You open your inbox, you scan the subject lines, and there it is again: "Looking for experts on personal finance". You've seen a hundred of these. You ignored the last ninety-nine. And that's exactly why your competitors are getting quoted in places you've never heard of — while your domain authority sits there, unmoving, month after month.
Journalist request platforms, the category that started with HARO back in the day, are still one of the few ways to earn a real editorial backlink from a high-authority publication without cold-emailing a single person. Not a guest post. Not a paid placement. An actual link, in an actual article, because you said something useful.
But the mechanics have shifted. The old email-only workflow is gone, the ownership changed hands, and the bar for what counts as a "good pitch" got higher. If you're still playing by 2019 rules, you're wasting your time.
Key takeaways
- Journalist request platforms connect you with reporters actively hunting for sources — the link is a byproduct, not the goal.
- HARO was shut down by Cision at the end of 2024 and relaunched under new ownership. The format today is web-first, not email-first.
- Response rate matters far more than volume. Twenty targeted pitches beat two hundred generic ones.
- A usable pitch is short, quotable, and gives the journalist something they can copy-paste into a draft.
- You will not get a link from every reply. A 10–20% hit rate on tightly-matched requests is realistic and, frankly, good.
- Track your wins manually. There is no dashboard that tells you which of your quotes made it into print.
What is HARO and why reporters still use it
HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out. If you've been in marketing for more than five minutes, you've heard the acronym. What you may not know is that the service you remember — the thrice-daily digest landing in your inbox at 5:45 a.m. — no longer exists in that form.
Cision, which had owned HARO for years, folded it into a product called Connectively and then shut Connectively down in December 2024. For a few months, the whole category looked dead. Then HARO was acquired and relaunched, this time as a web platform rather than a pure email list. That single change alters how you should work it.
HARO's official website and the new login flow
If you go looking for the HARO official website today, you'll land on a sign-up page that asks you to create an account before you can browse anything. No more anonymous lurking. You pick your categories — finance, health, tech, whatever fits — and the platform surfaces matching requests.
Two practical consequences:
- You must log in to see requests, which kills the "skim the digest over coffee" habit. You have to sit down and work.
- Category selection is now a real filter. If you tick twelve categories, you'll drown. Tick two or three.
The email alerts still exist as an option, but they're secondary. Treat the platform as a destination, not a notification.
The alternatives worth your time
HARO isn't the only game. It probably isn't even the best one anymore, depending on your niche. Here's the landscape as it stands.
| Platform | Model | Best for | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| HARO (relaunched) | Web platform, category-based alerts | Broad generalist coverage | Free tier, paid upgrades |
| Qwoted | Web + app, journalist profiles | Building ongoing media relationships | Free for experts |
| Featured | Curated, smaller request volume | Higher-touch pitches | Paid |
| Direct pitch lists | Twitter/X feeds, niche newsletters | Beat reporters in your field | Free |
Qwoted deserves a specific mention because it lets you see which journalists are active and what they've written before. That context is worth more than volume. I've had better luck on Qwoted for B2B topics than on the big generalist platforms — the requests are fewer, but the reporters are more likely to actually read a reply.
Is Cision HARO still a thing?
No. Cision HARO, as a branded product, ended when Connectively was discontinued. The HARO name survives under different ownership. If a tool or a blog post is still telling you to "send your pitch to the Cision HARO email address," you're reading outdated advice. There is no such address anymore.
How to write a pitch that actually lands
Here's the thing most people get wrong: journalists aren't looking for the smartest person in your industry. They're looking for a sentence they can quote, from a source they can verify, delivered before their deadline.
That's it. That's the whole job.
I made this mistake for months. I'd write 400-word essays with subheadings and bullet points, convinced I was being helpful. I got almost nothing back. The day I cut my pitches to roughly 120 words and led with the quotable line, my response rate roughly tripled. One pitch I sent about a niche tax rule got picked up by a national outlet and included a dofollow link to a page I'd written two years earlier and forgotten about.
What a working pitch looks like
Structure it like this:
- Your name, role, and company — one line, with your site linked. No bio paragraph.
- The direct answer — two to three sentences, written as if it's already a quote. No preamble.
- One specific proof point — a number, an example, something concrete. "We saw X happen to Y" beats "in my experience."
- Your contact details — a phone number if you're happy to be called.
What you must not do: attach a press kit, offer to "hop on a call to discuss," or write in the third person about yourself. Reporters are not editors reviewing a submission. They are under deadline and hunting for a usable line.
One more thing. Skip the AI-generated reply. Journalists spot them instantly now, and getting blacklisted by a reporter is a permanent cost. If a request doesn't match your expertise, don't answer it.
Measuring what you actually got
The gap between "I sent a pitch" and "I have a backlink" is where most people lose the plot. There is no notification when your quote goes live. You have to hunt for it.
A workflow that works:
- Log every pitch in a spreadsheet: date, platform, journalist, publication, topic, the exact quote you sent.
- Set a calendar reminder for seven to ten days out to search for your name plus the publication.
- Check the link with a tool once you find it. Many are nofollow, and that's fine — the referral traffic and the credibility are the real prize.
- Add the placement to your press page. It compounds.
Realistically, if you pitch twenty well-matched requests, expect somewhere between two and four placements. The rest either go unanswered, get cut in editing, or never see the light of day. That's normal. I've had months where a single pitch landed in a publication I'd been trying to crack for two years, and I've had months where nothing stuck at all.
What you cannot do is pitch once, get silence, and decide the whole approach doesn't work. The people getting linked from major outlets are the ones sending twenty pitches a month, every month, for a year. Not because they're spamming — because they've learned which requests are real and which are link-farming bait.
How do you spot a link-farming request?
Two signs: the request is vague about the publication, and the "journalist" asks for a fee. Legitimate reporters name their outlet and never charge sources. If either is missing, close the tab.
And if you get quoted, don't chase the journalist for a link insertion. If it's there, great. If it isn't, you still have a testimonial you can put on your site — which is worth more than the link most days.
The uncomfortable truth is that backlinks from journalist requests are a slow, unglamorous grind with a low success rate per pitch. That's also exactly why they still work. Everyone wants the shortcut. The people who show up with a genuinely useful, tightly-written reply — day after day — end up being the source that reporters come back to. Not because they pitched better. Because they made the reporter's job easier, one deadline at a time.
