Most digital PR advice comes from digital PR people talking to other digital PR people. It's a bit like getting driving directions only from other passengers, never from anyone who's actually driven.
So I’d like to point you to a BuzzStream podcast episode that flips the script. Vince Nero sat down with Jade Denby (15 years agency side) and Sam Forrester, who spent over a decade as an actual reporter and news editor at Reach PLC. Sam has actually been in newsrooms, and he's been on the other end of having to hit his view targets. He's the guy who used to be on the other end of your pitch email, except now he's not.
Newsrooms are drowning in KPIs, not story ideas
Sam ran a regional outlet with a daily target of 250,000 unique page views. Monthly, that's 8 million. And it's not soft, aspirational, "let's see how we do" pressure. Editors sit with software like Chartbeat open all day, watching concurrent visitors in real time. If a story isn't performing by lunch, they know it, and they pivot.
This should change how you think about pitching. You're not trying to convince a gatekeeper that your story is good. You're trying to convince someone with a number tattooed on their forehead that your story helps them hit it. Frame your pitch as traffic, not as merit, and you're speaking their actual language.
The pub test still wins
Jade's rule: if a headline can't spark a conversation in a pub, you've overcomplicated it. That's it. That's the whole test.
Digital PR loves to stack 10 data points into a single mega campaign because it feels more defensible in a strategy deck. But readers don't care about your methodology slide.
They care about whether the headline makes them want to turn to the person next to them and say "did you see this?" If it doesn't pass that test, you don't have a story. You have a spreadsheet with a headline glued on top.
Let journalists do the localizing, not you
This one's a genuine tactical gift. Sam's advice: if you've got a national stat (school attendance down 20% since COVID, whatever), don't try to manufacture 76 hyper-localized versions yourself.
Hand the journalist clean national data and let their local reporter find the local head teacher, the local angle, the local quote. That's literally their job and their beat, and they're set up to do it faster than you are.
Digital PR agencies burn a lot of hours trying to out-localize local reporters. Stop. Give them the raw material and get out of the way.
The "fake experts" mess is actually good news for legit agencies
Reach PLC is under fire right now over sourcing sketchy or fabricated experts, and it's rattling a lot of digital PR playbooks that lean on expert commentary. Jade's take, and I think she's right, is that this scandal doesn't kill expert-driven PR. It raises the floor. Journalists are more skeptical, which means the agencies doing this for real (actual credentials, actual digital footprint, actual bios on the client's own site) look better by comparison, not worse.
This is the same E-E-A-T conversation SEOs have been having with clients for years and getting ignored. Suddenly there's a PR-shaped reason for clients to actually do it. Take the win.
Newsrooms have no idea how to do SEO, and that's your opening
Sam's admission is the most useful thing in the whole episode: at the regional level, there was basically zero real keyword research. Their biggest SEO win was an accident, a local TV personality's home renovation show that nobody else happened to be covering. That's it. That's the strategy. Get lucky and hope nobody notices.
If a newsroom's SEO approach is "hope," a digital PR pitch backed by real trend and search data isn't just a nice-to-have, it's doing the journalist's job for them in a way they'll actually appreciate. Jade's approach: don't lead with SEO language, journalists don't want a keyword lecture. Lead with the story, back it quietly with the data. Two-pronged, one story.
The bigger picture
The through line across the whole conversation: journalists are under exactly as much pressure as digital PR pros are, just from a different direction. They need page views. You need coverage and links. That's not opposition, that's alignment, and the agencies that figure out how to make a journalist's day easier (not harder, not longer, not more complicated) are the ones who'll keep getting picked up when the fake-expert dust settles and the AI-overview traffic keeps eating away at everyone's numbers.
On-page makes you eligible. Links get you chosen. Understanding what the person choosing you is actually being measured on doesn't hurt either.
