How to Pitch Journalists on HARO (Help a Reporter Out)

If you want to know how to pitch journalists on HARO (Help a Reporter Out), start with the part most guides skip: the original HARO email service was folded into Cision’s Connectively platform and then shut down at the end of 2024. The pitching method it created is very much alive, though, and it now runs on a handful of free and paid successors. This guide covers what HARO was, what replaced it, and exactly how to write a pitch that a reporter will actually read and quote.

What Was Help a Reporter Out (HARO)?

HARO was a free email service founded by publicist Peter Shankman in 2008 that connected journalists with expert sources. Three times a business day, subscribers received a digest of reporter queries: short requests like “Need a CPA to comment on new 1099-K thresholds, deadline Thursday 3pm ET.” You replied to the ones you were qualified for, and if the reporter used your answer, you usually earned a quote, a byline mention and a link.

At its peak, HARO sent queries to roughly 800,000 subscribers and worked with tens of thousands of journalists. For small businesses and SEO agencies, it was the cheapest legitimate route to coverage in outlets that would never return a cold email.

What Happened to HARO?

Cision acquired HARO, rebranded it as Connectively in early 2024, and then retired Connectively in December 2024. The classic email digest disappeared with it, which is why searches for “HARO website” and “Help Every Reporter Out sign up” now land on a mix of dead pages and lookalike tools.

Two things caused the decline: pitch quality collapsed under a flood of AI-generated responses, and journalists got tired of sorting 200 replies to find one usable source. That matters for you, because the bar for a good pitch in 2026 is higher than it was in 2019, and generic answers get deleted in seconds.

Where HARO-Style Queries Live Now

• Source of Sources (SOS): Peter Shankman’s direct revival of the original format, free for sources, with a familiar three-a-day query email.
• Qwoted: strong in finance, tech and B2B; a free tier plus paid plans, and reporters tend to be more responsive here.
• Featured (formerly Terkel): question-and-answer format where your response can be published as-is on partner sites.
• SourceBottle: heavy in Australia, the UK and lifestyle or consumer beats.
• Help a B2B Writer: narrow, high-signal queries from content marketers and trade publications.
• #JournoRequest on X, Bluesky and LinkedIn: unstructured but fast, and often less crowded than a paid database.

Every technique below works the same way across all of them, which is the point: you are not learning a platform, you are learning how to be an easy source to quote. If you want the wider strategic picture, our walkthrough on using digital PR to earn high-quality backlinks shows where reactive pitching fits alongside data studies and original research.

How Does HARO Work (and How the Replacements Work)

The mechanics are almost identical across platforms. You register as an expert source, choose the categories that match your actual expertise, and receive query digests, historically at 5:35am, 12:35pm and 5:35pm ET on weekdays. You then reply directly to the query with your answer, and the reporter contacts you only if they plan to use it.

Three numbers set expectations. Popular consumer queries can draw 100 to 400 responses, most reporters pick one to three sources, and a good sustained hit rate for a specialist is 10% to 20%. Landing five placements a quarter is a realistic goal for someone pitching two or three queries a day.

How Do I Pitch a Reporter? A Step-by-Step Method

1. Filter ruthlessly. Only answer queries where you have first-hand experience, real data or a client story. If you have to research the topic to answer it, skip it.
2. Read the query twice. Note the deadline, the outlet, the requested format (two sentences? 100 words? phone interview?) and any disqualifiers like “no PR pros” or “US-based only.”
3. Respond within 60 minutes when possible. Reporters on deadline often build the piece from the first usable answers, and late replies land after the draft is done.
4. Write a subject line the reporter can scan. Restate the query topic plus your credential: “Re: 401(k) hardship withdrawals: CFP, 14 yrs, has client data.”
5. Lead with the quote, not the intro. Give the answer in the first two lines, formatted as a clean, quotable block of 40 to 80 words.
6. Add one proof point. A number, a case, a timeframe, a mistake you watched happen. Specifics are the whole ballgame.
7. Close with credentials and logistics. Name, title, company, one-line bio, a link to your site or LinkedIn, phone number and your availability window.
8. Never follow up more than once. One short nudge after 48 hours is fine; anything more damages the relationship.

A Pitch Template You Can Adapt

Keep the whole thing under 200 words. Here is the skeleton I use:

• Line 1: “Happy to help. Short answer: [direct answer to the exact question asked].”
• Lines 2 to 4: the quotable paragraph, written in plain speech so it can be lifted verbatim.
• Line 5: “Concrete example: [client, industry, number, outcome, timeframe].”
• Line 6: “Credentials: [name, title, company, years in field, any certification or notable client].”
• Line 7: “Free for a 10-minute call today until 5pm ET. Headshot attached if useful.”

