HARO (Help a Reporter Out)
HARO (Help a Reporter Out) was a service that emailed journalists' source requests to subscribers, who pitched themselves as expert sources in exchange for a quote and usually a link. Its owner Cision rebranded it as Connectively and then shut that service down, so the original HARO workflow no longer exists.
Also called: Help a Reporter Out, Connectively, HARO alternative
For roughly fifteen years HARO was the default entry point to digital PR: a few daily emails of journalist requests, sorted loosely by subject, that anyone could answer. Its appeal was that it inverted normal PR — instead of pitching a story to a journalist who had not asked, you answered a journalist who had explicitly said what they needed.
Its weaknesses were volume and speed. A single request could draw hundreds of responses within hours, so being early and specifically useful mattered far more than being eloquent, and most pitches were never read. That dynamic is why the tactic rewarded people who could turn a relevant request around in minutes.
The shutdown left the model intact and the venue changed. Several services now run the same source-request pattern — Qwoted, Featured, SourceBottle and others — and journalists increasingly post requests directly on social platforms. Anyone told to 'do HARO' today is being pointed at the workflow, not the product.
How Outlink AI runs this in practice: Digital PR.
Common questions
What replaced HARO?
No single service replaced it. Qwoted, Featured and SourceBottle all run the same journalist-request model, and many reporters now post source requests directly on social platforms. The workflow — answer a request fast and specifically — carried over unchanged.
Does HARO still exist?
Not as HARO. Cision rebranded it to Connectively and subsequently closed that service, so the original HARO email digests are no longer sent. The name persists in the industry mainly as shorthand for the source-request tactic itself.
Related terms
Qwoted
Qwoted is a platform where journalists post source requests and experts pitch themselves as sources, typically earning a quote and an attributed link if selected. It is one of the services that carries the model HARO popularized.
Digital PR
Digital PR is public relations run with search visibility as an explicit goal: earning coverage, citations, and links in online publications rather than pursuing print or broadcast placement for brand awareness alone.
Editorial link
An editorial link is a link someone chose to add because it was useful to their reader, with nothing given in exchange. It is the category of link search engines are trying to reward.
Last reviewed 2026-07-30. All glossary terms
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