Trends in UK journalism: What are the media writing about this summer?

We are now just over half way through the year (where did the time go?) and entering a summer of sport. The Ashes, Wimbledon, Women’s football World Cup and the on-going Formula 1 season are all taking place over the next few weeks and months, leaving sports fans spoiled for choice.

It also provides plenty of opportunities for PRs in this sector to get featured in the media as journalists ready to cover these major sporting events. However, there are still plenty of other trending keywords and topics, and journalists have been using the ResponseSource Journalist Enquiry Service to get what they need. Here is what the UK media have been requesting over the last month.

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With so many different sporting events going on, it’s unsurprising that the Sport category saw the biggest growth between May and June. It increased by just under 20%, with journalists from the Sun on Sunday, City AM, Living360 and Bindy Street all looking to get information on the upcoming events.

Two of the top keywords for June were also associated with the Sport category as both ‘fitness’ and ‘diet’ appeared in 2% of the total requests last month. The enquiries for fitness were mostly looking for experts, as well as some opportunities to feature products. Journalists from Women’s Health, Tom’s Guide, The Telegraph, The Daily Express and Stylist all submitted requests to PR users of the Journalist Enquiry Service. ‘Diet’-related requests were a mix of expert opinion and case studies asks, coming from the MailOnline, GoodtoKnow, best and Hello! Online.

The top performing keyword last month was ‘summer’ as it appeared in over 7% of the total requests in June. This spanned across many of the categories on the Journalist Enquiry Service with requests such as ‘things to do in London this summer with the kids’, ‘affordable summer beauty products’ and ‘summer cocktail and mocktail recipes’. The majority of the enquiries were from national papers and consumer media including The Evening Standard, The Sun Online, Pick Me Up, Sheerluxe and The English Home.

A lot of the consumer-related categories saw a boost as a result, with Women’s Interest & Beauty up by 11%, Leisure & Hobbies increasing by 6% and Home & Garden rising 4% compared to May.

The category which saw the second highest increase in requests was for Children & Teenagers, which jumped up by 19%. There were a variety of enquiries here with some looking for gifts for teachers, others wanting to know about back to school uniform and products, plus what to do with kids over the school summer holidays. The Education & Human Resources category also saw a boost as a result too, rising by 18%, with several requests wanting academic experts to talk on digital literacy, the state of secondary education and teacher shortages. All providing a great opportunity to get any parenting and education experts or information featured in the press.

As mentioned, the school holidays are nearly upon us and ‘holiday’ has performed well again as a keyword, appearing in 2.5% of all requests. This is slightly down on May’s figure but still helped the Travel category to increase by 10%. Last month also saw the first of the big music festivals this summer with Glastonbury. ‘Festival’ has appeared as a new keyword and was included in just over 2% of the total requests in June. The Daily Mirror, BBC News, Fabulous, The Independent and PA Media all made enquiries including one or both of these keywords, presenting more chances to get clients featured in some of the biggest publications and broadcasters.

Away from the excitement of the summer and festivals and holidays, the cost-of-living crisis continues to rumble on. Both ‘cost of living’ and ‘mortgages’ had 1% of the total requests last month as interest rates increased. June was also Pride month, with London Pride taking place last weekend. ‘Pride’ and ‘LGBTQ’ combined had 1% of the requests on the service.

Overall in June, 52% of journalists using the service were staff with 31% being freelance journalists. 37% of those were from consumer media, followed by national newspaper/current affairs on 26% and trade/business/professional media on 20%. The majority were looking for a spokesperson or expert (37%) with information for an article second (25%) and review products in third (16%). Eight of the top ten outlets for June were national press.

The month ahead should continue to be a strong one for keywords such as ‘summer’, ‘holiday’ and ‘festival’, despite the weather. This in turn means the consumer categories should continue to perform well. We should also start to see our first flurry of Christmas related requests as feature journalists start compiling information on what products and themes will be popular come December. There is also International French Fry Day (13th July) and National Junk Food Day (21st July), so the Food & Drink category should see a boost, too.

For more on connecting with journalists, here are 6 reasons to stop searching #JournoRequest and start using the Journalist Enquiry Service as well as what journalists want from PRs and how Vuelio can help.