Reading · Aly Walansky's Newsletter

I recently had an amazing conversation with Brett Farmiloe, founder of Featured, which now owns HARO, and he shared some incredible insights about a lot of what he sees going on about pitching and our media landscape — including a whole bunch of stuff we’ve touched on here in our daily newsletter, but through a wider lens, as HARO is processing millions of pitches and sending millions of emails.

Brett truly has his pulse on some staggering stats.

Here’s three standout stats that I really want to focus on before we get into the nitty gritty:

21% of pitches are 100% AI-generated (WHAT?!)
Human-written pitches are about 3x more likely to get featured than AI-written ones (THANK GOODNESS!)
HARO rejects about 32% of the journalist requests they receive.

When I knew I was going to have the opportunity to chat with Farmiloe, the first thing I wanted to bring up was the long and storied history of HARO. Those of us who have been around a few decades know it is a pretty wild one. It disappeared, became Connectively, and then disappeared again. I asked Farmiloe to walk me through what actually happened.

“HARO was founded in 2008, sold in 2010, operated for 14 years, and was rebranded to Connectively in April 2024. Then, Connectively announced it would be discontinued. That’s when I sent an email to Connectively’s general support address, asking if I could connect with anyone to discuss the closure of the platform and explore a potential acquisition,” explained Farmiloe in an email.

It was then that Farmiloe got a response, put together an offer, and got a deal across the finish line. “HARO relaunched under us in April 2025. And today, we operate three brands. HARO is the free newsletter that connects journalists with sources, supported by ads. Connectively is the platform version where you can search and manage those opportunities instead of working out of your inbox. Featured is a co-pilot for PR that monitors HARO alongside everywhere else media opportunities show up.”

One of the biggest concerns a lot of journalists have right now is AI-generated pitching. They’re not just frustrated by the volume of pitches—they’re frustrated by how generic and low-quality so many of them have become. I asked Farmiloe what his team is thinking about that problem.

“We’ve sent out more than 100 million emails to subscribers and have delivered more than 2 million pitches from sources to journalists. I’d say we’ve seen a fair share of ugly, bad, and good when it comes to AI pitching. Generally, I think the PR industry is split into two camps: automators and fully human. The ugly generally comes from the automators. We’ve seen fake profiles, fake credentials, misinformation, you name it. All stuff that as a platform, you need to develop solutions for in order to offer a reliable service,” said Farmiloe.

Farmiloe finds the good typically comes from fully human teams. Real relationship building. Real information and credentials. Real stories that matter.

That said, Farmiloe shares that AI pitch spam is what they have spent the majority of time addressing behind the scenes with HARO. “We’ve deployed stuff like community reporting tools for journalists (who can mark pitches as unhelpful, which prompts a manual review from our team), banning accounts, and running every pitch through AI detection (powered by Pangram). Among other things,” said Farmiloe, who shares it’s a lot of effort, but HARO only works if there’s quality and trust in the platform.

I asked Farmiloe to walk me through what happens to a pitch the moment someone clicks “send.” What checks happen behind the scenes before it ever reaches a journalist?

HARO works because it is simple. “A source sees an opportunity in their inbox. They reply directly to the journalist. The journalist takes it from there,” said Farmiloe.

That said, simplicity is complex.

“When someone hits send, they are sending their pitch to a masked email address. In other words, they’re not sending to aly(at)gmail.com. They’re sending to something like reply+40a9cae149-baa3-42a5-8b2d-128df844c318@helpareporter.com,” he said.

Basically, HARO is like USPS. “Our job is to deliver mail. But there’s a variety of checks and guardrails that we have in place to ensure that mail is sent from a legitimate sender, to a recipient that would find the message helpful,” said Farmiloe.

HARO’s team runs AI detection on every pitch. So, I asked Farmiloe, what percentage his team was finding to be heavily AI-generated? Are there any trends in who’s sending them, and why score those pitches instead of simply blocking them? The answer was was fascinating.

“We’re seeing 35% of journalists opt out of receiving AI pitches. Meaning, when a journalist submits their HARO query, they check a box that spares their inbox from any pitch that’s been flagged as AI generated by our systems. At the same time, we’re seeing 21% of all pitches being 100% generated by AI. These AI-generated pitches come from your typical DIY small business owner looking to get earned media placements, all the way up to some of the world’s most recognized public relations firms,” said Farmiloe..

