The start of a new year is a time for making resolutions, planning for the future and setting goals for the months ahead. It’s the same for media organisations as they reveal their forward features and implement content plans for 2023. 

However, before we look too far ahead, it’s time to reflect on December 2022 and what was trending on the Journalist Enquiry Service. 

For the fourth consecutive month, ‘Christmas’ was the most used keyword. It appeared in 13% of all enquiries on the service. This was a reduction though from the previous two months when it was at 17%, as the majority of journalists would have already filed their Christmas content. 

This was again reflected in the category choice as Women’s Interest & Beauty remained the most popular category. We saw requests for products for last minute Christmas beauty guides and calls for case studies on family traditions over the festive period. 

The second most popular keyword for December was ‘2023’, which we saw in 12% of all enquiries through the month. It was highlighted in last month’s report that journalists would start to look ahead towards next year. That proved to be the case with the keyword ‘resolution’ in 2% of the total requests and the key phrase ‘new year’ in 4% as well. 

Requests including ‘2023’ as a keyword varied widely from upcoming trends for the year in fashion, beauty, weddings and business to the top travel destinations and restaurant openings. This meant that a lot of the consumer categories performed well with Home & Garden, Food & Drink and Leisure & Hobbies all amongst the top six categories selected in December. 

The second-best performing category last month was also a consumer one in Health. This links into another two of the keywords with ‘fitness’ in 5% of the total requests and ‘diet’ in just over 2%. It perhaps isn’t surprising to see either keyword here with both Veganuary and Dry January taking place this month and journalists looked to get ahead of the curve and cover these topics earlier. 

Requests for ‘fitness’ mainly focused on getting a spokesperson or expert or advice on setting fitness goals for the new year. Whereas requests around ‘diet’ varied a bit more, with information wanted on healthy diets as well as wanting comment from dieticians and nutritionists. 

The other key phrase throughout December was another recurring one with ‘cost of living’ appearing in 3% of all requests. This is actually a slight rise from the November statistics on the service as journalists looked to cover how to enjoy Christmas on a budget. Plus there was also requests for case studies on businesses and how they are coping with the cost of living crisis. 

Overall on the service, staff journalists are still our most regular users and 60% of all requests came from them with freelance journalists accounting for 26%. Consumer media remained our most popular media type at 42% followed by national newspaper/current affairs on 26% and trade/business/professional media on 16%. 

January is now just over halfway complete and requests around Veganuary, Dry January and lifestyle trends for the year have been frequent. This means the Health and Food & Drink categories should perform well and we expect the keywords of ‘diet’ and ‘fitness’ to increase their percentage from December. 

The Medical & Pharmaceutical category could see a rise too with Cervical Cancer Prevention Week from 20-26 January and as we move into February, there is then National Heart Month and World Cancer Day (4 February).  

Journalists are also looking to plan ahead with features and content around Valentines Day (14 February) which normally means that the Women’s Interest & Beauty and Men’s Interest categories grow. Plus, February is LGBT History month so we could see ‘LGBT’ as a new keyword on the service. 

Love the idea of getting information for your feature on Valentines Day sorted? Then send a request on the Journalist Enquiry Service here and find the perfect match (for your content)!