Media List Building and Journalist Outreach in Italy

Every name I hand you arrives with a link and a date: a piece that journalist published in the last 90 days that makes your story plausibly theirs, plus one sentence on the angle. That test is why a list runs to thirty or forty-five names, why it takes about two weeks, and why it works on people who receive well over a hundred pitches a week. Where the names come from: Bylines, read forwards. I go through the outlets covering your category for the past quarter and take the people actually writing, then check who has moved. Beats in Italian newsrooms change quietly, and a database will keep a journalist filed under food long after they moved to the economy desk. Muck Rack and Cision are cross-checks here, never the source. Freelancers are listed with the two or three titles they genuinely sell into, because pitching a freelancer as though they own a section wastes their time and yours. Verification: The published address or the desk address, not a guessed pattern. Signal or WhatsApp only where the journalist has publicly said to use it. No LinkedIn messages: sending a pitch to somebody's professional profile announces that you could not find their contact details, which is exactly what has happened. Anyone whose contact I cannot verify comes off the list rather than going on it as a maybe. The pitch: About 120 words. The subject line is the story, not your brand. No attachments; assets sit behind a link that does not ask for a form. Sent one at a time, by me, from my own address — which means my name is attached to your story and I have to be able to defend it. One follow-up after five working days, then that story is finished with that person, whatever the client would prefer. The second follow-up is where practices lose contacts they spent years building. The do-not-contact log: Anyone who asks to be left alone goes on it permanently, and it travels with me across every client. You will see the log and you cannot override it. It is the reason journalists still open my mail after eleven years. What you keep: The list itself, in a sheet carrying the outlet, the person, the link, the date I read them, the contact route, the pitch that went out and the reply. It is yours to run in house afterwards. I would rather sell you one list you use for two years than a subscription to my address book. What I refuse: Exporting a database and reselling it as research. Sending one pitch to everybody. Pitching a journalist whose recent work I have not read, including when the coverage has already been promised internally. Paid placement in any form, including from the Italian outlets that will quietly offer it. Guaranteeing coverage, which nobody honest can do and which is usually the first question the wrong buyer asks. Not for you if: The story is that you exist. A list cannot fix that, and I will suggest you spend the money on original data instead — a survey of your own customers with a real sample size will out-earn any outreach round for a company at that stage. Also not for you if you need coverage by a fixed date for an investor update, or if the spokesperson cannot give interviews in the fortnight after the send. Languages: Italian for the Italian press, English elsewhere. I do not pitch in languages I do not read.