Unfortunately, yes. If you don't know the journalist, you can forget about your news item or press release being published.
It's sad really, that news items get picked on who you know, instead of what the news is about. If you live in Europe, you're basically fucked. Unless they can't ignore you anymore, like Minecraft.
That's why I don't do PR anymore, because I'm not based in US and don't have any journalist contacts in my social network.
Using PR to generate top-level interest is just one approach to marketing, there are others that might be more suited to your situation. But, I do think you can develop good PR in North America even if you're based in Europe. In my experience much of the English speaking readers and PR outlets take the lead from North America, so if you have profile in their outlets then it's easier to build profile elsewhere. Perhaps the key if you're not the size of Minecraft is to build profile with particular niche journalists/locations - perhaps starting with online blogs/news sites and then working upwards from there.
It's sad really, that news items get picked on who you know, instead of what the news is about. If you live in Europe, you're basically fucked. Unless they can't ignore you anymore, like Minecraft.
That's why I don't do PR anymore, because I'm not based in US and don't have any journalist contacts in my social network.