That said, journalists care about getting connected with the right source for their story. “If an AI-generated pitch got them connected with the right person, some don’t care because they’re going to interview the source anyway,” said Farmiloe.

According to Farmiloe, the issue is that AI really just makes it harder for HARO to maintain quality and trust in the service. “But, that’s why we own it, because we’re up for the challenge.”

I then asked Farmiloe what they were actively doing to reduce spam and improve pitch quality. At what point does someone cross the line and risk being suspended or banned from HARO?

Farmiloe says the team takes a hard stance on spam, and bans someone from HARO every 23 minutes.

“There’s a variety of reasons why someone gets banned from HARO. Mostly, bans are a result of spam that’s been flagged or a violation of our terms of service,” said Farmiloe.

With that being said, the false positive - penalizing and perma-banning a real person - is the error they work hardest to avoid. “Clear-cut violations are handled automatically. Anything ambiguous, and any ban that gets appealed, goes to a human on our team,” said Farmiloe.

“With HARO, we care about helping a reporter out. If a source is not being helpful, authentic, or relevant in their usage, then there will likely be a review from our team.”

Trust goes both ways. I asked Farmiloe how his team goes about verifying journalists and media opportunities. What safeguards are in place to prevent fake reporters or bad actors from simply harvesting quotes and pitches?

Farmiloe shared a staggering stat in response: HARO rejects about 32% of the journalist requests they receive.

“Again, quality and trust are everything for HARO. Trust can’t be one-sided, where we only protect a journalist’s inbox from spam pitches. To make HARO work, you need to protect a source’s inbox from spam journalist requests as well,” he said. “That’s why we have a multi-step and multi-layer review and approval process for every HARO query. We verify journalists, publications, and ensure that a request is legitimate. We listen to feedback from the community and investigate any reports we receive to see if we need to take action against a journalist.”

One of Farmiloe’s favorite stories is from his Dad using HARO. “My Dad runs a podcast, and I told him to use HARO to land some guests for his show. He put out a HARO, and within an hour we had multiple complaints about him. He was trying to get guests to pay to be on his show,” Farmiloe shared.

Farmiloe called him and was like, “Dad, what are you doing!? You’re embarrassing me.”

So, the owner’s own Dad is banned from HARO! “Bottom line, if a request is included in a HARO edition, we’ve made the determination that it’s a worthwhile query for our subscribers,” said Farmiloe.

There are several platforms competing in this space now, including Qwoted.

“HARO created the space in 2008. For years Help a Reporter Out was the only journalist request platform there was,” Farmiloe reflects (and as someone who has been in this space for nearly three decades, I remember the evolution well!). What differentiates HARO today is the business model and its network effects. “HARO is 100% free, supported by newsletter ads. There’s no paid tier that gets your pitch there faster, or limits on how much you pitch. There’s no time delays for free users. Everyone replying to a HARO query is on identical footing,” Farmiloe said.

The other differentiator is the network. “Someone gets a HARO email, sees a request that’s perfect for a contact they haven’t spoken to in three years, and forwards it on. That person replies straight to the journalist, without ever visiting HARO or creating an account. The journalist gets a great source in minutes. That’s a property of email, and it’s hard to replicate on a platform where you need an account to participate,” said Farmiloe..

If you’re in PR, use every platform where relevant opportunities show up, competitors included. But free access with paid tooling on top is the structure I’d bet on.

I asked Farmiloe if he was seeing differences in how HARO performs across industries. For example, are highly technical fields behaving differently than lifestyle or consumer media now that AI search seems to reward authoritative earned media more heavily?

Here’s the thing about HARO: There’s some really random, odd requests for sources. “On any given hour, we’ll see journalist requests that range from Sonoma County winemakers using llamas for vineyard protection to technologists building frontier AI models to gastroenterologists with expertise in a rare cheese,” said Farmiloe.

That said, the categories that HARO offers include Business and Finance, Technology, Travel, Lifestyle and Entertainment, Health and Pharma, General, Gift Bags and Gift Guides, as well as Podcasts and Shows.

