The AI Pitching Errors That Hurt Your Deliverability

It kind of looks like this easy shortcut at first, like you open custom GPT or Claude, type a prompt, and suddenly you’ve got a clean media pitch in seconds, almost too easy.

But then there’s the annoying part. Journalists are getting really good at spotting AI written stuff now, like almost immediately, and honestly they’re pretty fed up with it. Their inboxes are already full every morning with these cold, identical sounding emails that feel like they were all generated from the same place. After a while they just stop reading them.

The big issue is people treating AI like it does the actual thinking for them. It doesn’t. Reporters are going through tons of pitches every week, so if something feels too polished, too structured, too “obviously generated,” it gets ignored right away or dumped into spam. AI also keeps repeating the same kinds of phrases and rhythm, so your pitch just ends up blending into all the other AI noise.

And journalists really don’t care for that corporate style language either. Words like revolutionary, groundbreaking, disruptive, AI loves those. But real people don’t actually talk like that in normal conversations, so it just feels off, kind of fake, a bit forced.

What actually works better is way more simple. Keep it short, clear, human. Just say what it is, why it matters, and don’t try to dress it up like some marketing flyer.

Also sending the same AI written pitch to like 40 journalists is basically pointless. It’s better to narrow it down to a small list, maybe five people who actually cover your niche and would care. AI can still help you research them or understand their work, but the actual message should feel like a real person wrote it. Even small stuff like mentioning one of their articles or connecting it to their audience makes a big difference.

And before sending it, read it out loud. If it sounds awkward or stiff or like something you would never actually say, then it’s not ready yet. AI is fast and useful, but it doesn’t really understand tone or nuance, so you still have to fix that part or it just becomes another ignored email sitting in an already crowded inbox.