Earned media & PR

What it is

Earned media is the coverage you don't buy: the local news story about your endorsement, the candidate Q&A in the county paper, the quote in a statehouse reporter's piece about your race. For a down-ballot campaign it's often worth more than any ad — a story carries credibility an ad can't — and it's the part of the communications job most campaigns simply never get to, because nobody on a volunteer-run team knows which reporters to call or what makes a pitch land.

This service does that job for you. We build pitch lists of the local and state political press who actually cover races like yours, write and send the pitches, and work the follow-up. We watch for the moments a campaign generates on its own — an endorsement, a filing deadline, a strong debate, a policy rollout — and turn them into news hooks before they go stale. When something breaks against you, rapid response means a same-day statement instead of a weekend of silence. And we cover the media-training basics, so the candidate walks into every interview knowing the message, the bridge lines, and the questions to expect.

Honest expectation-setting: nobody can guarantee coverage, and anyone who does is selling you something. What a retainer buys is consistent, professional pressure on the right press list — which is how coverage actually happens.

How it works with your Electbase site

Coverage and your website feed each other. Every story we place drives readers somewhere, and that somewhere is your Electbase site — your news page, your issue pages, your donate flow. In the other direction, your site's news feed gives reporters something to work with: a statement they can quote, a page they can link, a record that the campaign said what it said, when it said it. A campaign that publishes consistently is an easier campaign to cover, and reporters notice.

What's included

A press strategy for your race level · pitch lists of local and state political press · pitch writing and outreach · press releases and statements · rapid response · media training basics for the candidate · turning campaign moments into news hooks · a monthly coverage report in plain English.

How pricing works

Earned media runs on a monthly retainer, sized to your race level and how much press activity your campaign generates. Press relationships compound — the second pitch to a reporter lands better than the first — which is why this is retainer work rather than one-off projects. The full rate card publishes at launch.

Who delivers it

Earned media and PR is run by the team at BlueList, the Democratic political-data firm behind Electbase. Knowing which outlets cover which races — and what those reporters have written before — is a data problem as much as a relationships problem, and that's the ground BlueList works every day.