Why Journalists Ignore You (and Who They Don’t)

I hear constantly that people have no idea what PR actually is. And yet the global public relations market is valued at roughly $110 to $114 billion in 2026, with forecasts pointing to a 6% to 8% annual growth rate over the next several years.

For those of us in the industry, that’s a good sign. But here’s the part that keeps me up at night: how does that translate for the small business owners and early-stage founders I actually work with?

Most of them are working with tight budgets and big expectations — they want to be in Forbes and the New York Times off the back of a single press release or an ad hoc announcement. No media relationships, no consistency in storytelling, just a hope that a journalist will drop everything the moment they hit send.

Here’s the question I keep asking them: Would you treat your own clients that way? Would you expect loyalty, results and priority treatment from someone who only shows up when they need something? No. So why expect it from the press?

This article is for founders who want to understand what PR actually is, and the work behind it, before they start measuring results.

Start with the “so what,” not the “what”

Founders love talking about what they built, but reporters don’t care. They care about why it matters to their readers, right now.

Cision’s 2023 State of the Media report found that over 60% of journalists say the pitches they receive are irrelevant to their beat or audience. That was the single biggest complaint in the survey. That’s a positioning problem.

The fix is simply to say what your audience wants to know, not what you’re selling. Don’t say “we make the best rust-prevention stick” or “we sell the best pet supplements.” Say “85% of U.S. households are affected by hard water, and here’s what that actually damages” or “65.2% of pet owners now give their pets supplements as part of a shared wellness routine.”

The first is a product description, while the second is a story a reporter can tell without you in the room, and is more likely to get picked up.

Build relationships before you need them

I can’t stop emphasizing this enough.

One of my clients decided to handle media outreach themselves after meeting a few journalists at a trade event. Reasonable instinct, except those journalists talked to dozens of founders that same day, and by the time my client needed them, they were forgotten.

That’s the pattern I see constantly. One conversation, one press release, then radio silence — and then the founder tells me “PR doesn’t work.” It’s not that it doesn’t work. It’s that the ‘relations’ part of public relations was never actually attempted.

The founders who land consistent coverage aren’t the ones with the flashiest pitch. They’re the ones who talked to journalists six months before they needed anything. Try commenting on their articles or sharing a genuinely useful data point on LinkedIn with no ask attached. Show up in someone’s inbox as a source of value, not a request.

A journalist covering your space will write dozens of stories this year. If you’re the founder who already helped them once, you’re the first call when they need a quote. Cold pitches get ignored, and warm relationships get answered.

Nobody buys the pen. They buy why you made it

Most founders treat PR as something tied to a launch or a funding round. That’s the mistake.
The space between milestones is where trust actually gets built. Publish a contrarian take on your industry or release proprietary data only your company could have. Weigh in publicly when news breaks in your space, and don’t underestimate your own story — people are often more curious about you than about your product.

I often give my clients this example: if you hand someone a pen and say “buy this pen,” they’ll probably won’t, but if you say “this pen is hand-made by a women-led cooperative in Ghana, where every sale funds a girl’s school fees for a year” — they’ll likely at least give it a try. Once that pen is in their hand and it’s genuinely good, repeat sales take care of themselves.

That’s the shift. People attach themselves to stories, not specs.

Measure influence, not impressions.

Quality over quantity, always. One feature in a smaller publication your actual customers read will outperform ten mentions in outlets your audience has never heard of.

Founders chase big magazine and newspaper logos for the ego boost, then wonder why none of it moved a single sale. Before chasing any placement, ask one question: would my ideal customer see this and trust me more? If the answer’s no, the logo isn’t worth it.

So, here’s what I’d leave every founder with: if a reporter searched your name today, would they find someone with a point of view worth quoting or just another founder who launched something?

That answer decides whether your next pitch gets opened or deleted.