In the summer of 2025, Larissa Holzki, head of the AI team at Handelsblatt, posted on LinkedIn that the notion that press releases are even made for the press in the first place, is a major misconception. At best, the document is useful for double-checking name spellings. In reality, it’s a neat user manual for what it actually takes to be relevant to Handelsblatt.
Handelsblatt PR: Why this newsroom plays by its own rules
A few key metrics: The paid print circulation sits at around 112,000 copies. Compared to tabloids or mass-market consumer titles, that may seem modest. But raw reach isn’t the product here. Handelsblatt is the daily newspaper of CEOs, the official gazette of the Frankfurt and Düsseldorf stock exchanges, and consistently ranks among Germany’s most cited publications. It is read by executive board members, investors, supervisory boards, and ministerial officials. Handelsblatt doesn’t provide a reach signal, but provides an authority signal. Getting into Handelsblatt means gaining direct access.
On top of that, the outlet instituted a hard paywall very early on. Since early 2021, Editor-in-Chief Sebastian Matthes has steered the newsroom strictly toward a digital-first course, complete with an in-house Editorial Lab for newsroom AI tools. The business model is built on digital subscriptions. And you don’t sell digital subscriptions with product announcements; you sell them with exclusive investigations, expert analysis, and actionable value for decision-makers.
Your pitch isn’t competing against other pitches. It is competing against an investigative corporate deep dive that three editors have spent the last six weeks researching.
Four strategies for PR success: Ways into Handelsblatt
The most common strategic mistake in Handelsblatt media relations: everyone wants to break in via a breaking news angle. Yet a pure news angle is the hardest route, because the story must be relevant to the vast majority of readership. Be honest with yourself: is your press release genuinely news? If not, try these paths:
- The exclusive news item. Only works for substantial deals, executive hires, financial figures, legal disputes, or strategic pivots. The newsroom never asks, “What did you do?” They ask, “What does this reveal about the wider market?” A funding round is a plain fact. What a funding round signals about sector consolidation is a story.
- The expert quote. The most underestimated entry point and usually the fastest initial win. Newsrooms are constantly searching for credible voices to contextualize unfolding developments. If you are already in a reporter’s contacts list, you get the call before you ever have to pitch. You build this up by establishing visibility in niche trade media that Handelsblatt journalists read, networking at trade fairs and conferences, and holding regular background briefings.
- Proprietary data. This is the lever almost no one pulls consistently. A rigorous survey, a proprietary index, or an anonymized dataset derived from your own product: that is material the newsroom cannot source anywhere else. Deliver robust data once a quarter, and you become a go-to cited source on demand.
- The side doors. Handelsblatt is an entire media portfolio: the Morning Briefing newsletter and podcast, vertical briefings spanning Finance, Energy, IT/Digitalization, and Automotive, alongside specialized podcasts, live journalism, and conferences. These formats have dedicated editors, a distinct appetite for topics, and a different publishing cadence than the daily print paper. Landing there gets your foot in the door before you ever target the main edition.
Departmental and contact management: Who to pitch at Handelsblatt
Handelsblatt provides public author profile pages. Browse through the respective desks and journalists. Their beats are clearly documented, along with their most recent articles. Twenty minutes of reading is enough to know whether a journalist is the right fit and what analytical angle they take. Check LinkedIn as well: many Handelsblatt journalists post openly about what they are currently working on and what annoys them about inbound PR pitches.
Always respect departmental lines. Technology is not Corporate, and Corporate is not Finance or Opinion. An email sent to the wrong editor is rarely forwarded internally. Another critical note: many emails never even reach journalists because spam filters screen them out instantly. The best, and frankly only, way around this is to get saved in their contact book. You don’t achieve that with high email volume, but with high quality. Deliver relevant insights regularly, and keep everything that lacks genuine journalistic value to yourself.
Timing and lead times: The optimal pitch window
Based on DACH market experience, Tuesday through Thursday mornings offer the best window. Mondays are dominated by editorial planning conferences, making them a poor choice.
Lead time matters far more than the day of the week. Starting an email with “today” typically yields silence rather than coverage. Newsrooms need time for fact-checking, follow-up questions, and graphics. For stories that aren’t breaking news, a lead time of seven to ten days is not a luxury, but the baseline.
The same applies to imagery. Handelsblatt runs an in-house photo desk that categorizes corporate images in advance. They prepare and store them to drop into layouts quickly. If you don’t provide assets early enough, your updated headshot won’t run until the next piece.
What a pitch email to Handelsblatt must deliver
Four elements, in this exact sequence:
- Subject line: Must immediately explain why this matters to their specific readership. “Exciting news from XY” says nothing.
- The hook in the first sentence: Skip the company bio and founding story. Lead straight with the offer.
- Why now: Pinpoint the market shift, regulatory update, or metric that makes the topic relevant this week.
- The proof point: A concrete figure, a credible source, or an independently verifiable claim.
Stop right there. A journalist once told me he never reads past three or four sentences anyway. Everything else belongs in an attachment or behind a link.
The most important editing rule: cut out words like “world-leading,” “revolutionary,” “groundbreaking,” and “innovative.” Journalists decide for themselves what leads the market. Using superlatives in a pitch is an immediate red flag that the story lacks substance.
Facts beat questionnaires
Here is a tip you won’t find in standard pitch guides, sent directly to our inbox by a Handelsblatt editor: “Send facts, not questions.”
Many pitches include suggested interview questions: “Potential questions for our founder.” Well-intentioned, but useless. Newsrooms craft their own questions and won’t outsource their editorial line. To decide whether a pitch has legs, editors need operational metrics: headcount, funding stage, market share, and comparative benchmarks. These figures show whether a story holds up as a standalone profile or serves merely as supporting data for an industry-wide piece.
Most of these numbers can be researched publicly anyway. Leaving them out doesn’t save the editorial team work; it just delays it. Worse, you risk having the reporter fill the gap with external data that contradicts your narrative.
The practical benefit: pitches with robust, verifiable facts get answered much faster, including rejections. And a fast rejection is infinitely more valuable than three weeks of dead silence.
Exclusives and embargoes: What makes sense, and when
An exclusive is not a gift; it is a calculated bet. If the story is strong, other media outlets will follow up anyway. If it is weak, you burn it in a single newsroom, and everyone else passes.
Never underestimate this rule: once an exclusive is agreed upon, it must remain an exclusive. If a reporter sells the pitch internally as an exclusive and it surfaces in a competing outlet two days later, the relationship is broken. Not just the story, but also the relationship.
Embargoes make sense when a newsroom needs lead time to produce a thorough, well-researched piece. They are useless if no one wants the story to begin with.
Is the press release dead?
No, reports of its death are exaggerated. As background material, it remains valuable: providing facts, figures, correct spellings, approved quotes, and clear corporate accountability. But as an initial door opener, it is finished. Anyone blasting out a mass press release and calling it PR should reconsider their approach.
A more compelling shift is currently unfolding: press releases are increasingly read by machines, not just humans. Structured, modular releases featuring clean data points and proof points are far easier for AI tools to process than convoluted marketing prose. As a result, some communications teams now create two versions: one tailored for humans, and one structured for machines.
Getting into Handelsblatt is not a function of outreach frequency. You get in by stopping making your company the focus, and instead answering a pressing market question the newsroom is already debating, or ought to be debating.
It takes far more effort than a distribution list blast, but that is what effective communications requires.
