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Help a Reporter Out (HARO) had one of those deaths that surprised nobody who had been paying attention. Cision rebranded it as Connectively, added paywalls and clunky dashboards, and killed the simple email-based system that had made the platform work for over a decade. By December 2024, Connectively was officially shut down and most people assumed HARO was gone for good.
It was not. Featured.com acquired HARO from Cision in April 2025 and relaunched it with the original model: free for both journalists and sources, email-based queries, no paywalls. Peter Shankman, who founded the original HARO back in 2008 as a Facebook group that grew into something much bigger, also launched his own successor called Source of Sources running on the same principle. The concept that made HARO valuable in the first place turned out to be more durable than the corporate decisions that nearly killed it.
If you are an author, a ghostwriting client, a business professional, or anyone who has published a book and wants media coverage, HARO is one of the most effective free tools available for getting quoted in major publications. I used it before the shutdown. It works remarkably well for the right kind of person. But it requires patience, speed, and the ability to write exactly what reporters need in the format they need it.
What HARO Is and How It Works
HARO connects journalists who need expert sources with professionals who can provide quotes, insights, and commentary. The journalist submits a query describing what they need. HARO distributes those queries to registered sources. Sources respond directly to the journalist. If the journalist uses your response, you get quoted in their publication, usually with your name, title, and a link to your website.
The publications range from blogs to major outlets. Journalists from The New York Times, Reuters, Forbes, Inc., and hundreds of other publications have used HARO to find sources. A single quote in a high-authority publication can generate a backlink worth more than months of SEO work, plus the credibility of being cited as an expert in a respected outlet.
You sign up as a source, select your areas of expertise, and receive email digests containing journalist queries. You scan for queries relevant to your knowledge, craft a response, and send it. That is the entire process.
Why HARO Matters for Authors
If you have written a book, you are an expert on the subject of that book. HARO gives you a direct channel to journalists who are actively looking for exactly that expertise. This is not cold pitching. This is responding to someone who has already asked for what you know.
For ghostwriting clients who have published a business book, a memoir, or a policy book, HARO is a way to extend the authority that book established. The book makes you credible. HARO puts that credibility in front of journalists who amplify it to their audiences.
The SEO value alone justifies the time investment. A backlink from Forbes, Inc., The New York Times, or any high-domain-authority publication sends a powerful signal to Google about your website’s credibility. My Author Platform Handbook covers how media coverage fits into the larger strategy of building author visibility, and HARO is one of the most accessible tools for generating that coverage.
Beyond SEO, being quoted in publications builds the kind of third-party credibility that no amount of self-promotion can replicate. When a journalist chooses to cite you as an expert, that is an independent endorsement of your knowledge. It carries weight with future media contacts, potential clients, speaking engagement organizers, and anyone evaluating your authority.
What Most People Get Wrong
Most people who try HARO and give up are not failing because the platform does not work. They are failing because they do not understand what journalists actually want, and the gap between what sources think journalists want and what journalists actually want is enormous.
The number one mistake is treating HARO like a marketing opportunity instead of a journalism tool. Journalists are not looking for your sales pitch. They are not interested in your company history or your book title or your credentials paragraph. They are looking for a specific piece of information, a quote, a data point, or an expert perspective that fits the story they are already writing.
When a journalist asks “What are the biggest mistakes first-time authors make?” they want three to five specific, concrete mistakes stated clearly and concisely. They do not want your company history, your book title, your credentials paragraph, or a 500-word essay. They want the answer to their question in a format they can paste into their article with minimal editing.
Speed matters enormously. Journalists work on deadlines. A query posted at 8 AM may have a deadline of 2 PM. If you respond at 5 PM, you have wasted your time. The sources who get quoted consistently are the ones who respond within the first hour or two. Set up notifications. Check the digests immediately when they arrive. If a query matches your expertise, respond now, not later.
Relevance is non-negotiable. If a journalist asks about healthcare policy and you are a fiction author, do not respond. Irrelevant responses waste the journalist’s time and damage your reputation on the platform. Respond only to queries where you have genuine expertise and can provide genuine value.
Keep responses short. Three to five sentences answering the specific question, followed by a one-line bio with your name, title, and website. That is it. Journalists are scanning dozens to hundreds of responses. The ones that get selected are the ones that give them exactly what they need without making them dig for it.
How to Write a HARO Response That Gets Selected
Start with the answer. This sounds obvious, but the vast majority of HARO responses bury the useful information under three paragraphs of credentials and context. Do not start with your background. Do not start with “Thank you for this great question.” Start with the specific information the journalist asked for. If they asked for mistakes first-time authors make, your first sentence should be a mistake. Everything else comes after.
Be specific and concrete. “Many authors struggle with marketing” is the kind of response that gets deleted without being read. “Most first-time authors spend their entire budget on editing and have nothing left for launch marketing, which means the book releases to silence” is specific, concrete, and quotable. The journalist can drop that sentence directly into their article. That is what you are aiming for: a response so clean and so specific that the journalist barely needs to edit it.
Write in a voice that sounds like a human being talking, not like a press release. Journalists want sources who sound like real people with real experience. If your response reads like it was generated by AI or written by a PR department, it will be ignored. This is one area where AI-generated responses are actively harmful. Journalists can spot them, and Peter Shankman has stated that AI pitches get sources removed from his platform.
Include one brief credential that establishes why you are qualified to answer. “Richard Lowe, ghostwriter of 54 books” is sufficient. The journalist will follow up if they need more.
Provide your contact information. Email and phone number. If a journalist wants to use your quote, they may need to verify it or ask a follow-up question. Make it easy for them to reach you.
The Current HARO Landscape
The journalist-source matching space has actually gotten more interesting since the Connectively debacle. As of 2025, the options include the relaunched HARO (now owned by Featured.com), Peter Shankman’s Source of Sources, Qwoted, Help a B2B Writer, and the low-tech but surprisingly effective approach of monitoring the #journorequest hashtag on X and Bluesky. Each operates on the same basic principle: journalists post queries, sources respond.
HARO under Featured.com has returned to the free model and is actively working to address the spam and AI-generated responses that plagued both the original HARO and Connectively. Source verification, AI content detection, and community reporting are all part of the new system. Whether they can maintain quality as the platform scales remains to be seen, but the early signs are encouraging.
The core strategy remains the same regardless of which platform you use: respond fast, respond relevantly, provide specific value, and make the journalist’s job easy.
For authors and professionals building their visibility, these platforms represent free access to media opportunities that PR agencies charge thousands of dollars to pursue. The investment is time and the ability to write a clear, concise, expert response. If you have published a book, you already have the expertise. HARO gives you the channel.
For authors building a platform, my Book Promotion Handbook and Author Platform Handbook cover the full strategy for turning a published book into sustained media visibility. For professionals who want a book that establishes their authority, ghostwriting services are available. Start with a conversation.