UNITED STATES – August 25, 2026 – Nearly three-quarters of journalist records, 73 percent, include a direct telephone number, according to data from media contact platform Media List, yet phone outreach has all but vanished from PR practice.
The finding, detailed in Media List’s published analysis, describes an inversion: email is where every pitch competes with hundreds of others in triage, while the phone line sits idle. For time-sensitive stories, a thirty-second call reaches a producer or editor faster than any subject line.
The channel rewards preparation. Media List’s newsroom composition data, a third editors, a third reporters, a quarter producers, matters more on the phone than in email: producers book guests and segments on the phone all day, while long-form editors often prefer written pitches.
For teams that stay in email, the company publishes companion guidance on subject lines that survive triage and following up without burning the contact. Coverage for a specific beat can be tested with 25 free contacts on registration.
The imbalance is a recent development. A generation ago the phone was the default channel of media relations and the pitch call was a practiced skill; the industry’s wholesale migration to email created today’s inversion, where the inbox absorbs hundreds of competing pitches a day while the direct line sits silent. The channel did not stop working — the callers left. For time-sensitive stories, a thirty-second call still outruns any subject line, and the caller learns instantly whether the story fits, information an unanswered email never provides.
The data also identifies who to call. Broadcast producers and assignment desks — nearly a quarter of all records — build rundowns by phone all day and treat an incoming call about a usable story as normal working input, not an interruption. Long-form writers and editors skew the other way, preferring written pitches they can evaluate on their own schedule. The study’s recommendation is a split strategy: reserve the phone for broadcast and breaking angles, keep email for considered pitches, and let the record’s role field — not habit — pick the channel.
The finding does not ask teams to abandon email; it asks them to stop leaving the second channel unused. In a discipline where every competitor is optimizing the same subject lines for the same inboxes, the reachable-by-phone majority of newsroom contacts represents the rare advantage that comes from doing what others have simply stopped doing.
About Media List
Media List maintains a verified database of 41,000+ journalists, editors, and broadcast producers across 3,100+ U.S. outlets. New users can export 25 contacts free to test coverage for their niche.
Media ContactCompany Name: Media ListContact Person: Media RelationsEmail: Send EmailCountry: United StatesWebsite: https://medialist.com/
