University of Kwazulu-Natal

Muck Rack The Pr Pro S Secret Weapon

Bonisiwe Shabane
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muck rack the pr pro s secret weapon

If you’re still using Muck Rack like a glorified contact database—searching “cybersecurity” journalists, downloading a list, and calling it a day—you’re leaving serious opportunities on the table. The difference between a pitch that gets opened and one that gets deleted often comes down to targeting precision. And while most PR professionals know they should be using Boolean search, few are actually leveraging Muck Rack’s full capabilities to build media lists that convert. Here’s what we’ve learned from hundreds of successful pitches—and how to turn Muck Rack from a simple search tool into your competitive advantage. Precision Targeting with Advanced Boolean Search A great pitch starts with a great recipient.

Your goal is to use Muck Rack to quickly identify and understand the media before you even begin drafting a pitch. Truly maximizing Muck Rack means mastering complex Boolean strings to filter a list of hundreds down to a handful of perfect contacts. The media landscape is shifting fast, and the newly released State of Journalism 2025 report from Muck Rack confirms what we at Proof are already seeing: relevance, personalization, and trust are everything. Based on insights from nearly 2,000 journalists across the globe, here are some key takeaways and why they matter for our clients and the future of earned media. More than 75% of journalists now use AI tools like ChatGPT in their workflow, yet most newsrooms don’t have a formal AI policy in place. For PR pros, that means being transparent about AI use in content creation and pitches is essential.

It also means fact-checking, sourcing, and accuracy matter more than ever. An overwhelming 86% of journalists say they’ll ignore pitches that aren’t relevant to their beat. At Proof, we’ve always believed in relationship-driven media outreach. This data proves the power of personalization. Generic blasts? They’re dead.

Strategic targeting? That’s how stories get told. LinkedIn was ranked the most trusted social platform by journalists this year, beating out X (FKA Twitter). Our takeaway: PR pros should double down on using LinkedIn as both a pitching tool and a visibility platform. Journalists are there, and they’re watching. More than one-third of journalists now self-publish outside traditional newsrooms.

As the industry decentralizes, PR strategies need to evolve too. Influential voices may not come from legacy outlets; they may come from substacks, podcasts, and TikTok. Muck Rack’s The State of PR 2025 survey paints a picture of a profession in rapid transformation, where technology is reshaping workflows, media relations is under pressure, and deep cultural divides persist within organizations. Based on insights gleaned from 1,089 PR professionals, followed are some of the trends reshaping the industry in 2025: AI adoption in PR has been swift, with 77% of practitioners using tools like ChatGPT to assist with tasks like pitching, content creation, analytics, and reporting. Nearly six in ten rank AI and automation as their top strategic priority for the next five years.

Seventy-two percent of PR pros report declining journalist response rates, and 62% say their media lists are shrinking. Only 2% believe the work hasn’t become more challenging. The reasons are familiar: heightened competition for coverage, faster news cycles, smaller newsrooms, and broader economic and political pressures. In this environment, strong relationships, relevant pitches, and compelling, data-driven narratives offer the best chance of breaking through. Nearly half of practitioners surveyed said they pitched “more than 20” journalists for a single campaign (and 25% pitch over 50). Yet more than a third admit they have only a few prior relationships with the reporters they contact.

While most claim to personalize their outreach, three-quarters say personalization amounts to only tweaking a few sentences, and 13% change nothing but the greeting. This approach rarely delivers as journalists have made their desires for exclusivity and thoughtful curation clear.

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