Local Press Pitch: 5 Steps to Getting Covered
Your regional paper writes about a business on your street every single week. Rarely yours — not because your news is not good enough, but because nobody ever e-mailed it in. Describe what is happening, pick who it goes to, and you get the mail an editor opens: subject line, story, practical block. One click and it is waiting in Gmail or Outlook.
The five moves of a pitch that gets read
An editor on a regional desk opens a hundred e-mails a day. They read the subject line and two lines of almost all of them, and the rest of maybe five. Every pitch that makes it does five things, in this order — and the first two decide everything.
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1
The hook
The subject line and the opening sentence
Put the news itself in the subject line, with your town in it: 'Bistro De Kade opens in Sandwich Street after two years empty'. No 'press release', no question mark, no 'invitation to'.
This is the only line everyone reads. An editor sorts by place first: if your town is not in it, it is not local news and they scroll past. Keep it under 65 characters or it gets cut off.
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2
The news
What is happening, in one paragraph
What, who, when, where — everything a reader would need if the desk published nothing but this paragraph. No adjectives, only concrete facts.
Regional journalists rewrite your mail into their own copy. Give them sentences they can lift, not words they have to delete first. 'Unique', 'passion' and 'culinary journey' all get struck out.
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3
The proof
Why a reader would want to know
The number, the first, the forty years, the person, the tie to the neighbourhood. One concrete fact that makes this news rather than advertising.
This is the move that separates an article from an ad. Without it your mail says 'we exist and we are good', and that is not news — however true it is.
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4
The offer
What the journalist gets out of it
Photographs they may publish, a table held for them, an interview, an hour when they may film, and a name with a mobile number. Explicitly with no obligation to write anything.
This is the move owners forget most often, and the reason a story a desk wanted to run dies anyway: no usable photo, or nobody picking up at five o'clock.
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5
The practical block
Plain lines at the bottom, not prose
Name, role, phone, e-mail, address, website, date and time. Each on its own line, so it can go straight into the article.
This block gets copied, not read. Anything the journalist cannot find here they have to look up or ring for — and on a deadline day that means: skip it.
Why local press still works
A piece in the regional news is not vanity. It is the cheapest reach you can get, and it stays online for years with your name in it.
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Free
Editorial coverage costs you one e-mail. Buying the same space as an advert in a regional title costs hundreds per placement — and readers skip it precisely because it is recognisable as an advert.
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For years
A regional paper's online article keeps sitting in the search results with your business name in it, and it is a link from a strong local news site. Exactly the kind of mention search engines and AI answers lean on.
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1 in 100
A desk gets hundreds of e-mails a week and publishes a handful. Respect the five moves and you are no longer competing with those hundred, only with the five who also did it properly.
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7 to 14 days
A weekly plans one to two weeks ahead, a city magazine four to six. The mail that lands two days before your event is not about something there is still room for.
Four kinds of outlet, four different e-mails
Sending the same mail to a newspaper desk, a radio desk and a food blogger does not work: each needs something different in order to say yes. This is what each of them wants to see.
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Regional newspaper
A reporter on a daily deadline who will rewrite your mail into their own article.
- Give facts they can lift word for word: dates, numbers, names, street names.
- Include one short quotable sentence in quotation marks — a reporter in a hurry uses the quote they were handed.
- Offer usable photographs explicitly, and say they are free to publish with a credit.
- No slogans, no exclamation marks, no superlatives about the food.
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Regional radio and TV
A desk that decides in fifteen seconds and asks: is there anything here to hear or to see?
- Say plainly what there is to film or to hear, and at what time of day it happens.
- Name one person who can speak on air, in what language, and when they are reachable.
- Keep it short: two tight paragraphs before the practical block, no more.
- The item has to be about the event or the person, never about the business as an advertiser.
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City magazine, news site or blog
Publishes faster, in a lighter register, and often runs your text close to verbatim.
- Write it so it could almost be the post itself: one clear opening paragraph, then the practical detail.
- Put the practical information in plain lines the editor can paste: what, when, where, price, link.
- A more human register is right here, but still no slogans.
- Mention that photos are available, and a short vertical clip if you have one.
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Food blogger or local influencer
A person, not a newsroom. You are asking for their time and their audience.
- Write to that person directly, reference the kind of places they cover, and keep it under one screen.
- Make the invitation concrete and low-pressure: a date, an offer, and an explicit 'no obligation to post anything'.
- Never tell them what to write and never ask for a positive piece.
- If you offer something, say you expect them to disclose it — in most countries that is simply the rule.
