Why 86% of Journalist Pitches Get Rejected Before Being Read

Most PR agencies assume their press releases are at least being read. Many are wrong.

TechDay, the technology and marketing news publisher behind properties including cmotech.asia, channellife.co.uk, and channellife.com.au, has published a formal guide telling PR agencies exactly how to submit press releases. The guide reads less like advice and more like a corrective memo. Its existence is itself a signal: editorial teams are so tired of non-compliant submissions that they have had to write down rules that should have been obvious.

The stakes are not small. Roughly 86% of journalist pitches are rejected for a lack of relevance. The average journalist responds to about 3.43% of all PR outreach. Around 8% of pitches result in any published coverage at all. In that environment, failing on compliance before the content is even read means burning opportunities that were already scarce.

What TechDay Actually Requires

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The guide is specific in ways that expose a gap between what PR agencies submit and what editors actually need.

Word count is the most striking rule. TechDay requires a minimum of 650 words, which directly contradicts the industry consensus that 300 to 500 words is the optimal press release length. The reason is practical: TechDay's editors are working from the agency's submission as raw material to write a 450-word published story. A 400-word release does not give them enough to work with.

Images have their own gatekeeping rule. Photos must be included in the initial email, must exceed 1,200 by 677 pixels, and must link to permanent files. Follow-up emails to add images are not reviewed. The submission window is one.

All releases must go to editors@techday.com. Submissions to individual editors are ignored, regardless of the relationship an agency thinks it has with a specific person.

TechDay also does not cover cryptocurrencies, NFTs, aviation, or the power industry unless the story is directly IT-related. It does not cover stories specific to the Middle East, Africa, or South America. Agencies submitting releases outside these parameters are wasting everyone's time.

The Embargo Problem

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One section of the guide stands out for what it reveals about agency behavior. TechDay explicitly advises against embargoed releases, noting that they often go unpublished due to timing misalignment with the editorial team's weekly targets.

PR agencies routinely use embargoes to create artificial urgency around announcements. The guide suggests this tactic is backfiring. When embargoed material arrives and does not fit the editorial calendar, it simply does not run.

Why This Is Happening Now

Newsrooms have been contracting for years. Fewer reporters means less capacity to salvage press releases that arrive incomplete or poorly formatted. The Reuters Institute's 2026 journalism trends report notes that journalists are increasingly functioning as curators and analysts rather than reporters. The bar for format compliance has risen, not because editors are being difficult, but because they have less time to do editorial repair work on submissions.

A PR Newswire survey of nearly 1,000 journalists across nine APAC markets found that 25% cite content quality as their top priority. Press releases remain the most trusted PR source at 27% journalist trust, compared to just 10% for social media. The channel is still effective. The execution is the problem.

TechDay's guide is not unique. AsiaTechDaily requires all research claims to link back to original sources and bans commercially motivated content. Media OutReach Newswire, which operates across 26 APAC countries, requires content to meet editorial standards before distribution enters its network of 1,500 media partnerships.

The rules have always existed. Now they are being written down because enough agencies were not reading them.