“We don’t break performance out by vertical, so I can’t give you a clean technical-versus-lifestyle comparison. What I can tell you is that AI visibility rewarding authoritative earned media has driven significant growth across the brands we own and operate. Journalist requests are up 68% year over year, and that growth isn’t concentrated in one category,” said Farmiloe.

After everything the platform has gone through over the past few years, what would Farmiloe say to PR professionals who are wondering whether they can trust HARO again?

“To trust a brand, I think you need to be able to trust the people, product, and mission behind it,” said Farmiloe. “Journalist requests on HARO have increased 68% year over year. There’s journalists using the service, and returning back to it, because it works. And as a result, we’ve seen a 54% increase in subscribers year over year, with many of them being PR professionals,” who said HARO has a highly technical team behind the platform that’s committed to maintaining quality and trust. Support is always available at haro@helpareporter.com. “Our team always wants to learn what we should build next. I do 10-25 customer calls a week,” said Farmiloe.

So there’s the team and traction, but what Farmiloe thinks matters most with HARO is the mission. “This is a free service for both journalists and sources, supported by newsletter ads,” said Farmiloe.

It’s a pure way to connect journalists and sources, to help create stories that matter. “Personally, I think that’s a great mission to get behind, support, and build. All that said, the best thing I always recommend is just to subscribe to HARO, and see what lands in your inbox. Proof in the pudding.”

I’ve heard from a few readers who say they stopped receiving HARO emails after all the transitions. What’s the best way for them to get back into the system and make sure they’re receiving opportunities again?

A few things to check. “If you were subscribed through Connectively, that subscription didn’t carry over automatically and you should resubscribe at helpareporter.com. If you’ve already resubscribed and still aren’t seeing anything, check spam and promotions and add haro@helpareporter.com to your contacts. Editions go out at 5:35am, 12:35pm, and 5:35pm EST. If none of that works, email haro@helpareporter.com and we’ll look at your specific address. That’s an easy fix on our end, and I’d rather fix it than have someone assume HARO is still gone,” said Farmiloe.

Featured has become something of a “co-pilot for PR” while HARO remains one of its best-known brands. How do the two work together?

“Most PR professionals I know receive HARO daily, monitor one or two other journalist request platforms, pay for access to a journalist database, subscribe to 14 Substacks, do podcast pitching, are hunting down speaking opportunities, are on the lookout for award submissions, got onboarded this morning to a new influencer database their firm just bought - all while scrolling through social media feeds to identify trendjacking opportunities,” said Farmiloe.

PR has too many subscriptions, and not enough time or people to monitor it all around the clock.

“Featured is a co-pilot for PR that finds media opportunities, and monitoring HARO is a great use case. Rather than opening HARO three times a day at 5:35am EST, 12:35pm EST, and 5:35pm EST, you can set up a workflow to “monitor HARO” at those exact times and be notified via email or Slack when there’s a relevant opportunity. In other words, Featured centralizes the various use cases in public relations, monitors and analyzes against parameters, and sets you up to easily submit so that you can get featured,” said Farmiloe.

If AI has made it easier than ever to send hundreds of pitches in minutes, how do we keep earned media from becoming a race to the bottom?

“I’m more optimistic. I think AI is forcing a race to the top in terms of pitching,” said Farmiloe, who says AI has set the bar higher, and the pitches we’re seeing win focus more on quality than quantity.

“For example, we scored 1,394,740 pitches for AI authorship using Pangram, then tracked each one to see whether it ended up published. Roughly 1 in 3 human-written pitches got featured. For AI-written pitches, closer to 1 in 10.That’s a 3x gap. Yes, AI has made it easy to pitch. But if I told you that you’d be 3x more successful doing the opposite, what would you do?” said Farmiloe.

What’s the biggest mistake Farmiloe sees PR professionals making with AI today?

Whether or not someone is using AI or not, the mistake that Farmiloe sees PR professionals making the most is treating pitching as a numbers game. “Quantity over quality is not how I’d recommend pitching, or using HARO,” said Farmiloe.

Instead, while HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out, Farmiloe thinks the HARO acronym can be used to remember a best practice: Helpful, Authentic, Relevant, and On time.

