National Incubation Center Karachi is hosting a session titled “What Makes a Startup Story Newsworthy” on September 24, 2026, featuring Talib H., a communications professional with more than 20 years of experience spanning journalism, broadcast media, government communications, and corporate affairs. The session addresses a gap that many founders only discover once they are actively trying to get press coverage, that understanding how journalists actually decide what is worth covering is a distinct skill from having a compelling product, and one that most startup training programs skip entirely in favor of pitch decks and fundraising preparation.
Talib will walk founders through how journalists identify stories and evaluate newsworthiness, then help participants translate that understanding into their own venture, whether the angle comes from their product, their data, the people behind the company, or the broader impact of their work. That framing matters because founders often default to pitching their startup the same way to journalists as they would to investors, when the two audiences are evaluating fundamentally different things, an investor cares about growth potential and returns, while a journalist is looking for a story that will resonate with readers or viewers regardless of the startup’s financial trajectory.
Beyond the theory of newsworthiness, the session covers practical mechanics that founders frequently get wrong when attempting media outreach independently, including how to approach journalists without coming across as a cold pitch, how to build media relationships that extend beyond a single story, and how to prepare properly for interviews and press conferences. This kind of hands-on media training is relatively uncommon within Pakistan’s incubation ecosystem, where founder development tends to concentrate heavily on product, fundraising, and go-to-market strategy while leaving public relations as an afterthought handled reactively once a startup already has traction worth covering.
For NIC Karachi’s Cohort 16 founders, the session offers a way to build visibility that does not depend on paid advertising, a resource many early-stage startups cannot afford to spend on brand awareness in the first place. As earned media coverage can carry more credibility with customers and investors than paid promotion, equipping founders with the skills to actively pursue press attention rather than waiting for it to arrive organically gives Cohort 16 companies another lever for growth heading into the later stages of their incubation. Interested founders can register here ahead of Thursday’s session.
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