What health journalists actually want
Pitching health journalists works when a hospital sends one relevant story to a reporter who covers it, offers a named doctor available before deadline, and backs every claim with evidence. Journalists value access and honesty over polished releases, and they drop sources that ask for copy approval, oversell or go quiet in a crisis.
Health journalists in India want roughly what any good source relationship offers: a real story, a credible person to talk to, fast and honest answers, and no wasted time. Pitching health journalists goes wrong when hospitals send what they want published instead of what a reporter can use, to people who do not cover the subject, and then go quiet when the reporter calls back.
This piece is written from the desk’s side of the table. It is part of the series on healthcare PR in India. The other half of the problem, the reluctance of hospital leaders to take the call at all, is covered in why hospital executives avoid the interview request.
Know who you are actually pitching
“Health journalist” covers very different jobs with different needs. Treating them as one list is the first mistake.
- Health correspondents at national dailies and wires. Want national relevance, policy connection, credible data and senior clinical voices. They receive the most pitches and are the most selective.
- City and metro reporters. Cover health alongside civic issues. Want local relevance, a named doctor today, and something their readers will notice in their neighbourhood.
- Business and healthcare-industry reporters. Want investment, expansion, deals, leadership and numbers on record. They do not want clinical features.
- Regional-language desks. Want a doctor who can speak in the language and a story relevant to their district. Often the most receptive and the most neglected.
- TV producers. Want a visual, a guest available at a specific time and someone comfortable on camera, usually at short notice.
- Digital explainers, podcasts and newsletters. Want depth, a clear explanation and a doctor who can talk for twenty minutes without jargon.
- Trade and medical media. Want clinical and operational detail that general media will not carry.
Most of the problem sits here. In Cision’s 2025 State of the Media survey of more than 3,000 journalists across 19 markets, 86% said they would immediately reject a pitch not aligned with their beat or audience. Matching the story to the person is most of the work.
What makes a health story, from the desk’s side
An editor deciding whether to assign a reporter asks some version of: is it new, does it affect our readers, can we explain it, and can we stand it up? Your pitch should answer those four before they are asked.
- New. A service, a pattern in the data, a change in guidance, a first for the city. “We completed ten years” is not new.
- Affects readers. Who, where, and what they should do differently.
- Explainable. A doctor who can make it clear in plain language, in the reader’s language.
- Stands up. Evidence, a method for any data, a patient with consent if a human face is needed, and nothing that falls apart on a phone call to another doctor.
Reporters are also looking for the story behind the story. A hospital announcing a new paediatric emergency unit is a press release. A hospital willing to explain, with anonymised aggregated data and clinical review, why paediatric emergency visits in the city rise in a particular season, and what parents should watch for, is a story. The second one gets written, and the unit gets mentioned in it.
Pitching health journalists: the email that gets read
A pitch is not the press release pasted into an email. It is a short, personal note that tells one reporter why this is a story for their readers. The release, if there is one, sits below or as a link.
Example pitch (fictional):
Subject: Dengue admissions starting earlier in Example City this year: paediatrician available today
Hi Priya, you wrote last month about fogging gaps in the eastern wards. Our paediatric team at Example Hospital has seen dengue admissions begin earlier than in the last two seasons (anonymised internal data, method attached). Dr A. Sharma (example), senior paediatrician, can speak today between 2 and 6 pm in English or Hindi on warning signs parents miss. Happy to share the aggregated numbers if useful.
What makes it work:
- The subject line is the story, with the offer.
- It shows the reporter’s own previous work was read.
- It offers something only this hospital has: local data and a named doctor.
- It states availability and language.
- It is under a hundred words and has no attachment larger than a small method note.
Follow up once, a day or two later, only if you have something to add. Silence is an answer. Calling a reporter to ask “did you receive my release?” is the fastest way to be filtered out.
Access is the currency
Ask health reporters what they value most in a hospital source and the answer is rarely the quality of the release. It is whether a competent doctor comes on the line before deadline. A newsroom working to an evening close will not wait for a medical director’s approval chain.
That makes spokesperson readiness a PR asset in its own right. Keep a short list of doctors who have agreed to take media calls, their specialties, languages and preferred times. Agree in advance what they can speak on without further clearance: general health advice, seasonal guidance, explanations of conditions and procedures. Reserve the approval chain for statements about the hospital itself, patients or anything contentious. I have argued for the doctor as spokesperson, not the marketing department; the practical training side is in doctors as media spokespersons.
