How to Build a Media List That Gets Your Startup Featured

I get asked about media databases constantly. Founders want to know whether they should pay for Cision, Muck Rack, or one of the dozen other tools that promise a searchable directory of every journalist on the planet. My answer is almost always the same: those tools aren't the problem. The problem is the instinct behind them — the idea that media coverage is a volume game, and that a bigger list produces more press.

It doesn't. A fintech startup with a 40-row spreadsheet of precisely targeted journalists will consistently outperform one blasting a 4,000-row database export. The reason is simple: journalists receive hundreds of pitches a week, and the ones that land are the ones that are demonstrably relevant to what that journalist actually covers. You can't achieve that relevance at scale. You achieve it by doing the work upfront.

This is the framework I use to build media lists for fintech and iGaming clients — companies that need specific journalists, not maximum journalist count.

Why Generic Databases Are a Startup Tax

Cision's enterprise licence starts around €20,000 per year. Muck Rack runs at a similar level. Both give you access to millions of journalist profiles, contact details, and beat categorisations. Both are genuinely useful — for enterprise communications teams managing dozens of active media relationships across multiple geographies and product lines.

For an early-stage fintech or iGaming startup, they're a tax you pay to feel like you're doing PR without actually doing the hard part. The hard part is knowing which journalists matter for your specific story, what they've written recently, why your news is relevant to their current beat, and what angle will make them want to pick up the phone.

No database tells you that. A database tells you Ryan Murray's email address. It doesn't tell you that Ryan spent the last three months covering embedded finance and would be genuinely interested in your banking-as-a-service product — or that he's burned out on that beat and moved to covering crypto regulation, making him the wrong call entirely. That intelligence comes from reading his work. Databases can't substitute for it.

"A media list is not a contact list. It's a research document. The moment you treat it like a broadcast list, response rates collapse and your sender reputation follows."

The 3-Tier Journalist Targeting Framework

Not all journalists serve the same purpose in your PR programme. Some coverage builds long-term credibility. Some drives immediate traffic and customer acquisition. Some shapes the perception of investors and regulators. Your media list needs journalists from all three tiers — in different proportions depending on your stage and objectives.

How to Research a Journalist Before You Pitch

The single biggest differentiator between pitches that land and pitches that don't is evidence of preparation. Journalists know within two sentences whether you've read their work. If you haven't, there's nothing to discuss.

Before adding a journalist to your list — and certainly before pitching them — do all of the following:

Read their last 10 articles. Not the headlines. The full pieces. What topics are they returning to? What companies are they covering? What angle do they tend to take — sceptical, enthusiastic, data-driven, narrative-driven? This takes 20–30 minutes per journalist and is non-negotiable. It tells you whether they're relevant, what hook will resonate, and what they're explicitly not interested in.

Check their social presence. Most journalists working the fintech and iGaming beat are active on X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn. Follow them. Read what they're sharing and commenting on. This surfaces what they're currently thinking about — which may not be reflected in their published work yet. A journalist who's been sharing articles about central bank digital currencies for three weeks is probably working on a piece about that topic. If you have relevant insight, the window is open.

Note their publication's recent fintech or iGaming coverage. You need to understand the editorial environment your pitch is landing in. If Finextra ran a deep piece on embedded finance three weeks ago, a follow-up pitch on a tangentially related topic may not be timely. If they haven't touched your specific sub-sector in months, you may have a gap to fill.

Identify their contact preference. Some journalists explicitly state on their profiles that they prefer email. Others are responsive via DM. Some have public tip lines. Leading with the wrong channel is a friction you can avoid.

The Google Sheets Template That Actually Works

Your media list lives in a Google Sheet. No CRM, no fancy software — a shared spreadsheet that your team can update in real time and that doesn't require a login to access during a late-night crisis. Here's the column structure I use with every client:

Maintain this actively. A media list that hasn't been updated in six months is a liability — journalists change beats, leave publications, and shift focus constantly. Block 30 minutes every month to update it: remove anyone who's moved off the beat, refresh the "Last Relevant Article" column, and add anyone new you've come across.

