Digital PR glossary

Journalist requests

Journalist requests are call-outs from reporters, editors and podcasters looking for expert sources, data or case studies for a story. They are shared on platforms such as Qwoted, Featured, HARO and Connectively, and on social media under hashtags such as #journorequest. Answering them is a core reactive PR tactic.

Reviewed by Gareth Hoyle, Managing Director
Last reviewed 31 October 2026

What happened to HARO?

HARO (Help a Reporter Out) was founded by Peter Shankman in 2008, bought by Vocus in June 2010 and became part of Cision when Vocus merged with Cision in 2014. Cision rebranded it as Connectively in 2024 and discontinued Connectively on 9 December 2024.

On 15 April 2025 Cision announced the sale of HARO to Featured.com, which relaunched HARO's request emails that month. In June 2026 Featured revived Connectively as well, so both names are live again under one owner: HARO as an email service and Connectively as a platform where experts browse and filter requests.

How the main platforms work

Qwoted: journalists post calls for experts, and replies go straight to the journalist, using pitch credits from the source's plan
Featured: experts answer questions that are matched to publishers building expert-led articles
HARO: requests sent to registered sources by email
Connectively: the same kind of requests in a searchable platform
Social media: reporters on X and LinkedIn post requests with #journorequest

Which platform is best?

BuzzStream's July 2025 study of requests posted in May and June 2025 found Qwoted had the most requests and the highest share from sites with an Ahrefs Domain Rating of 70 or more (70.3%). Just over 38% of HARO's requests came from sites rated 0 to 9. Only 21.9% of all requests explicitly offered a followed link. Domain Rating is a third-party metric, not a Google signal, but it is a useful filter for which requests are worth answering.

Example

A reporter asks for a mortgage adviser to explain what a rate cut means for first-time buyers, with a 3pm deadline. A reply with the adviser's name, regulatory status, two quotable sentences and a phone number is usable as it stands. A reply that links to a blog post is not.