Notice what is missing: no “I hope this email finds you well,” no company boilerplate, no attachment-heavy media kit and no request for a specific anchor text. Asking for a keyword-rich link is the fastest way to get blacklisted, and it edges into the territory Google describes in its spam policies on link schemes.

What Are the 4 C’s of Journalism?

The 4 C’s most commonly taught are clear, concise, correct and complete, and some newsrooms swap in credible or compelling. Reporters are trained to write that way, so a pitch written that way feels like usable copy instead of marketing.

Run every pitch through the four before you hit send. Is the answer clear to a non-expert? Is it concise enough to paste into a draft?

Is every claim correct and attributable? Does it answer the whole question, including the awkward part most people dodge?

The Gap Nobody Covers: Building a Reactive PR System

Most HARO guides teach you to write one good email. The people who get 30 placements a year have a repeatable system instead, and that is the real difference between a lucky mention and a link profile that moves rankings.

• Keep a swipe file of pre-approved facts. Ten to fifteen data points from your own client work, each already cleared for public use, cuts drafting time to five minutes.
• Assign one owner and one time block. Fifteen minutes after each digest arrives beats “whenever someone remembers.”
• Track pitches in a simple sheet. Date, outlet, query, sent time, result. After 50 pitches you will see exactly which beats reply to you.
• Log the reporters who quote you. A source who was easy once gets called again directly, which is worth more than any platform subscription.
• Verify the link. Roughly a third of placements arrive unlinked or nofollowed; a polite request for attribution succeeds often enough to be worth sending.

Reactive pitching also pairs well with other white-hat tactics rather than replacing them. It sits comfortably next to broken link building and the approaches in our roundup of white hat link building strategies that still work.

How to Find Journalists to Pitch Without a Platform

Query platforms are only one channel, and newsroom staffing has thinned considerably: Pew Research Center has documented a roughly 26% drop in US newsroom employment between 2008 and 2020, which means fewer reporters covering more beats. Those reporters need reliable sources more than ever. The top four ways to reach them directly:

1. Reverse-engineer bylines. Find the last five articles on your topic, note who wrote them, and read their recent work before you email.
2. Monitor social requests. Search #JournoRequest, #PRRequest and “looking for sources” on X, Bluesky and LinkedIn daily.
3. Use a media database. Muck Rack, Prowly and Roxhill list beats, contact details and pitching preferences, typically from a few hundred dollars a month.
4. Pitch trade publications first. Industry titles have smaller teams, tighter niches and much higher acceptance rates than national outlets.

Then help the reporter beyond the single question: offer a competing viewpoint, a customer who will speak on record, or a chart. Sources who make a story better get added to the speed dial, and that is how you graduate from cold pitching to inbound requests. Our guide to guest posting for SEO covers the complementary path when a reporter would rather have a full article than a quote.

Five Mistakes That Get Your Pitch Deleted

• Obvious AI text. Reporters spot it instantly, and several platforms banned sources for it before HARO closed.
• Answering a question they did not ask. Pivoting to your product reads as a commercial and gets filed as spam.
• Burying the answer. If paragraph one is about your company history, nobody reaches paragraph two.
• Missing the deadline window. “EOD” means their EOD, not yours; time zones matter.
• Demanding a link or approval rights. Journalists do not negotiate copy with sources, and asking ends the conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Help a Reporter Out (HARO)?

HARO was a free service, launched in 2008, that emailed journalist source requests to subscribers three times each business day. Reporters posted queries, expert sources replied, and successful matches produced quotes, mentions and backlinks. It was acquired by Cision, rebranded Connectively, and retired in December 2024.

How do I pitch a reporter?

Answer the exact question in the first two sentences, keep the whole email under 200 words, and send it within an hour of seeing the query. Include one specific number or example, then your title, company, years of experience and a phone number, so the reporter can verify and quote you without a follow-up email.

What are the 4 C’s of journalism?

The four C’s are clear, concise, correct and complete, with some editors substituting credible or compelling. Writing pitches against that checklist makes your response feel like finished copy, which is exactly why it gets used ahead of longer, vaguer submissions.

How to find journalists to pitch to?

Start with the bylines on the last 5 to 10 articles published about your topic, then check #JournoRequest on X, Bluesky and LinkedIn daily. Free query platforms like Source of Sources and Qwoted cover the reactive side, while databases such as Muck Rack list beats and pitching preferences for direct outreach.

Is there a free HARO alternative in 2026?

Yes, at least four are free for sources: Source of Sources, Help a B2B Writer, SourceBottle and Featured’s basic tier. Qwoted also offers a free plan with limited monthly pitches, which is usually enough for one person answering two or three queries a day.

Want Help Turning Media Pitches Into Rankings?

Reactive PR only pays off when the links point at pages built to convert and rank, which is where strategy matters more than volume. Learn who you would be working with, then get in touch with SEO Quirk to map a pitching and link building plan for your niche.