Don’t Pitch Reporters. Help Them.

Bonfire Partners
February 21, 2025

Don’t Pitch Reporters. Help Them.

Most PR firms teach their clients how to pitch.
We teach ours how to be useful.

Because here’s the truth: reporters don’t want your pitch. They want help.

They want help making sense of a trend.
They want help sourcing credible voices.
They want help telling a story that matters right now.

If you’re not helping them do that, your email—no matter how “strategic”—is probably getting archived, deleted, or ignored.

Stop Trying to Convince Reporters. Start Making Their Jobs Easier.

The traditional approach to PR is based on a weird assumption: that if you just say the right magic words, you can convince a journalist to write about your company.

But that’s not how newsrooms work. Reporters don’t wake up wondering, “Whose announcement can I amplify today?”
They wake up thinking, “How do I explain what’s happening in the world right now?”

That’s why our entire approach flips the model.

We don’t train founders to pitch themselves.
We coach them to be relevant, informed, and timely contributors to stories that are already forming.

We don’t blast out templated press releases.
We build narratives that reporters are already trying to write—and then give them exactly what they need to tell it well.

It’s not magic. It’s empathy. And it works.

The Best Coverage Doesn’t Come From Pitches. It Comes From Partnership.

If you’re showing up in a journalist’s inbox trying to get something from them—a favor, a mention, a moment—you’re playing a losing game.

But if you show up with something they actually need—a new angle, a smart quote, a trend no one’s spotted yet—you become a resource.

We do this every day.

We monitor what reporters are covering.
We track where public conversations are going.
We figure out what our clients know that’s genuinely additive to those conversations.
Then we offer that up—not as a sales pitch, but as fuel for a story.

The result?
Reporters actually reply.
Clients actually get quoted.
Stories actually run.
And they’re not fluff—they’re stories that drive real awareness, credibility, and growth.

This Is Why Reporters Call Us Back

We don’t just “have relationships” with journalists.
We’ve earned trust by being relentlessly helpful.

We don’t waste their time.
We don’t fake relevance.
We don’t force stories that aren’t there.

And that’s why when we do reach out, we get answers. Not because of some magical Rolodex. But because we’ve proven we know what they need—and when they need it.

So no, we don’t “pitch” reporters.
We help them do their jobs.

That’s the difference between getting mentioned and becoming a go-to voice in your space.

Bonfire Partners
April 15, 2025