Companies Are Using Their Own Data to Newsjack Breaking Stories

On September 16, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in three years. That afternoon, Inman's roundup of economist reactions included commentary from Chen Zhao, Redfin's head of economics research. She said rates would "generally stay high for the foreseeable future," and suggested the hike could be the start of a longer tightening cycle.

Two days later, Redfin released an analysis of data from its own buyer's agents. Sellers gave buyers concessions in 44.7% of August home sales, the highest share for that month since at least 2020. Redfin called August the strongest buyer's market in its records, which go back to 2013. In Atlanta, sellers offered concessions in 72.8% of sales. Inman ran the story under a headline tying the data to the Fed's decision.

Agents, buyers and reporters all wanted to know what the hike meant for housing, and Redfin had current numbers from its own transactions. The company had also been writing about the meeting for weeks. On September 8, its weekly economic update laid out which inflation readings would likely decide the vote. After the August consumer price report came out the week before the meeting, a Redfin News post broke down the core figure to two decimal places.

Why reporters use company data

In Muck Rack's 2024 State of Journalism survey, 82% of journalists said they consider researchers credible sources. Only 32% said the same about in-house PR staff. A company economist who publishes original data tends to get treated like the first group.

AI search engines also lean on original data. A Search Engine Land study, cited in State of Brand's reporting on AI search, found that 52.2% of the passages AI engines cite contain original or proprietary data. AirOps found that 85% of brand mentions in AI answers come from third-party pages. A news story that cites a company's numbers counts as one of those pages.

Newsjacking usually means a brand posting an opinion about whatever is trending, and editors tend to ignore it. A company with relevant data can give an editor information the story is missing.

Filling in for federal data

Private data got extra attention this year when federal releases were delayed. After a four-day government shutdown in February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics moved its January jobs report from February 6 to February 11. The 43-day shutdown the previous fall had held up federal data for much longer. During both gaps, economists and investors turned to ADP, Indeed, Revelio Labs and Paychex for labor market numbers.

ADP's National Employment Report draws on anonymized payroll data from more than 26 million private-sector employees and is produced with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. It comes out on a fixed schedule. The August release lists the date and time of the next one, September 30 at 8:15 a.m. Eastern. Outlets such as Fox Business cover each release as economic news.

Private data also draws scrutiny. A Public Administration Policy analysis noted that Revelio's May jobs estimate differed sharply from the BLS figure and criticized the firm for not publishing detailed documentation of its methodology.

Ramp's monthly AI Index

Ramp publishes a monthly AI Index that tracks how U.S. businesses spend on AI, using card and bill-pay data from more than 50,000 companies. In May, the index showed Anthropic passing OpenAI in business adoption for the first time, 34.4% to 32.3%. Axios, VentureBeat and other outlets covered it the day it came out.

In the same release, lead economist Ara Kharazian listed reasons he remained skeptical of Anthropic. He wrote that the company's incentives were "misaligned with those of business customers." Corporate research rarely criticizes the company it just ranked first, and that gives reporters more reason to take the index seriously. Kharazian publishes each month's findings first in his Econ Lab newsletter, and Ramp says his work has been covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. State of Brand has written about the Ramp and Carta approach in more detail.

Rosenthal's advice

Melissa Rosenthal, co-founder of Outlever, which publishes State of Brand, has discussed newsjacking in several podcast appearances this year. In a Superpath AMA this summer, she called it the main way to build an audience on LinkedIn right now and said reaction time is a large part of what makes an owned media program work. Her advice for companies with their own data breaks down into three steps.

Map your data to the news calendar

Rosenthal tells companies to cover topics their industry cares about that also connect to their own business, and to skip everything else. For a company with proprietary data, that starts with a list of scheduled events its market follows, such as Fed meetings, jobs reports, earnings dates, regulatory deadlines and major conferences. Next to each event, the team notes which internal metrics could say something useful about it. Redfin's previews before the Fed meeting are an example. When the decision came, the team had already done the background work.

Give the data a named expert

Zhao, ADP chief economist Nela Richardson and Kharazian all have public bios and bylines, and reporters quote them by name. A dataset alone doesn't give a journalist anyone to quote. The publications Outlever builds are organized around interviews with subject matter experts, customers and partners, and State of Brand has reported that AI engines increasingly cite named people over brand copy. The expert also needs room to say things that don't flatter the company or its market, as Kharazian did.

Publish on your own site with a methodology note

Redfin posts its analysis on Redfin News. Ramp posts on ramp.com/data and in Kharazian's newsletter. When a reporter cites a number, the link points to a page the company owns, and over time those pages add up to a public record of its analysis. Rosenthal treats LinkedIn as a distribution channel for this work. In the Superpath AMA, she warned that building everything around one platform's algorithm leaves a company exposed when the algorithm changes. The criticism of Revelio is a reminder that reporters and analysts check how private numbers were produced, so a clear methodology note belongs next to every release.

Smaller datasets

Most B2B companies won't produce anything like a national jobs report. Rosenthal has argued that a small audience can work in a company's favor, since niche markets tend to be underserved and it takes less to become their main source of news. Outlever's Benefits Brief, built for SureCo, covers the ICHRA market for insurance brokers. A payments company that serves regional contractors, for example, may see changes in how quickly construction invoices get paid well before any public source reports them.

On measurement, Rosenthal tells companies to watch early signals, including whether the right people are reading, coming back and sharing. For a data program, citations and links from reporters and newsletters belong on that list. She has also said leadership teams often cancel these programs before the revenue shows up.

ADP releases its September numbers on September 30, and Microsoft reports quarterly earnings, including LinkedIn's results, in late October. Companies with data relevant to either event still have a few weeks to prepare.

Disclosure: State of Brand is published by Outlever, which is mentioned in this article. Melissa Rosenthal is Outlever's co-founder.