The 30-Second Personalization Rule

Every pitch you send should have something in it that could only have been written for that specific journalist. Not a boilerplate line like "I loved your recent piece on fintech regulation" — a specific reference that demonstrates you actually read it and drew a connection.

The formula is simple: one sentence that proves you know their work, one sentence that makes the relevance to their beat explicit, then your story. That's it. The whole personalisation takes 30 seconds to write per journalist once you've done the research. Skip it and your open rate drops by half.

Here's the difference in practice. Generic version: "I wanted to share some news about our company's latest funding round, which I thought might be of interest to you." Personalised version: "Your piece last month on the gap between embedded finance promise and enterprise adoption rates landed in our team's Slack immediately — you named exactly the friction we've spent two years solving. We just closed a Series A around it and I think there's a story here for you."

The first pitch goes to 200 journalists at once. The second pitch goes to 12. The second one gets covered. This is the entire point of building a targeted list rather than buying a database export.

Building Relationships, Not Just Getting Coverage

The most effective PR programmes I've seen don't treat journalists as one-shot targets. They treat them as recurring relationships — people worth maintaining contact with between pitches, worth being genuinely helpful to, worth building enough trust with that the journalist calls you when they're on deadline and need a source.

In practice this means a few things. Respond to journalists' requests quickly, even when you can't help directly — and if you can't help, refer someone who can. Send relevant research, data, or regulatory updates without attaching an ask to them. When a journalist publishes a piece you found genuinely useful, say so — briefly, without an embedded pitch. These micro-interactions build the impression that you're a reliable industry participant, not an intermittent press release sender.

For iGaming operators building media credibility in regulated markets, this long-game relationship approach is especially important. The journalists covering the sector are sceptical by default — they're used to operators who only reach out during a crisis or a product launch, not companies who are genuinely interested in the regulatory and industry conversation year-round. Being the operator who actually engages with the press between announcements is a significant differentiator.

The same principle applies in fintech. When a crisis hits, the founders who already have working relationships with the journalists covering their space can call those journalists directly, explain the situation, and influence the coverage in a way that cold-calling during a breaking story simply doesn't allow.

Fintech and iGaming: Where to Find the Right Journalists

If you're building your first list and aren't sure where to start, here's where I look for the journalists worth researching in these specific verticals.

Fintech (Europe/Baltics focus): Sifted covers European startup growth with a strong fintech vertical. Finextra is the trade standard for payments and banking technology. FinTech Futures covers banking transformation and infrastructure. The FT's fintech correspondent is essential for any company targeting institutional or regulatory audiences. Techcrunch Europe covers Series A and beyond. For Baltic-specific coverage, Emerging Europe and Baltic Business News are worth building relationships with, as they actively seek fintech stories from the region.

iGaming (MGA/UKGC/Estonian licence focus): iGB (iGaming Business) is the trade record. Gambling Insider covers operator strategy and M&A. Casino Beats focuses on product and B2B technology. EGR (eGaming Review) covers the commercial and executive side. For regulatory coverage, VIXIO Regulatory Intelligence is where compliance-side journalists live. In the Nordics, Spilnu and similar regional outlets matter if you have consumer-facing products in those markets.

Start by mapping which publications your target investors, potential enterprise customers, and key regulators actually read. That constraint alone will cut your list to the right size and the right tier mix.

Once you know which outlets matter, use Google News searches, Twitter lists, and publication mastheads to identify the specific journalists covering the beats you care about. Do the research outlined above. Add them to your sheet. Keep the list short and live.

If you want to understand how this targeted outreach connects to measurable business outcomes, the PR ROI measurement framework covers exactly how to track whether your media programme is moving the metrics that matter — from share of voice to referral traffic to inbound lead attribution.