Doctors quoted in media remain bound by professional conduct rules. The Code of Medical Ethics Regulations, 2002 on the NMC site treat publicity that draws attention to a doctor’s own skill or achievements as unethical, and restrict disclosure of patient information. Journalists generally prefer this anyway. They want expertise, not a doctor promoting themselves.
TV, podcast and digital video requests
Broadcast requests come with different constraints. A TV producer usually needs a guest at a fixed slot, sometimes within hours, and a location that looks right on camera. Say yes only if the doctor can genuinely make it, and brief them on the format: live or recorded, studio or remote, panel or solo, and how long they will have to answer. Podcasts and digital explainers want the opposite: time, depth and a doctor who can hold a conversation without slides.
For remote appearances, test the doctor’s video setup in advance: a quiet room, stable internet, a neutral background with no patient information visible, and a phone on silent. A good doctor with poor audio will not be invited back.
Evidence behind every claim
Good health reporters check. They will ask another doctor whether your claim is reasonable, look up whether your “first” really is one, and compare your numbers with public data. The same Cision survey reported that 72% of journalists worry about factual errors in AI-generated PR content, which tells you how carefully they are reading anything that looks machine-written.
So make checking easy:
- Attribute public figures to their source in the text.
- For internal data, explain the method in two lines: period, which patients, how counted, and that it is anonymised and aggregated.
- Have clinical review sign off on any statement about outcomes, safety or recovery before it reaches a reporter.
- Be ready to say what you do not know. Reporters trust a source who admits the limit of the data more than one who oversells.
The practical build of a release that meets this bar is in how to write a hospital press release journalists use.
Things that end a media relationship
Journalists have long memories and share notes with each other. The behaviours that get a hospital quietly dropped from contact lists are consistent:
- Asking to see or approve the story before publication. You can offer to check facts or spellings; you cannot edit their copy.
- Offering a patient and then withdrawing them because consent was never properly obtained.
- Pushing a reporter to include a doctor’s name or a service mention that has no place in the story.
- Offering advertising alongside a pitch, or implying that coverage and ad spend are linked.
- Sending the same “exclusive” to three outlets.
- Going silent during a crisis after being very available during a launch.
- Complaining to an editor about a fair but unflattering story.
The last two matter most. A hospital that only talks when the news is good will not be believed when it needs to be.
Exclusives, embargoes and fairness between outlets
An exclusive is a promise that one outlet gets the story first. Use it when a story is strong enough that one well-placed piece will do more than several brief mentions, and honour it completely. Do not offer the same exclusive to a second outlet if the first is slow to respond; ask first whether they still want it, and move on only once they say no.
Embargoes work the same way. When you share material under embargo, state the exact time and time zone, and do not publish anything yourself, on social media or the website, before it lifts. A hospital that breaks its own embargo on Instagram teaches reporters not to trust the next one.
Across outlets, be even-handed over time. If one paper always gets your best stories, others will notice. Rotating exclusives among the reporters who have served your readers well is part of pitching health journalists fairly, and it keeps more doors open for the day you need them.
Regional-language and tier-2 media
Outside the metros, regional-language papers and their digital editions often reach more of a hospital’s actual catchment than English national titles. Yet many hospital PR plans treat them as an afterthought, sending English releases and hoping someone translates.
What these desks want is not complicated: a release in their language, reviewed by a native speaker; a doctor who can give interviews in that language; and a local angle. District correspondents also value hospitals that keep them informed about practical things: camp timings, emergency numbers during festivals, what to do in a heatwave. Useful public information builds the relationship that earns coverage later.
Building healthcare media relations over a year
Healthcare media relations are built between announcements, not during them. The hospitals journalists call first are the ones that were useful when they had nothing to sell. A year-long routine looks like this:
- Map the media. For each city, list the reporters who actually cover health, city issues, business and regional-language news. Note what each has written recently.
- Build the spokesperson bench. Agree a small group of doctors, their topics, languages and availability.
- Plan the calendar. Use seasonal patterns and verified observance dates to plan useful reactive content; the health awareness days PR calendar for India is a starting point, and newsjacking and health awareness days explains how to stand out.
- Offer before you ask. Introduce doctors to reporters as sources, with no story attached.
- Keep a media log. Record every contact, request, response time and outcome, inside the hospital rather than only at the agency.
