A guide to getting your story, product announcement, promotion
or idea covered by The Desk.net.
Have a new product announcement, executive appointment, promotion, research report or other development to share? TheDesk.net would like to hear from you.
We receive a sizable amount of press releases, announcements and tips on a daily basis, from media startups to established players in the industries of broadcast, streaming, advertising, measurement and Big Data.
As a journalistic outlet that is widely read by executives, stakeholders and policy makers, we don’t just cover the business of media — we also produce investigative reports and original stories on policy matters, litigation and the influence of power and politics.
If you have a pitch or news tip for us, please feel free to get in touch. If you work as a publicist, media outreach, spokesperson or an external communications team/agency on behalf of a person, product or company, please read on. If you are a tipster or whistleblower who would like a more-secure method of communicating with us, please see this branch of our “Contact Us” page.
What we’re looking for
We are most interested in timely, newsworthy developments, including:
- Corporate announcements and strategic initiatives
- Executive appointments and leadership changes
- Business performance and financial results
- Mergers, acquisitions and partnerships
- Product launches and technology innovations
- Research reports, audience measurement and market data
- Regulatory, legal and policy developments
- Distribution agreements, carriage deals and contract expiration
- Programming and content initiatives with broader industry significance
Help us out
When sending us a pitch, please keep the following in mind:
- We receive a lot of pitches. Our inbox and voicemail fills up on a daily basis, but there are some things you can do to stand out from the crowd. Following these guidelines gives you a better chance of getting in front of us and having your story covered.
- We’re based on the West Coast, and while we do our best to accommodate East Coast hours and other time zones around the world, we do have to sleep, and our families want time with us. If you’re on the East Coast, sending a pitch in the late morning or early afternoon works out best. One upside to our unusual hours: We tend to work pretty late. (Hello, Europe!)
- Please send your pitch in the body of your e-mail, or as a plain text or Microsoft Word document. To ensure quote accuracy, we often copy direct quotes from press releases at our discretion. Copying from a PDF can be complicated; it is much easier to copy from an e-mail, a plain text file or a Word document. If you must send a PDF on behalf of your company or client, please ensure all relevant quotes are in the body of the e-mail
- Please include courtesy art and related material. The more images and videos we have, the more likely we are to run your story. Courtesy photos and videos really go a long way for us — every story we publish has at least one visual element, and if we don’t already have an image in our file, we have to hunt down one we can freely use. (Please do not send us images from agencies or photos that were professionally captured, unless you have the right to distribute the images for editorial use.) We can help arrange a Google Drive or Box folder for your materials, or you can use a free service like WeTransfer.
- If you say or write it, we can use it, unless mutually agreed otherwise. Please refer to our ethics statement for more information about how we handle on-the-record, on background and off-the-record conversations. Additionally, our ethics statement covers our standards of practice, including our handling of embargoes.
- If your pitch is about a report, please include it with your first outreach attempt. Please send complete reports — not drafts. We accept watermarked, controlled reports, though providing separate courtesy media like charts and graphs definitely helps us out. If we have to fill out a lead-generation form to receive a report, even if the download is free, we’re less likely to cover it. Additionally, if the complete report is a paid-only product, please send us an excerpt with any guidelines or conditions of use.
- We don’t mind follow ups! If you haven’t heard back from us, please feel free to reach out again — sometimes, e-mails get buried or sent to our SPAM folders. Please limit follow-ups across all mediums — phone, e-mails, texts, etc. — to two attempts.
Ready to get in touch?
Sending an e-mail is the best way to reach us. Our address is news@thedesk.net — if you have breaking news, a news tip or an embargoed release, please note that in the subject line.
If you prefer to fill out a form, you can do so by clicking or tapping here.
Submitting a pitch does not guarantee coverage. Every story is evaluated based on its news value, relevance to our audience, originality and editorial priorities. We may edit information for clarity, accuracy, length and style. In some cases, we may contact you for additional details or independent verification before publication.
We do not republish press releases wholesale, and we do not have sponsored content opportunities. Please do not submit press releases with a link-share request. We generally link to covered individuals, products and companies at our discretion. We will not respond to requests for “guest posts” that cover regulated or restricted categories, including gambling, wagering or betting.
To learn more about us — including what we cover, who reads our articles and our commitment to accuracy — click or tap here. To read our ethics statement, standards of practice and style guide, click or tap here.
