Boston, MA — 2026-10-21
Most Small-Business Press Releases Get No Independent Coverage, PitchBud Study of 102 Wire Releases Finds
Checked 30 to 90 days later, 84 of 102 small-business releases sent through five newswires this summer had not been written about by any journalist, editor or independent writer; most were reposted as copies instead.
PitchBud, which helps small businesses write press releases and pitch them directly to journalists, today published a study of 102 small-business press releases distributed through five newswires between July and September 2026. Checked 30 to 90 days after each went out, 84 of the 102 (82%) had not been written about by any journalist, editor or independent writer the study could find.
What the releases did receive was copies. 64 of them (63%) appeared, word for word or lightly reworded, on wire partner sites, the press-release sections of local news sites, financial portals and news apps. The study found 167 such copies, about four for every independent page, and 20 of them had been rewritten by software and credited to a bot or labelled “By AI”.
Key findings:
• 18 of 102 releases (18%; with 95% confidence, between 11% and 26%) received at least one independent article or mention. Counting only news and trade articles, 15 (15%) did.
• No newswire stood out. 7 of 34 EIN Presswire releases (21%) and 11 of 68 releases from PRWeb, PRLog, 24-7 Press Release and Newswire.com combined (16%) were covered, a difference within the margin of error.
• Where coverage did happen, it usually followed news a particular audience already cared about, such as a venture firm’s new fund, a rebuilding service after a neighbourhood fire, or a specialist engineering component.
The study counted generously: list mentions, a profile on a site that sells placements, and the obituaries of one release’s author, a well-known media founder who died the day it went out, all count as coverage.
“Most small businesses send a wire release hoping a reporter will see it. In our sample, more than four in five got no coverage at all, only copies of the release itself. The release still matters as the official record of your news. It just doesn’t do the pitching for you.” said Bo Bennett, PhD, founder of PitchBud.
Method: the sample days were fixed in advance as every Tuesday and Thursday from 23 July to 17 September 2026. On each day the study took the first qualifying small-business releases in each service’s public listing, two from EIN Presswire and one each from the other four, after setting aside government, public-company, non-profit, advice-article and market-report releases. Each release went through PitchBud’s own coverage check plus a search for the business name, and every one of the 680 pages that named a business was sorted into copies, the business’s own pages and listings, earlier or unrelated pages, and independent coverage. Pages in doubt were counted as coverage. PitchBud sells press-release writing and journalist outreach, so the method was written down and fingerprinted before any data was collected; it is published with a dated change log.
The full results, method and limits are at https://www.pitchbud.io/research/wire-release-study. Journalists may cite the figures with a link to the study; the list of releases and page-by-page classifications is available on request. Individual businesses are not named.
About PitchBud: PitchBud (pitchbud.io) helps small businesses, authors and founders write a press release, publish it on a clean newsroom page, and find and pitch the journalists most likely to cover it, with pitches sent from their own inbox. Plans start free; a one-time Campaign Pack is $59.