Six angles a desk actually picks up
'We have a new menu' is not news. The same menu becomes news the moment it hangs on something bigger than your business. Six angles that work in every town.
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The first or the only
The first place in town with something, the only one still doing it the old way, the last of its kind. 'First' and 'last' are the two words every desk reacts to.
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Time and change
Forty years, three generations, back after a fire, open again after two years empty. A building with a past is a story; a business without one is an address.
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A person
The nineteen-year-old chef from the village, the owner stopping after thirty years, the staff member who has been there since opening day. Local journalism is about people, not companies.
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The neighbourhood itself
Work for twelve people, a unit that stood empty, a producer five kilometres away, a street that is alive again. This is the angle local media literally exist for.
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A number, or a decision you explain
Why you are raising prices or not, what energy really costs you, how much you throw away and what you are doing about it. An owner who does their sums in public becomes a source journalists come back to.
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Something for someone else
A benefit dinner, free meals, support after a disaster in the region. Report it plainly and without fanfare — the less it sounds like marketing, the likelier it runs.
Six mistakes that get your mail deleted unread
Most press mails from restaurant owners are not badly written. They are unusable — for the person who was supposed to use them.
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'Press release' in the subject line
It says nothing about your news and it is exactly the word a full inbox filters on. Put the news itself in there, with your town.
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Sending it to info@
Nobody reads that mailbox personally. Find the name of whoever covers hospitality, the region or business for that title — it is usually under a previous article.
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Marketing language
'Unique', 'passion', 'culinary journey', 'we are delighted to announce': every one of those tells an editor there is no news underneath.
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Everything as an attachment
A two-page PDF and six 12 MB photos. Put the news in the mail itself and offer the photos; nobody opens an attachment to decide whether something is news.
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Two days beforehand
The weekly is already full by then. What you could have mailed last month was the same mail — only usable.
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Never following up
One polite reminder a week later produces more coverage than a second well-written pitch. No reply almost always means 'buried', not 'no'.
When do you send it?
Timing decides as often as content does, and it is the one part that is entirely down to you.
- Weekly or regional daily: seven to fourteen days before the date. Earlier is allowed, but then it gets set aside and forgotten.
- City magazine or monthly: four to six weeks, because they are locked a month before they appear.
- Send it on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning. Monday is the editorial meeting and nobody reads anything on a Friday afternoon.
- No answer after a week? One short reminder, without reproach, repeating the offer. After that, let it go.
How the newsworthiness check works
The check beside it adds six things up to a hundred points — exactly the six a local desk sorts on. Below 45 the honest advice is not 'write it better', it is 'this is not a story yet'.
- Timing (25 points)Full marks between ten and twenty-eight days ahead. Under three days there is usually no slot left, and after the date it is no longer an invitation but a report.
- Tie to the town (20 points)The strongest signal of all. A pitch you could just as well have sent to every paper in the country gets deleted by every paper in the country.
- Something new (20 points)A first, an only, a change, a return. A business that simply continues to exist is not news — the hardest sentence for any owner to hear.
- A person (15 points)A name with a story turns a company announcement into an article somebody finishes reading.
- A picture (10 points)Between two equally good items, the one with a photo wins, because a page needs an image.
- A number (10 points)One concrete figure — forty years, twelve jobs, three hundred meals — is what the headline gets made of.
Frequently asked questions
Is this tool free?
Yes. You need no account and you install nothing. You get five mails a day; that is what generating them costs, and it is more than enough to send one piece of news to all your local media.
Is this a press release or an e-mail?
An e-mail — deliberately. The classic third-person press release is the attachment; the mail is what decides whether anyone ever opens that attachment. For local media the mail alone is almost always enough.
Who do I send it to?
A person, never info@. Look in the paper or on the site for whoever covers your region or hospitality; their address is usually under their articles or on the masthead page. Send each desk its own mail, never twenty addresses in cc.
What if they do not reply?
That is normal and almost never means no. The tool writes you a short follow-up mail to send a week later — that is the mail most coverage actually comes from.
May I offer a journalist something?
Offering a meal or an invitation is allowed and usual, as long as nothing is expected in return. Never ask for a positive piece and never tie your offer to one; with bloggers and influencers a disclosure goes with it.
Is my text stored anywhere?
What you type goes once to the language module to write your mail and is not stored anywhere else. What you see on this page stays in your own browser.
What language does the tool write in?
The language of this page. If the desk you want to reach works in another language, use the language picker at the top to open the same tool in that language.
Why is there a security check?
Every mail costs a real request to the language model. An invisible check runs alongside to keep bots out, so the tool can stay free. There is nothing for you to tick.