Most of what organizations send us is true, and most of it still cannot be published as it arrives. That gap is not about writing quality. It is almost always one of three things missing: a person who will stand behind a claim, something an editor can check it against, or a reason the story matters to anyone outside the organization.
Fixing those three takes about fifteen minutes and is the difference between a story that publishes and one that sits in a queue.
1. A named person, not a department
Every claim in a story has to be attributable to someone who can be contacted. Not “the management” and not “our team” — a name, a role, and a way to reach them.
This is the single most common reason a story stalls. A press note says the company has doubled capacity. An editor asks who says so, and there is nobody to ask. The story cannot move, because publishing it would mean GullyStory asserting the claim rather than reporting it.
When you submit through the publisher workspace, each source is recorded against the story with a name and a role. An editor can see at a glance whether a claim is sourced or floating.
2. Something to check the numbers against
If a story contains a figure — jobs created, units produced, students placed, rupees invested — an editor needs a document, a photograph, an official listing or a public record that supports it. Not proof beyond doubt. Something that makes the number checkable rather than asserted.
Useful evidence, in rough order of how much work it saves everyone:
- An order, certificate, licence or registration document
- A public listing — a tender result, a government scheme page, a university notification
- A dated photograph of the thing itself: the new line, the building, the cohort
- An independent mention: a trade body, a partner organization, a supplier
Evidence is attached to the story and reviewed, not published. Nobody sees your purchase order. What readers see is the verification level the story earned because it existed — which is the whole point of how we label verification.
3. A reason it matters outside your building
A milestone is not automatically a story. An anniversary, a new website, an internal award, a leadership reshuffle nobody outside the firm will notice — these are real events and still not news.
The version that publishes usually answers one of these:
- Somebody local can now get something they could not get before
- Somebody local can now earn something they could not earn before
- A skill, a facility or a piece of infrastructure has arrived in the area
- A local institution did something measurably well
If none of those fit, the material is often better as your permanent organization profile than as a story. That is not a consolation prize — a profile is the thing people still find two years later.
What to actually send
Short beats polished. An editor rewrites anyway, so spend the effort on substance rather than adjectives:
- What happened, in one sentence. No build-up.
- When and where, precisely enough to place it in a city.
- Who says so — name, role, phone or email.
- What backs the numbers — attach it, however rough.
- One photograph of the real thing, not a logo or a stock image.
That is it. Five items, and a story that took you fifteen minutes will clear review faster than a two-page release that took an agency a week.
What we will not do
We will not publish a claim we cannot check, remove a correction because it is inconvenient, or let coverage be bought. A sponsored item is labelled as sponsored and does not receive favourable treatment. If we get something wrong, the correction stays on the page.
None of that is posturing. It is the only reason a reader has to believe the next story — including yours.
Next step
Register your organization once, then submit stories from the publisher workspace with sources and evidence attached.
Register your organization