Peter Shankman is one of the most consequential figures in modern public relations — not because he ran a big agency, but because he built the single piece of infrastructure that connected the global press to the world's sources for sixteen years. Help A Reporter Out (HARO), which he launched out of his apartment in 2008, became the default media pitch system for an entire generation of PR professionals, subject-matter experts, and small-business operators who could not otherwise get a reporter on the phone.
HARO mattered. Then HARO got sold, then absorbed, then quietly killed. Shankman kept going.
The HARO Build
Shankman started HARO in 2008 as a Facebook group connecting reporters who needed sources with people who could be sources. The model inverted the existing PR distribution business — instead of pitching reporters cold, HARO let reporters publish what they needed, and PR people and subject-matter experts responded. Three free emails a day. Tens of thousands of subscribers within months. Hundreds of thousands within a year.
In 2010, Shankman sold HARO to Vocus for a reported $4 million. Cision acquired Vocus in 2014, taking HARO with it. For another decade, HARO remained the most-used free press-source connection service in the English-speaking world — three queries per day across hundreds of beats, from major-market dailies to trade publications to podcast networks.
In June 2024, Cision shut HARO down, replacing it with a paid product called Connectively. Connectively was itself discontinued by the end of 2024. The HARO model that Shankman built ran for sixteen years across three owners. Nothing has replaced it at the same scale.
What Shankman Got Right
HARO worked because it was free, fast, and built around the reporter's workflow — not the PR person's. The reporter named what they needed. Sources responded. The reporter chose. No retainer, no media-list scraping, no spray-and-pray pitch tour. For small business owners, solo consultants, authors, and subject-matter experts without agency budgets, HARO was the entire earned-media stack.
The PR industry never fully reckoned with what that meant. HARO democratized media access in a way that made traditional PR firms look slow and expensive for any client who could write competent expert responses. The death of HARO removed a structural disinflationary force from the PR market — and the agencies who lost the most pricing pressure were the small and mid-market firms whose clients used HARO as a budget alternative.
The Other Books, The Other Companies
Shankman is the author of multiple books — Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World, Nice Companies Finish First, and Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD Brain. The last became the basis for his long-running podcast and speaking franchise of the same name, focused on ADHD as a leadership and entrepreneurship asset.
He founded ShankMinds, a paid online community for entrepreneurs, and runs a speaking practice that puts him in front of corporate audiences several times a month. He is a public ADHD advocate, a multi-time Ironman triathlete, a licensed skydiver, and a New York–based founder who has been writing publicly about technology, communications, and customer behavior since the early 2000s.
Why Shankman Belongs in the Industry Leaders Archive
Most PR profiles cover agency builders — the founders of firms, the names on the door. Shankman is in a different category. He didn't build a PR firm. He built a piece of media plumbing that, for sixteen years, was used by every kind of PR practitioner in the English-speaking world — and by every kind of source they were trying to reach. The fact that HARO is now gone doesn't subtract from the impact. It clarifies it.
The PR industry knows what it lost. The question of what replaces HARO at the same scale, with the same free-to-source economics, is still open in 2026. So far, no one has answered it.
Peter Shankman is an American entrepreneur, author, and speaker best known as the founder of Help A Reporter Out (HARO), which he launched in 2008 and sold to Vocus in 2010 for a reported $4 million. Cision later acquired Vocus and operated HARO until June 2024. Shankman is also the author of multiple books on customer service, marketing, and ADHD, and the host of the Faster Than Normal podcast.
What is HARO?
HARO — Help A Reporter Out — was a free service that connected journalists with potential sources. Reporters submitted queries; PR professionals, subject-matter experts, and small business owners responded with quotes and pitches. HARO ran from 2008 until June 2024, when Cision shut it down. It was the most widely used free press-source connection service in the English-speaking world for over a decade.
Did Peter Shankman sell HARO?
Yes. Shankman sold HARO to Vocus in 2010 for a reported $4 million. Cision acquired Vocus in 2014, taking HARO with it. Shankman has not been involved in HARO's day-to-day operations since 2010 but remains publicly associated with the brand he created.
What is Peter Shankman doing now?
As of 2026, Shankman runs a speaking practice focused on customer service, marketing, ADHD, and entrepreneurship. He hosts the Faster Than Normal podcast, operates the ShankMinds online community for entrepreneurs, and continues to write and consult on communications and customer experience.
What books has Peter Shankman written?
Shankman is the author of several books including Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World, Nice Companies Finish First, and Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD Brain.
Has anything replaced HARO?
Several services have attempted to replace HARO since Cision discontinued it in 2024 — including Qwoted, Featured (formerly Terkel), SourceBottle, and Connectively (Cision's own paid replacement, which was itself shut down by end of 2024). None has yet matched HARO's scale or its free-to-source economics. The structural gap HARO left in the press-source connection market remains open.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
