A media list of 40 outperforms a list of 400.

Step 1 — Write the story before you search

A list is downstream of a pitch, not the other way round. Write one sentence describing what a reporter would actually publish. If you cannot, no database will save the campaign.

That sentence tells you the beat and the geography, which are the only two filters worth starting with.

Step 2 — Start narrow, then widen

Begin with beat plus country. Across 799,000+ journalist profiles that combination usually lands you a workable shortlist in one step, rather than the thousands you get from “all technology journalists” and then have to cut down by hand.

Widen only when the narrow search is genuinely too small. Adding an adjacent country usually beats adding an adjacent beat, because a reporter's patch is defined more by subject than by geography.

Step 3 — Filter to people who write

Job title is the strongest signal available. Reporters, correspondents and staff writers file regularly. Editors commission and are worth having for a small number of tier-one targets, but a list made entirely of editors-in-chief will underperform.

Filter on job title deliberately: a list weighted toward reporters and correspondents will normally out-perform one built from senior editor titles alone.

Step 4 — Segment into tiers

• Tier one (5–10 contacts): the outlets that would genuinely change your week. Individually researched, individually written, sent first.
• Tier two (20–40 contacts): trade and specialist press who cover your category regularly. Personalised opening line, shared body.
• Tier three (optional): broader relevance, sent last, only if the story has legs.

Keep tiers as separate lists. It stops you sending the tier-three template to a tier-one reporter at 5pm on a Friday.

Step 5 — Check recency before you send

Any contact database, ours included, is a snapshot. Journalists move outlets constantly. Before a tier-one send, spend thirty seconds on the reporter's recent work — their outlet page, byline feed or LinkedIn, which we carry on every record.

This is the single highest-return habit in media outreach. See contact data coverage for the channels available on each profile.

Step 6 — Keep the list alive

Lists compound if you maintain them. After each campaign, mark who replied, who bounced and who asked not to be contacted again. The next launch starts from a better list instead of from zero.

Common mistakes

• Pitching the masthead. Generic newsdesk addresses have terrible reply rates. Find the person who covers the beat.
• Ignoring the trade press. A specialist trade title with 8,000 engaged readers often does more for a B2B launch than a national with two million casual ones.
• Re-pitching the same reporter across campaigns. Keep one shared pitch log so two people on the team do not hit the same inbox in one week.
• Sending to the whole list at once. Send tier one first and learn from the replies before the rest goes out.
• Treating a bounce as a dead end. A bounced address usually means the person moved, not that they stopped writing. Check their current outlet.

Doing this in InsightFuse

• Search by beat, country, job title and outlet across 799,000+ journalist profiles — free, no credit card.
• Save results into named lists. One list per tier per campaign.
• Reveal contact details on Pro from $49/month, then pitch from your own mailbox.
• Export any list to CSV whenever you want it elsewhere.