The hardest place to get a company into CFO Dive is the place most companies try first: the press release. The easiest place, for the right person, is the one many never consider at all, which is an email to a reporter that contains no press release and asks for nothing.
That inversion makes sense once you see how the publication works. CFO Dive is a daily trade publication for finance leaders, part of the Industry Dive network owned by Informa TechTarget. Its newsroom is small and specialized, and it covers corporate finance the way a beat reporter covers a city: steady attention to regulators, standard setters, earnings season, treasury, risk and the changing job of the CFO. A vendor launch announcement rarely fits that beat. A specific, well-sourced insight from a finance leader often does.
There are three real doors into CFO Dive’s editorial pages. This guide on how to get featured in CFO Dive walks through each one, then covers the pitch itself.
Door one: become a source the newsroom calls
CFO Dive’s editorial team page lists the people who write the stories. As of this writing it includes senior editors Maura Webber Sadovi and Grace Noto, managing editor Saied Sartipzadeh, senior reporter Jim Tyson and reporter Alexei Alexis. Read their recent bylines before you contact anyone. Each reporter has areas they return to again and again, whether that is SEC and PCAOB rulemaking, tax policy, treasury and liquidity, AI in finance functions, or CFO turnover.
Most of the outside voices in those stories are not company spokespeople. They are CFOs, controllers, treasurers, audit partners, economists, and analysts at research firms who have a specific view on a specific development. Reporters need them because a daily news story about, say, a new disclosure rule is stronger with a practitioner explaining what it costs to comply.
Becoming one of those sources is a long game, and it starts with being useful. When a story breaks on your reporter’s beat, send a short note within a day or two. Keep it under 150 words. Say who you are in one line (title, company, size), then give one concrete observation the reporter can use: what your team is doing in response, a number from your own experience, or a point the initial coverage missed. Include a phone number and say you are available that day. Do not attach anything.
The note works because it costs the reporter nothing to read and gives them something they can use right away. Even if it does not make the current story, a reporter who gets two or three useful notes from the same person over a few months starts to think of them when the next story breaks. That is the real goal. A source relationship produces coverage for years, while a single pitch produces one shot.
A few habits make the difference. Respond fast when a reporter replies, because daily news runs on deadlines measured in hours. Be willing to speak on the record with your name and title, since trade reporters strongly prefer named sources and Industry Dive’s own editorial policies require senior approval for anonymous ones. Never ask to review a story before it runs. And never send a gift of any real value. Industry Dive’s ethics code says its journalists generally should not accept gifts worth more than $20.
There is also a cadence to respect. A finance leader who emails a reporter every week about every development becomes noise. Two or three well-timed notes per quarter, each tied to news the reporter is already covering, is about right. Track what you sent and when, and do not repeat yourself.
Door two: the tip form, for real news
The second door is CFO Dive’s Submit a Tip form, linked from the editorial team page and the contact page. The site describes it plainly: if you have news you think the publication should cover, or a story you want to see told, submit it here.
This is the right channel for genuine news with a finance angle that the newsroom might not otherwise hear about. A company changing auditors after a disagreement. A material weakness disclosure with an unusual cause. A finance team adopting a reporting practice ahead of a rule that has not taken effect yet. Original survey data from a research firm or professional association on how finance leaders are budgeting, hiring or managing risk. The common thread is that each one tells CFOs something about their own jobs.
What does not belong in the tip form is a product announcement, a funding round with no finance-function angle, or an executive appointment at a company the audience has no reason to follow. Those stories may be real news to you. To a newsroom that covers corporate finance, they are not.
Write a tip the way you would want to read one on a busy morning. The first sentence states the news in full: who did what, when. The second explains why finance leaders should care. The third offers evidence, such as a filing, a data set, or a named person willing to talk. Then stop. If the reporter wants more, they will ask.
