesn’t think it’s validating? Data like this can help with that conversation.

Muck Rack does break it out by beat, but frankly, the trend is pretty consistent across a couple of dozen beats.

On Social Media, it is Twitter

And that is all it is. Three-quarters of journalists say Twitter is most valuable. Nothing else is even close. LinkedIn and YouTube are growing, however. This jibes with my observation that LinkedIn is increasingly becoming the medium of choice, at least for B2B communications.

Journalists Want to be Shared

Almost two-thirds of journalists track how often their story is shared. Therefore, it makes sense for us to pitch them more shareable stories.

How do you do that? Journalists say these four things are most likely to get their work shared.

A trending story
Contains an image or infographic
Exclusive or surprising date
Easily “localized,” which by this we mean made relevant to the journalist’s target audience

Journalists Mostly Value Their Relationship with PR

This is good to know. In the day-to-day, you can sometimes get the opposite impression. For us, it means not to take pitch rejections personally. Just how it goes.

Three in five journalists say that the relationship is mutually beneficial. Only 8% say it is a partnership, which I don’t think it even should be. One-in-six say we are a necessary evil.

The lesson here is to add value and only approach them with relevant information and journalists will be glad we are doing what we do. The likelihood of response ticked up over last year.

Last thing here. This sounds like a story problem, but 80% of journalists say a quarter or more of their stories originate with pitches. Unless the train starting in Philadelphia beat the train from Baltimore due to the angle of the headwinds.

The Perfect Pitch

The data here is pretty helpful. More importantly, though, is that 1:1 email is the top channel and it is not even remotely close. Spray and pray won’t get it done and might get you blocked.

The business challenge here is that 1:1 is the most labor-intensive work at a time when people value media coverage less

The Opportunity Universities Are Missing

Journalists say that the most credible sources are academic subject matter experts. This is and remains a key brand and reputation builder for academics.

Agency PR people are 14% behind company PR people and 30% behind CEOs. Advise accordingly.

Muck Rack’s State of Journalism 2022