As newsrooms shrink and public relations professionals outnumber journalists by a six to one ratio, a new Denver startup has developed a solution that it says will offer a new version of passive PR that benefits sources and news outlets.
Jon Amar and Matthew Kaliara have teamed up to found Vetted, a performance-based public relations platform that connects verified journalists to experts.
The idea came to Amar in 2019, as he had just started his own Denver-based PR consultancy Onword. With many of his clients asking for media relations services, he began thinking of better strategies for the industry.
“There’s got to be a better way for me to automate media relations for me as a PR person, make the pricing more performance-based and predictable for my clients and make it easier for the journalists to connect with higher-quality sources without being bogged down in pitches from people like me,” Amar said he thought at the time.
After connecting with Boulder-based Kaliara via an Indie Hackers forum, the duo founded Vetted in 2020 and spent the year building its platform. During the building process, they consulted with journalists and PR professionals in an attempt to create a passive solution that satisfied both sides.
Vetted offers a transparent pricing solution that only charges experts when their connection with a journalist results in inclusion in a published article. There is no subscription fee and Vetted’s media placement fee ranges from $350 to $600 depending on the size and reputation of the media outlet in which experts are quoted.
And, on the other side of the marketplace, Amar said Vetted offers news outlets a new way to connect with diverse sources.
“For journalists, what we were hearing is it’s really difficult to find diverse, high-quality voices,” he said.
Vetted platform gives journalists the ability to locate sources based on keyword, location and demographics, including gender identity, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity and much more. And, unlike other media databases, journalists’ contact information isn’t listed during the sourcing process. Amar compared the interaction to the way people communicate on Craigslist, where contact information is masked.
The startup reviews all of its source and journalist applications before approving them for the platform, ensuring that they have quality members on each side of the marketplace, Amar added.
Vetted had a soft launch in late 2020 and recently emerged from beta testing, with experts from Colorado Springs-based FoodMaven, national nonprofit Direct Relief, Florida Atlantic University and more already available on the platform.
As it continues to bootstrap, Amar said Vetted is focused on adding members to both sides of its marketplace, as well as hiring in areas like marketing, sales and community management.
And, while he still sees a place for traditional PR, he’s hopeful Vetted can offer a boost to the industry.
“While our platform does not allow pitching… we don’t think that pitching is ever going to go away,” he said. “There is certainly a lot of value in pitching, but this is just another way. Pitching is active PR and Vetted is passive PR.”
