The latest US jobless figures show another 3.2 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits during the week ending May 2. That brought the seven-week total to 33 million.
Reeling prior to coronavirus, newsrooms continue to shed bodies. Roughly 36,000 journalists were furloughed, lost jobs or had their pay cut during the pandemic, the NY Times reports. A sign of the times was a May 4 tweet from Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Joe Sonka (@joesonka): “I won a Pulitzer Prize today, and I’m on my second week of unpaid furlough starting next Monday. Please subscribe....”
It’s not much better for PR pros. In a late-April PRNEWS survey, 70 percent said employees at their companies were furloughed, terminated or took salary cuts.
Those left in the media relations trenches are grinding, according to Propel data, provided exclusively to PRNEWS.
With an average of 17 daily pitches in April (top chart), the month’s average bests March (14), February (13) and January (10). Average open rate in April was 49 percent, while response rate was 9 percent.
January’s rates were 46 and 9 percent, respectively. Incredibly, pitch volume and journalist engagement were stronger in April, the pandemic’s worst month, than before coronavirus hit, said Zach Cutler, Propel’s founder.
The most-crowded pitching days used to be early in the week. In April, they were toward week’s end, as you see in the bottom chart. The most popular hour to pitch in April was 11am-12pm. It was 12pm-1pm in the three months prior.
Propel analyzed thousands of pitches from more than 100 US PR professionals.
