Media enquiry tracking: how to build the ideal manual template

If you're searching for a media enquiry tracking template, you've probably had the moment every comms team has: a leader asks "what did we say to that journalist?" and the answer is scattered across four inboxes and a group chat.

A well-built tracking log fixes that, at least for a while. This guide sets out the structure we'd build in a spreadsheet today: the columns that matter, the conventions that keep it honest, and the habits that keep it alive. We'll also be straight about where every spreadsheet eventually breaks, because we've run them inside large organisations ourselves. That experience is why Pressia exists.

The columns that matter

Most enquiry logs fail because they track too much. Every extra column is a cost to the person logging under deadline, and a busy team stops paying that cost quickly. Here is a lean structure that holds up, in order.

Identity and source

1. Enquiry ID. A simple sequential reference, such as MEQ-2026-041. It feels bureaucratic until the first time legal asks about "that enquiry from March".

2. Date received, including the time. You can't report on response times without it.

3. Journalist and outlet, in separate columns, because you'll want to filter by each on its own.

4. Topic, in one line and in your words, not the email subject line. "Power price increases, household impact" is more useful than "RE: RE: FW: quick question".

Timing

5. Deadline, with the time. If the journalist gave none, record "none stated". That is information too.

6. Publication timing, if known. A Friday 10am deadline for a Friday afternoon story is a very different situation from the same deadline for next week's feature.

Assessment

7. Risk rating: low, medium or high. Avoid a one-to-ten scale. In a spreadsheet, three levels is all a team will apply consistently.

8. Opportunity rating, also low, medium or high, recorded separately. If you only track risk, you'll never see which enquiries you should have leant into. (For what should sit behind these ratings, see our triage framework.)

Response

9. Owner. One name. Shared ownership is no ownership.

10. Status. See the conventions below.

11. Response path: on record, holding statement, background only, referred to a prior statement, or declined. Recording how you responded, not just whether you did, is what makes the log useful next year.

12. Approved by, with a name and date. This column is your audit trail. It's also the one most often left blank, and the one you'll most regret leaving blank.

13. Final response, as a link to the sent email or approved wording. Don't paste the text in; the sheet becomes unreadable.

Outcome

14. Coverage, with a link to the published story if one ran, and whether your line was used. This is the column that lets you say something at month end beyond "we were busy".

Fourteen columns. Be sceptical of anything beyond that.

Status conventions

Use five statuses and no more: new, assessing, drafting, awaiting approval, closed.

Two rules make this work. "Awaiting approval" gets its own status because that is where enquiries quietly stall, and making the bottleneck visible is half the point of the log. And "closed" requires the approval and final response columns to be filled in. No exceptions, including declines. Especially declines. "We said nothing" is a decision someone made, and six months later you'll want to know who.

The habits that keep it alive

The template is the easy part. Three habits separate a working log from an abandoned one.

Log on arrival, not at close. The enquiry goes in when it lands, with whatever is known at that point. A log updated only when things are resolved is a record of the past, not a tool for managing the present.

One person owns the log's integrity. Not all the logging, just the integrity: a five-minute weekly sweep for open rows and blank approval columns.

Review it monthly as a team. Volumes by topic, response times, which outlets keep coming back. The log only earns its keep if someone reads it.

Build this in a shared spreadsheet, protect the header row, restrict the status column to the five values, and you'll have a solid manual system. For a small team handling a few enquiries a week, it may be enough for a year or more.

Where every spreadsheet breaks

The log and the work live in different places. The enquiry is in the inbox, the draft is in a document, the approval is in a side email, and the log is a fourth place summarising the other three. Under pressure, the summary is the first thing skipped, which means the log is least accurate during the weeks you need it most.

The assessment depends on who fills it in. The risk column is only as consistent as the person typing it, working from whatever they happen to know at the time. A spreadsheet can't check what the journalist has written recently, can't tell you that you answered almost this exact question in October, and can't flag that the topic sits inside a live regulatory process.

Memory doesn't accumulate. Row 200 knows nothing about row 40. Finding "what we said last time" depends on someone remembering it happened. When that person leaves, the memory leaves with them.

Approvals aren't really auditable. A name typed in a column is a claim, not a record. If a response is ever seriously questioned, you'll end up reconstructing the trail from sent items anyway.

None of this is a flaw in the template. It's the limit of the medium.

When the log builds itself

This is the problem Pressia was built to solve. Rather than a spreadsheet that describes the work, Pressia is where the work happens, so the record creates itself.

Capture is automatic: forward your media inbox once and every enquiry is logged, threaded and assigned when it arrives. Nobody is filling in row one at five to five.

The assessment columns fill themselves, and properly. Every enquiry is scored for risk and opportunity on arrival by AI that checks the actual context: the journalist's recent coverage, your past responses on the topic, and what's live in the news cycle. The "medium" in your risk column becomes a reasoned assessment with specific flags your team can act on.

Memory accumulates. When a similar enquiry lands, Pressia surfaces what you said last time and who approved it.

The audit trail is real. Drafting, comments, legal review and sign-off happen inside the enquiry record, so every revision and approval is logged with a name and timestamp, and can be exported when it counts.

And the monthly review is already built: response times, topics, outlets and risk trends in a live dashboard rather than an end-of-month compilation exercise.

Setup takes a few minutes, needs no IT involvement, and journalists notice nothing. They email the same address they always have.

Build the spreadsheet above. It's a genuine improvement on a shared inbox. When you reach its limits, usually the week a big story lands on top of your normal volume, join the Pressia waitlist and we'll show you the next step.