Tuesdata: Why most journalists don’t read press releases properly (despite them being the main source of news)

Welcome to Tuesdata, our weekly data-led analysis for Unmade’s paying members.

Below, we explore the point of the communications landscape where PR meets journalism, and examine the immediate verdict of the investment community on yesterday’s departure of Southern Cross Austereo CEO Grant Blackley.

Everyone else hits the paywall a bit further down. Subscribe today to get all of our Tuesdata posts and access our full publishing archive, which goes behind the paywall after two months.

Unmade members also got discounted tickets to our events, including humAIn, our conference focusing on the impact of AI on media and marketing. The coupon code to access the discount appears in this post below the paywall

Guess how many journos will read your press release to the end? One in ten

Today’s Tuesdata focuses on findings from Medianet’s latest Media Landscape report, a survey exploring the key issues in the working lives of PR professionals and Australian journalists.

For the first time, Medianet published a ‘PR Edition’ of its annual report, with 291 PR professionals included in the survey, along wit 1,023 journalists . Topics covered include how journalists prefer to deal with PRs and the best ways to achieve coverage.

One thing was clear in the Medianet data – though press releases are primary sources for stories used by journalists, they receive much less attention than the PR professionals writing them might think.

(Hear how Medianet boss Amrita Sidhu explains the key findings to Seja Al Zaidi in the audio player above)

When receiving a press release, only 11% of journalists said they read the whole thing before deciding if the story is worth pursuing. In fact, the majority of journalist respondents (70%) read less than a paragraph of a release when it lands in their inbox.

The majority of journalists give press releases no more than a ‘glance’, the data suggests.

According to the findings, there was an an uptick in the number of journalists using either press releases or PR agencies/publicists as story sources, with the number climbing to 86% and 67% respectively.

One journalist interviewed said that stretched resources was the cause: “Media now is dependent on press releases as there is not enough time or resources to hunt independently for stories.”

When it came to the PR perspective of rejected or ignored press releases, they acknowledged the pressures journalists face:

“There are so few journalists covering so many beats across so many outlets you’re thrilled when you even get a decline,” one respondent said.

46% of PRs surveyed said their press releases or pitches get picked up and covered by the media most of the time. 22% of respondents said their pitches get picked up less than half of the time, and 21% who said their pitches get picked up half of the time.

Composition of the media industry

There have been a few shifts in the composition of journalists in the industry since 2020. For starters, the percentage of journalists working in print media has been decreasing over the past three years, dropping by 8% between 2020 and 2022.

Since 2020, there’s been a steady decline in the amount of journalists working in print and TV. ‘Digital’ is the only sector which grew slightly, by two percentage points.

Of all journalist respondents in the survey, 64% said they worked in digital media, 44% in print, 21% in radio, 13% in TV and 10% in podcasting. 39% of journalists worked across more than one platform of media in 2021 and 2022.

PR professionals and journalists were both asked to share what their topic area of focus was, which brought into light the discrepancies between PR and journalist coverage of a particular beat.

For journalist survey respondents, the most common topic areas were entertainment (38%), politics (37%), lifestyle (36%), business (35%), health (35%) and music or arts (34%).

For PR survey respondents, the most common topic area relevant to respondents’ line of work was health (45% of respondents), followed by business (41%), national news (34%), politics (32%) and tech (32%).

There were far more PRs working in ‘industry news’ and ‘health’ than journalists; in fact, both areas had 10% more PRs than journalists.

Agriculture, entertainment and courts/crime had far more journalists than PRs covering the area.

Sidhu mentioned the primary issue faced by PRs was burnout, due to the need to ‘always be available’ for both clients and journalists.

“PR professionals were discussing some of the challenges of constantly having to be available, or on call for both journalists and their clients. They said expectations from both groups can be hard to manage,” Sidhu said.

Despite this, she emphasised how critical it is for a PR to be available to a journalist when they need comment or further information on a story. To get a better chance at coverage, Sidhu advised “being available and being in their inbox” was key.

“A journalist will finally come across a story they want to do coverage on, they’ll go to their inbox searching for releases and information, but if you’re not in their inbox you won’t get cut through. You need to have that kind of brand awareness in the journo’s inbox. And when they call you, be available – that’s the other thing we hear.” Evidently, there’s a fine balance PRs need to manage, and subsequent PR editions of this report should shine some light on whether that’s feasible for most PR professionals.

Unmade Index responds to Blackley’s exit

The Unmade Index, which tracks performance of ASX-listed media and marketing stocks, fell slightly yesterday, dropping 0.68% to finish at 679.6 points.

Yesterday’s announcement that Grant Blackley would step down as CEO of Southern Cross Austereo, hanging over to COO John Kelly didn’t cause major ripples. Although SCA’s share price fell by 2.40% yesterday, the company’s closest peer, HT&E, owner of ARN, dropped by 3.04%.

Only two stocks saw any positive movement yesterday – Domain and Enero, which moved up 1.8% and 3% respectively.

That’s it for today, Unmade will be back tomorrow with an examination of Grant Blackley’s SCA legacy, and an analysis of the challenges facing his successor John Kelly.

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