- Review quarterly. Which reporters engaged, which doctors were quoted, which pitches failed and why. Measuring PR beyond clippings covers what to track.
Handle journalists’ contact details with the same care as any personal data. Keep the list to people who cover your subject, and remove anyone who asks.
None of this is glamorous. It is closer to account management than to publicity. But it is the difference between a hospital that issues releases and one that journalists call. If you want to see the failure pattern this routine fixes, read why hospital press releases get ignored.
Questions people ask
Pitching health journalists means offering a specific reporter a story that suits their readers, with a named doctor, evidence and availability, usually through a short personal email. It is different from distributing a press release to a list. The pitch explains why this is a story for that outlet today; the release, if there is one, is the reference document the reporter checks facts against afterwards.
Because the hospital’s reputation in the media is shaped by hundreds of small interactions: who calls back, who is accurate, who is available during a crisis. Journalists remember. A hospital that is useful to reporters in ordinary months is treated more fairly when something goes wrong. Your willingness to make senior doctors and leaders available sets the tone for the whole function.
As few as the story needs. A local service story might go to a handful of city and regional-language reporters who cover health. A national data story might go to a few health correspondents, one at a time if you are offering an exclusive. Broad blasts to large lists are how hospitals get filtered out. Relevance matters far more than volume.
Fast enough to meet the reporter’s deadline, which is often the same day and sometimes within the hour. Ask the deadline at the first call and commit to a time. If you cannot provide a doctor in time, say so quickly so the reporter can go elsewhere. A prompt no is far better for the relationship than a late yes.
They should know the reporter, the outlet, the angle and the deadline, the two or three points worth making, and what they must not discuss, such as individual patients or unverified outcomes. They should speak in plain language and avoid promoting themselves, in line with professional conduct rules. A short briefing before every interview is enough for experienced spokespeople.
No. Asking to approve copy damages the relationship and most reporters will refuse. You can offer to check technical facts, spellings of names and figures, and many reporters appreciate that, particularly on clinical detail. If a published story contains a factual error, contact the reporter politely with the correction and evidence. Save escalation to editors for serious inaccuracies.
It should not, and implying a link between ad spend and coverage will damage your standing with journalists. Editorial and advertising are separate in reputable outlets, and reporters resent any suggestion otherwise. If you buy sponsored content, it should be clearly labelled as such. Earned coverage comes from news value, access and credibility, not from the media budget.
Anonymised, aggregated patterns that say something about public health in a city: seasonal trends, age profiles, gaps in screening or awareness, with the method explained. The data must be clinically reviewed and must not identify any patient. Internal figures about your own volumes are less interesting unless they reveal a public trend. Always be ready to explain how numbers were counted.
Send a release in their language, reviewed by a native speaker, and offer a doctor who can give interviews in that language. Lead with the local angle for their district. Regional desks often receive fewer quality health pitches than English national desks, so a useful, well-prepared story is more likely to be taken up and can reach much more of your actual catchment.
A good agency maintains a targeted, current media list with reasons for each name, knows which reporters cover what, drafts pitches tailored to each outlet, manages logistics for interviews, and keeps a shared media log the hospital owns. It should push back when a story is not news. An agency that measures success only by the number of releases sent is not building relationships.
Track how often journalists contact you unprompted, how quickly you respond to requests, which doctors are quoted and in which outlets, and the accuracy of coverage. Over time, look at whether your hospital becomes a regular source on its priority specialties in its cities. These signals matter more than the count of mentions, and they predict how you will be treated in difficult moments.
Compliance should confirm that doctors understand confidentiality obligations, that no individual patient will be discussed without documented consent and legal sign-off, that outcome claims have evidence, and that the doctor’s comments inform rather than promote themselves. Pre-agreeing topics that need no further clearance, such as general health advice, keeps compliance from slowing routine requests.
First, check whether it is accurate. If it is fair, respond constructively, explain what you are doing about the issue and stay available. If it contains factual errors, contact the reporter with evidence and ask for a correction. Avoid threats, legal letters as a first step, or complaints to the editor about tone. How you behave after a hard story shapes the next one.
Yes. The core work is identifying a few reporters who cover health in your city, offering one or two doctors as reliable sources, and responding quickly when called. That needs a named person with time and authority, not a large budget. Many local stories come from simply being the hospital that answers the phone and explains things clearly.
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