MINUTES: The seven reasons people pay attention

Every pitch is asking a reporter for a few minutes of their day. Most pitches don’t get them.

MINUTES is Notably’s framework for what makes a story newsworthy. It names the seven reasons people stop and pay attention to one thing over another: Momentum, Identity, Novelty, Urgency, Tension, Exclusivity and Surprise. We named it MINUTES because… that’s exactly what you’re competing for.

Look, “newsworthy” gets thrown around like it’s a vibe. It isn’t. After years of watching which stories land and which ones vanish into an inbox, the winners almost always trigger one of these seven reactions.

The seven triggers

• Momentum: “Everyone is suddenly talking about this.” The story rides something already moving -- a trend, a news cycle, a moment people are watching.
• Identity: “That’s about people like me.” It names a group the reader belongs to: parents, nurses, first-time founders, people who work in the trades.
• Novelty: “I’ve never heard that before.” A first, a new category, a new way of doing something familiar.
• Urgency: “This could affect me.” A cost, a risk, a deadline, a consequence nobody saw coming.
• Tension: “Wait, how can both of those be true?!” Two facts that shouldn’t sit together, but do.
• Exclusivity: “I want to know this before everyone else.” A first look, data no one has seen, access nobody else can offer.
• Surprise: “That’s not what I expected.” A finding that flips an assumption.

When a client sends us news, the very first thing we ask is which of these it triggers. If the answer is none? It’s not a story yet. And no amount of pitching will fix that.

So I tested it on my own pitches

I went back through 1,225 pitches I’ve sent to reporters and had each one tagged by the trigger its subject line leads with. Then we counted how often a reporter replied with real interest -- asking for more, asking a question, or saying they’d cover it.

The pitches went out from my own inbox between December 2020 and mid-September 2026, about 3,400 emails in all. AI agents did the tagging with a written rubric, reading only the subject line and the first couple of lines -- what a reporter sees before deciding to open it. The same process sorted every reply into interested or not.

Here’s what came back:

• Pitches written for one reporter got an interested reply 19.6% of the time
• The same kind of pitch blasted to eight or more reporters? 3.9%
• Reporters who’d replied to me before answered with interest 34.9% of the time, versus 7% cold

And the triggers themselves:

• Identity was the strongest with cold reporters, at 10.2%. People read about people.
• Surprise came dead last, at 3.8%.

That last one surprised me (yes, I see it). Until I looked at the pitches. A lot of them led with a stat that was surprising… to the client. Not to anyone else. A finding only surprises a reporter when it flips something their readers already believe.

One caveat, because I’d want someone to point it out to me: this is my own inbox, not a controlled experiment. Who you send to and whether they know you moves the numbers way more than the trigger does. I use the trigger data as a hint, never a rule.

How to use MINUTES on your next announcement

• Write the headline a reporter would put on your news. Not your press release headline -- theirs.
• Ask which of the seven triggers it hits.
• If it hits one clearly, lead with it in your subject line.
• If it hits two, pick the stronger one. Pitches built on one trigger did slightly better than pitches trying to juggle two (8.5% versus 6.8%).
• If it hits none, don’t send it. Go find the group it affects, the thing it changes, or the assumption it breaks.

That’s where the story is. It almost always is.

Want to see how this plays out across a whole PR program? Here’s how we use behavioral psychology in PR, with a client story for every trigger.

Want a second set of eyes on your next announcement? Book a call with us. We’ll tell you exactly what we’d dig for.

FAQ

What is the MINUTES framework?

MINUTES is Notably’s framework for what makes a story newsworthy. It names seven reasons people pay attention: Momentum, Identity, Novelty, Urgency, Tension, Exclusivity and Surprise. A pitch that clearly triggers at least one of them is far more likely to get a reporter’s attention.

What makes a story newsworthy to a journalist?

A story is newsworthy when it gives a reporter’s readers a reason to care right now. In Notably’s MINUTES framework, that reason is one of seven triggers: it rides a moment people are watching, it’s about a specific group of people, it’s new, it affects the reader, it holds a contradiction, it’s exclusive, or it flips an assumption.

Which pitch trigger gets the most replies?

In Notably’s review of 1,225 of its own pitches, sent December 2020 to September 2026, identity-led pitches got the most interested replies from cold reporters (10.2%) and surprise-led pitches got the fewest (3.8%). Send size and an existing relationship mattered more than any trigger: one-to-one pitches got interested replies 19.6% of the time, versus 3.9% for pitches sent to eight or more reporters.

Should a pitch use more than one trigger?

Usually no. Pitches that led with one clear trigger got interested replies 8.5% of the time, versus 6.8% for pitches that led with two. Pick the strongest one and put it in the subject line.