“Your reply should help the journalist do their job. You should be authentic, and not use automation or 100% AI to generate your pitch. You should be a relevant source, with any credentials the journalist needs. And since journalists are on deadline, your pitch should be on time, meaning it’s before their stated deadline. Be helpful, authentic, relevant, and on time to avoid the mistakes some PR pros make when using HARO. Then press send.”

On the flip side, what’s one way AI is actually making really good communicators even better?

“AI does a great job at ingesting data and making recommendations based on the inputs. Specifically, I’m seeing some of the best AI cases from communicators being directed at journalist relationship building,” said Farmiloe.

For example, the opportunity Farmiloe is seeing is journalist relationship building systems taking in all the articles and social media updates from a journalist, and providing updates to communicators about what they need to know or may have missed to better inform their pitches.

If Farmiloe could change one habit you see in PR pitching overnight, what would it be?

Really simple: following instructions. “Journalists leave incredibly detailed instructions when putting out a HARO query. The quickest way to annoy them is to not follow the instructions they explicitly asked for. These instructions could be a specific subject line, including specific information in your pitch, or ensuring that you have the exact credentials that the journalist needs.”

Media relations has always been built on trust and relationships. As AI becomes a bigger part of the workflow, how do we make sure we don’t automate away the very thing that makes good PR effective in the first place?

“I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to leverage AI to help automate the stuff that’s not fun, so that we can spend more time on the value added activities,” said Farmiloe.

For example, the most pure and enjoyable moments between a journalist and a source is when they connect for an interview. That’s where the magic happens.

“You know where the magic doesn’t happen? Sifting through the fifty inbound pitches to get to the one source you want to speak with. Going back and forth to find a time on the schedule that works for both sides. I think we’ll have a future that automates and streamlines both parties towards the value added activities.”

Farmiloe has spent years building tools for communicators. What’s one thing he wishes every PR professional understood—not about his platform, but about the future of media relations itself?

“The future of media relations is machine relations. But, the last mile will still be human. Journalists are using AI as an inbox filter and to manage their workload. Communicators should prep for a future where their pitch and press release is read by a bot before a person ever sees them. A machine may decide what gets seen. A person still decides what gets covered. Relations is the operative word. Always has been, and always will be. AI is making pitching cheap and relationships scarce. The communicators who win the next decade will spend their time on the half that can’t be automated.”

Have we reached “subscription fatigue” in PR, where communications teams are paying for more tools than they can realistically use?

“Yes. And we’re entering an era where it’ll be easier for entrepreneurs to build and ship products, which means that there will be more deserving products in the market than you could reasonably subscribe to. It’s actually very exciting for a person buying products. Solutions should get much better at solving problems, at a rate that’s cheaper, for far more people - just because of the speed of iteration and the volume of competition.”

Featured now combines journalist requests, podcast opportunities, speaking engagements, proactive outreach, and GEO visibility. Which of those areas has generated the most excitement from early users?

“We have 814,000 podcasts in our database, so podcast searches deliver a lot of value. The GEO visibility prompts demo really well, and I haven’t seen anything else like them on the market. And centralizing journalist requests across HARO, Connectively, LinkedIn, X, Substack, and other platforms has saved our users a lot of time,” said Farmiloe.

Finally: Does Farmiloe worry that as AI makes outreach easier, journalists will simply receive even more pitches?

That’s the reality. “We’ve seen pitch volume to journalists increase by 43% in the last 18 months. The average journalist inbox is beyond noisy. It’s barely usable. That’s why we see journalists have their public email address, their private email address, their burner email, and their personal email. The reality is that the inbox of a journalist actually has some really good stuff in there. Pitches that are on point. Stories that can be written. Expert sources who are available. There’s just not enough time to find and act on all the information,” said Farmiloe.

Ultimately, Farmiloe thinks a solution will surface for journalists to help manage the inbound. “Perhaps that’s another way we could help a reporter out?”

Thank you SO MUCH to Brett Farmiloe to taking the time to chat with our community. I learned so much, and I think all of you will enjoy the read as well. And feel free to include any questions or comments in the reply section below - I will make sure they get to Brett!

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Wednesday: HARO is back. But has pitching changed?

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