How To Pitch Story Ideas to Crunchbase News with Christine Hall

Crunchbase is a database with curated business information about private and public companies. Their service tracks investments and funding information, founding members and individuals in leadership positions, mergers, and acquisitions.

Crunchbase News publishes financial news stories about startups and companies in the private sector, particularly concerning fund raising and initial public offerings. Their news coverage has the power to put emerging tech brands in front of a highly desirable audience of business news media outlets, investors and market makers during fund raising rounds, which makes Crunchbase a top-tier news media outlet for PR firms promoting venture-backed tech companies.

Crunchbase News is owned by Crunchbase, but as a general policy, the database part of the business does not exert any editorial control or influence over its newsroom or coverage decisions. If you’re in media relations and have a story idea you’d like to pitch them for news coverage consideration, listen to this podcast.

Crunchbase News Media Relations Tips

Sourcing Financial News at Crunchbase

The Crunchbase research team does, from time to time, assist in pulling more intractable queries from the dataset to aid in our data-driven reporting. Christine Hall, writes for Crunchbase News and in this interview, she shares about what she covers and how best to pitch her story ideas.

“We’re all about data-driven journalism,” she says. “You know, basically tapping into the Crunchbase database to round out our typical funding announcements and feature stories.” Crunchbase News has a staff of five writers, each with a different financial news focus. Christine, covers companies in financial services, ecommerce, healthcare, agriculture, and food tech.

Given the number of companies out there, how does Crunchbase News figure out what stories to cover? “It comes down to whether it’s interesting,” Christine Hall says. “Is it something really disrupting in that industry? It’s doesn’t necessarily need to be a big number, because I’ve covered funding as low as $1 million seed rounds. It’s just a matter of our personal likes, and if it’s something that will make for a good story.” But $1 million is usually the minimum amount of funding required to get featured on the site.

Crunchbase News Editorial Acumen

In order to increase their reach, Crunchbase News has a daily newsletter with tens of thousands of subscribers, as well as a new section called the Briefing, where they run the breaking news items. For Christine Hall, a successful story has a good narrative behind it. While it doesn’t necessarily have to be about the founder’s background, it needs to have some “color.” Unsuccessful stories are the ones that are boring to write. .

Christine Hall alone receives at least 50 pitches per day. The good ones are those announcing new rounds of venture capital. Around half of the pitches she receives are not newsworthy. So it doesn’t really matter what a PR firm does when they pitch. If it isn’t a funding deal, it’s not a fit.

Crunchbase News is relatively unique in their coverage, but they do compete against Venture Beat, Tech Crunch, Axios, Fortune, Forbes, and The Information. Crunchbase News is a subscriber benefit so this outlet is not ad-supported.

Crunchbase News Editorial Personality

This interview with Christine Hall provides valuable insights into the dynamic landscape of tech journalism and the evolving role of public relations in the tech industry. As we navigate the ever-changing realm of startups, venture capital, and emerging technologies, it becomes clear that strategic communications and PR are more critical than ever.

As a prominent figure in tech journalism, Christine Hall demystifies media relations best practices at for getting story ideas considered at Crunchbase so listen her interview for more insight.

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