Getting your story into UAE and Saudi media: a pitching guide

Failed pitches tend to look alike: a subject line that is only a company name, a release built from adjectives, and no news beyond the fact that a business would like to be written about. Gulf newsrooms are busy and often lean, and like newsrooms anywhere they receive far more than they could ever use.

What follows is standard newsroom practice that most editors would recognise, adapted to a region that publishes in two languages and runs on two working weeks. If you pitch your own news, use it as a checklist. If someone pitches for you, use it as the standard to hold them to. Neither replaces a genuine relationship with individual journalists, still the biggest asset any PR effort has.

Find the story inside the news

An opening, a launch or a new appointment is an event. The story is the reason a particular outlet's readers should care: what changes for them, what is new in the market, and the number or example that makes it real. If you cannot put that to a friend in one sentence, the journalist has little chance of putting it to an editor.

One piece of news can hold several stories. A business desk will look for the market and the figures, a lifestyle title for the experience, and a trade publication for the detail nobody else would bother to print. Send the same unchanged release to all three and it is likely to fit none of them.

Know who you are writing to

Read a journalist's recent articles before you contact them. Confirm their beat, the language they write in, and that they are still at the outlet. Journalists move often, and pitching someone who left six months ago tells the newsroom nobody did the homework.

Keep it short and easy to use

Put the story in the subject line rather than only the brand. Use the opening two lines to say what has changed and why the outlet's readers would care. After that, offer whatever makes the story easy to run: someone to interview, pictures, figures, or a customer happy to talk.

On deadline, journalists reach for the release that asks least of them. Lead with facts rather than adjectives, include a quote that sounds like something a person would really say, and put the what, who, where and when in the first paragraph.

• Paste the release into the body of the email rather than relying on an attachment.
• Link to high resolution images, captioned in both languages, instead of attaching large files.
• Name a contact who will take calls on the day, within the journalist's own working hours.
• Keep the company boilerplate to a few lines at the end.

Arabic and English, written separately

Arabic and English outlets have different readers and frequently want different angles, so treat the two versions as two pieces of writing. A word-for-word translation of the English is obvious to an Arabic desk from the first line. Have a native writer who understands the outlet's register write the Arabic, or at the very least edit it.

Keep names, titles and figures identical in both. Agree the Arabic spelling of the company name and the spokesperson's name before anything is sent, and never vary it. If the spokesperson can only give interviews in one language, make that clear from the start, so the journalist is not caught out when booking the call.

Timing across two working weeks

When a pitch arrives decides whether it is read. The UAE works Monday to Friday, and many offices there finish early on Friday. Saudi Arabia works Sunday to Thursday and takes Friday and Saturday as its weekend. So a release sent to a Dubai desk on a Friday afternoon arrives in the weekend, and a Sunday pitch finds Riyadh at work and Dubai at rest.

Mornings are generally a safer bet than late afternoons. Anything tied to a date must reach journalists well before it, never on the morning itself. Monthly and print titles plan much further ahead than daily news, so seasonal stories have to go out early. Ramadan, Eid and the national days reshape both the news agenda and the working day, and deserve deliberate planning rather than an accidental collision.

Embargoes and exclusives

An embargo asks a journalist to hold a story until a set time, giving them room to prepare a fuller piece. It is a request rather than a contract, and it works only because both sides honour it. State the date, time and time zone prominently at the top, in a form such as embargoed until 9am UAE time on a specific date, and check that the Arabic version and every other version carry the identical line.

Keep embargoes for news that genuinely gains from preparation, and send them only to people you trust to respect them. An exclusive is a different deal: one outlet gets the story first and, in return, gives it proper space. Approach one outlet at a time, make the exclusivity explicit, and hold off on anyone else until you have an answer. Promise one exclusive to two outlets and you will usually lose both.

Follow up once, then keep a record

One follow-up a few days later is fair, as long as it brings something new: an extra detail, an image, the offer of an interview. Asking whether the email arrived brings nothing. If there is still silence, move on and note it for next time.

Coverage rarely goes to the cleverest pitch. It goes to the one that saved a busy journalist some work that afternoon.

That note is where most PR efforts lose ground. A record of who answered, who prefers Arabic and who covered you last time is what sharpens the next pitch, and it vanishes when it lives in one person's inbox. Keep a shared record of each journalist with their publication, beat and language, and log every pitch, reply and piece of coverage against it. If someone else runs your PR, ask to see that record.

Planning an announcement and want a second pair of eyes on the story, the release or the images that go with it? Talk to us at ALXO.