Press releases and journalist pitches, written and sent
It reads the news, picks the journalists who would actually care, writes the release and sends the pitch.
Press is the channel founders believe in and never get to. It has no deadline, the research is tedious, and a bad pitch burns the contact permanently. So it stays on the list for months while the product ships without a single mention.
The job to be done
A press pitch that works needs three things that are all slow. You need a reason to write today, which usually means something in this week's news that your product speaks to. You need the specific journalists who cover that, which means reading what they published recently rather than buying a media list. And you need a release and a short note that a busy reporter can act on.
Do that badly at scale and you get ignored, then filtered. Do it well and it takes an afternoon per pitch. Most solo founders do neither, which is why we wrote how to pitch journalists as a solo founder as the manual version of this page.
How it works, step by step
- It reads the morning's news.
- It works out who would actually care about your product, based on what those journalists covered recently rather than on a static list.
- It writes the press release, in your voice, with your numbers.
- It writes and sends the pitch to the journalists it picked.
- You wake up to the replies, and the conversation from there is yours.
The filter matters more than the volume. Reading a large pile of articles and finding the few worth pitching is the part that makes the difference between a pitch and spam, and it is the part no founder has time to do daily.
What you approve versus what runs
| Step | Who |
|---|---|
| Reading the day's news | Runs without you |
| Choosing which journalists to pitch | Runs without you |
| Writing the release and the pitch | Runs without you |
| What goes out under your name | You approve |
| Answering a journalist who replies | You, always |
| The interview | You |
Approvals are part of the same morning briefing as everything else, which is how the whole thing fits in about four minutes a day.
Safety
- Relevance over volume. It pitches the journalists who covered your subject recently, not everyone with a byline. A blasted list is how a founder gets permanently filtered.
- Your voice, your numbers. The release is written from your product. Nothing invents a claim you did not make.
- Replies come to you. When a journalist writes back, the conversation is handed over. Software does not hold a press relationship on your behalf.
- Nothing is posted in anyone else's space. The same rule that applies to drafted Reddit replies applies here: outbound from your own accounts, human judgement at the point of contact.
AutoTraction versus doing it by hand
The by-hand figures are the rough shape of the manual job for one founder doing press properly. They are an estimate of the work, not a measured average.
| Task | By hand, per week | With AutoTraction |
|---|---|---|
| Reading the news for an angle | 2 to 3 hours | None |
| Finding journalists who cover it | 2 to 4 hours | None |
| Checking what they wrote recently | 1 to 2 hours | None |
| Writing the release | 2 to 3 hours | None |
| Writing and sending each pitch | 1 to 2 hours | None |
| Approving what goes out | Not applicable | Part of four minutes a day |
| Replying to a journalist | Yours | Yours |
Realistically the by-hand column is not what happens. What happens is zero hours for eleven weeks and a panicked afternoon before a launch. The value here is that press runs on the weeks you were not thinking about it.
Which plan includes it
Every plan. Press releases and journalist pitches are on all four, from Solo at $19 a month upward. Plans differ on credits, outreach channels and how many campaigns run at once, not on whether press runs. The detail is on the pricing page.
Press works better when the page a journalist lands on is clear, so run the free site grader before you start pitching. Related features: cold email outreach with your own mailbox for the same discipline applied to buyers, and LinkedIn outreach for founders.
Where does the journalist list come from?
It is built from what journalists actually covered recently, not from a bought media list. That is why it reads the morning's news first and pitches only the ones whose recent work fits.
Does it send without me seeing the pitch?
What goes out under your name is yours to approve, as part of the morning briefing. The reading, the shortlist and the drafting happen before you look at it.
What happens when a journalist replies?
The reply comes to you and the conversation is yours. AutoTraction does not hold a press relationship on your behalf or answer questions about your company.
Is a press release still worth writing?
As a document a reporter can quote from, yes. As a thing you blast to a list, no. The useful part is the pitch to the few people whose beat your product fits, and the release exists to make saying yes easy for them.