Be honest about timing and exclusivity. If you are giving CFO Dive the story before anyone else, say so, and say when you plan to announce it publicly. If other outlets already have it, say that too. Reporters remember who was straight with them.
Original data deserves special mention, because it is the single most reliable way to get a smaller company into a trade publication. Reporters covering finance need numbers they can cite, and most of the numbers available to them come from the same handful of consultancies and surveys. If your company runs a credible survey of finance leaders, analyzes an anonymized data set across your customers, or tracks a trend no one else measures, that data is a story in its own right. Share the method along with the findings: sample size, dates, and how respondents were chosen. A reporter who can check your method can use your numbers, and the people working out how to get featured in CFO Dive often find that a solid data set opens all three doors at once.
Door three: the opinion page
The third door is the Opinion section, which accepts submissions through a form on the site. CFO Dive’s guidelines for opinion pieces are short and clear, and they match the rules Industry Dive applies across its publications.
Submissions must be exclusive to CFO Dive. The publication will not accept pieces published anywhere else, and it reserves exclusive rights for at least 30 days after publication. Pieces must be original and the author’s own work, with any distinctive phrasing from another source quoted and attributed. They should take a position on a timely and important issue and add value to an ongoing discussion in the industry. The editors fact-check and edit for style, and they reserve the right to decide whether a piece is promotional, biased or not grounded in fact.
On process, the editors say they consider all submissions but cannot respond to each one because of volume. If a piece is accepted, they will contact the author within three weeks. Industry Dive’s sister publications describe authors working through two to three rounds of edits and fact checks, which is a fair expectation here as well.
The phrase that matters most in those guidelines is “add value to an ongoing discussion.” CFO Dive does not want a general essay on why finance leaders should embrace technology. It wants an argument about something finance leaders are already debating, made by someone with standing to make it. Good examples of the shape: why a particular reporting rule will cost mid-size companies more than regulators estimated, and what to do about it; why a common approach to AI pilots in accounts payable fails, from someone who ran one; what a CFO learned from a restatement and how they changed controls afterward.
We use a filter with clients called the Three-Door Map before they write a word. For any idea, ask which door it fits. If the value is a fact the newsroom does not have, it is a tip. If the value is your reaction to news already breaking, it is a source note. If the value is an argument you can sustain for 800 to 1,000 words with evidence, it is an opinion piece. Ideas that do not fit any door usually are not ready, and ideas sent through the wrong door usually get ignored.
A word on the paid option. CFO Dive, like other Industry Dive titles, lets companies post press releases on the site for a fee, in a section separate from the newsroom’s journalism. That can be useful for distribution, and it guarantees the release appears. It is not editorial coverage, readers can tell the difference, and it should not be confused with being featured by the publication.
How to write the pitch itself
Whichever door you use, the pitch should read like it was written by a finance professional for finance professionals. Use the vocabulary your readers use, such as ASC references, days sales outstanding, or covenant headroom, and skip marketing language entirely.
For a source note, a strong pitch has a subject line that names the news and your angle (“PCAOB QC 1000 changes: what one mid-size audit client is doing”), a one-line introduction, two or three sentences of substance, and your availability. For a tip, the subject line is the news itself, and the body follows the three-sentence structure above. For an opinion piece, the submission form asks for the piece and a short description, so lead the description with your argument in one sentence and your credential in the next.
Before you send anything, read the last month of CFO Dive coverage on your topic. Reference it if it helps, such as noting that a recent story covered the rule’s adoption and your piece covers its first-year costs. Editors notice when someone has done the reading.
Then follow up only once, and only with something new. A fresh number, a sharper angle, or a change in timing is a reason to write again. “Just checking in” is not.
That is how to get featured in CFO Dive in practice: match the idea to the right door, write it the way your peers talk, and make each contact worth the reporter’s time. The finance leaders who appear in the publication repeatedly are rarely the ones with the biggest marketing budgets. They are the ones reporters have learned will answer the phone with something useful to say.