The Propel Media Barometer - Q3 2023

The Q3 2023 Propel Media Barometer is here, and we can’t wait for you to have your own copy with all its highlights! This is a quarterly report we publish to share research findings from studying half a million PR pitches sent to journalists every three months. PR pros around the world sent 485,722 news pitches through our platform in Q2 2023, so we have tons of insights to share about which pitches performed the best (and the worst) and what journalists are looking for today. In this report, you’ll learn everything from the optimal subject line length to how journalists are responding to an array of trending news topics like “Pride” and “generative AI.”

In an era marked by the rise of fake news, growing media distrust, limited newsroom resources, and an escalating demand for strong earned media coverage across industries, it makes perfect sense that securing high-quality press coverage is becoming more difficult by the minute. Our goal with these quarterly benchmark reports is to offer actionable insights and strategies to improve your journalist outreach results when pitching news for your brand or clients. From there, we hope you can much more efficiently land the news coverage you’re after with the resources at your disposal.

Key findings include:

Despite media outlets’ diminishing resources, we see impressive consistency in the average time it takes for journalists to open a pitch. In Q2 2023, journalists opened an average of 49.14% of the pitches they received.
Journalists responded to an average of 2.99% of the pitches they received.‍
Out of every weekday, journalists responded to the most pitches on Tuesday (27.73% of all journalist responses).
The average response rate to pitches with the shortest subject lines is more than double the response rate to pitches with the longest subject lines.
Pitches mentioning generative AI had a response rate of 11.47%, showing that journalists are hungry for unique and interesting generative AI stories.