Muck Rack became PR system of record

COVID turned Muck Rack from a better journalist database into the system of record for a media market that was suddenly exploding outside traditional newsrooms. As writers moved to Substack, podcasts, and social channels, PR teams needed one place to find these newer voices, understand what they covered, and track outreach across many smaller outlets. That expanded both the number of relevant contacts and the value of software that kept the list current.

• Muck Rack moved quickly to index new media formats as they emerged. In May 2021 it added newsletter authors to its database, citing Reuters Institute data that 21% of Americans had accessed news via email newsletters in the prior week. Later that year it published podcast specific research and productized podcast metrics for PR teams.
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• The demand shock was real on both sides. Muck Rack's 2021 journalism survey found 94% of journalists had shifted at least some reporting toward COVID, while layoffs and furloughs increased workloads. At the same time, Axios reported that many journalists left newsrooms during the pandemic to launch independent newsletter businesses.
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• This helps explain why Muck Rack outgrew older PR vendors during the period. Internal ARR data shows growth jumping from about 55% in 2020 to about 76% in 2021 and about 67% in 2022, while legacy incumbents like Cision and Meltwater were built around slower moving databases and monitoring products tied more closely to traditional media org charts.
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The next step is broader creator coverage, where PR software tracks not just staff reporters but the whole surface area of influence, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube, LinkedIn, and AI cited sources. The company that best maps these fragmented voices, and turns that map into usable outreach workflows, will keep taking share from legacy PR stacks.