Who Is Actually in a Media Database? 35.1% Reporters, 18.7% Editors, 12.6% Producers

The finding

Across 38,872 journalist records, 35.1% are reporters or correspondents, 18.7% carry an editor title, 12.6% are producers and 2.8% are anchors. Nearly a quarter of a media database is broadcast production staff — a group most PR teams never deliberately target.

The breakdown by role

Categories overlap, since one title can contain more than one signal. Only 2.46% are top-tier editors — editor-in-chief, managing editor or executive editor.

The producers nobody pitches

Producers are the third of the database, and the most misunderstood. In broadcast, the producer books the segment. The anchor whose name you recognise generally does not decide what airs; the producer decides, and then briefs them.

Pitching the anchor is pitching the wrong person, politely. At 2.8% of records against the producers' 12.6%, most PR effort aimed at broadcast is aimed at the visible name rather than the decision.

Producers also want something different: a spokesperson available on camera at a specific time, in a specific place, with a specific point to make. A written announcement is not a broadcast pitch, and sending one is the most common reason television never calls back.

What to do about it

• Pitch producers for broadcast, not anchors or on-air talent.
• Offer a person, not a story, when the target is television or radio.
• Do not aim everything at editors-in-chief. They are 2.46% of the field and the least likely to read cold mail.
• Match the format to the role. Reporters want facts, producers want availability, editors want an angle that fits the section.

The trouble with the word editor

Reporter is the single most common title in the database at 35.1%, and it is close to meaningless on its own.

At a one-person outlet, editor means the person who does everything. At a mid-size publication it usually means someone who commissions and shapes a section — the person you most want to reach. At a large newspaper it can mean a subeditor who never commissions anything, or an executive several layers above any decision about a pitch.

Only 2.46% of records carry a top-tier editor title such as editor-in-chief, managing editor or executive editor, and those are generally the worst cold-email targets in the database. They receive the most mail, delegate the most decisions and read the least of it.

The reliable signal is not the seniority word in the title but the subject word next to it. A section or beat named in the title tells you what that person actually decides. A title that names only a rank tells you how far they sit from the decision.

Methodology

These figures come from the 38,872 published journalist records in the Media List database, spread across 10,639 news outlets, measured on 15 August 2026.

Only published records are counted — the ones a customer can actually reach. Deliverability states are supplied by third-party address verification and reflect the most recent check on each address. Outlet size means the number of journalists we hold at that outlet, which is a floor on its real newsroom headcount rather than an exact count.

You are welcome to cite these findings with attribution to Media List.

Source for the figures on this page: Media List media database statistics, which is generated from the live database and carries the date each figure was last read.

How this was measured, and when

Every figure on this page was re-run against the live database on October 20, 2026. The counts move as the database grows and as addresses are rechecked, so a figure here is a reading on a date rather than a fixed fact. When this study was first published the same set was smaller, which is why these percentages differ from the ones it originally carried. Each one is reproducible from the filters described above.

The missing titles, and why they matter

The largest single group on this set is not a job at all. 29.6 percent of records carry no title, because plenty of outlets publish a byline and an address without saying what the person does. That is worth knowing before you sort a list by seniority, since a blank title is not a junior one.

The split that does show is 18.6 percent reporters, 18.6 percent editors, 14.9 percent producers, 4.5 percent writers, 3.5 percent anchors and hosts. Producers are the group most lists under weight. Broadcast runs on them, and a producer decides what a segment covers more often than the anchor whose name is on it.