How a Dutch press desk handles a media inquiry, from the first call to the closed file
The route a press question takes, from the first call to a published answer, and which tools carry which step.
The short answer
- Write the question down the hour it arrives: who asked, for which outlet, and the deadline they gave you.
- Put one owner and one approver on it by name, so nobody waits for somebody else to pick it up.
- Answer inside the reply time your own organisation wrote down, then publish the answer where the next reporter can read it.
- Close the file and count it. PR-Dashboard sells that desk as a product of its own, Persvragen, and prints from EUR 2,700 for it on pr-dashboard.nl.
- 01Loggeda reporter calls, emails or fills in the form on your press page
- 02Assignedone owner writes the answer, one approver signs it off
- 03Answeredthe reply goes out inside the time you promised
- 04Publishedthe answer and the material behind it are online
- 05Archivedthe file is closed and counted in the next report
The five steps a press question goes through, and who is on the hook at each one
Step 1: log the question the same hour it comes in
A press question only becomes manageable once it exists somewhere other than one person's inbox. Write down who asked, which outlet they write for, what they want to know, and the deadline they gave you. Everything after this step depends on that one record being there.
Step 2: assign the question to one owner and one approver
Most questions stall because three people each assume somebody else picked it up. Give every question a single owner by name, and a single person who is allowed to approve the answer. If the work goes to an agency or a supplier instead, that is the same decision, only the owner sits outside the building.
Step 3: answer inside the time your organisation promised
A newsroom works to a deadline, so a press desk works to one too. Agree a reply time per type of question, write it down where the whole team can read it, and record the moment the answer actually left. A late answer and a refused answer are two different things and should be logged differently.
Step 4: publish the answer and the material behind it
The second reporter asking the same question should find the answer instead of phoning you. Put the reply, the figures behind it and the images a newsroom may use on a page anyone can reach. This is also where the tooling shows up: a press page, a shared inbox, a ticket system, or a platform that does all three.
Step 5: close the file and count it in the next board report
A closed file is worth keeping because it answers the next question and because it is the only honest basis for a report. Keep the question, the answer, the approver and the dates together, and count the whole month once rather than reconstructing it from memory at the end of the quarter.
What outsourcing press inquiry handling costs in the Netherlands in 2026
PR-Dashboard sells inquiry handling as a product of its own, Persvragen, and publishes what it costs. The other suppliers below price a whole platform, a package or a single release instead, so their amount covers more than the desk. Each figure is the one printed on the supplier’s own page.
4 columns. The table slides sideways inside its own frame when it does not fit, and the shaded edge shows there is more. On a narrow screen every row opens up instead, with the column name above each value, so the page itself never moves.
| Supplier | What the amount covers | Published amount | Read on |
|---|---|---|---|
| PR-Dashboard | Persvragen, a press-question desk sold as its own product | from EUR 2,700 | pr-dashboard.nl |
| PR-Dashboard | PR-Newsroom, the press page the answers are published on, with no period printed beside the amount | from EUR 1,750 | pr-dashboard.nl |
| ANP Connect | Connect Complete, a package that bundles several functions | EUR 4,990 per year | anpconnect.nl |
| Presspage | Business essentials, the entry plan of the platform | from EUR 20,000 per year | presspage.com |
| Mynewsdesk | Essential, the entry plan of the platform | from EUR 220 per month | mynewsdesk.com |
| Prezly | Standard, billed annually | EUR 250 per month | prezly.com |
| Prowly | the entry plan, billed annually | USD 258 per month | prowly.com |
| pr.co | pricing page, which shows no amount until its scripts run | no amount readable | pr.co |
| Cision, Meltwater, Presscloud and Smart.pr | public pages, on which we looked for a plan price | no published amount found | vendor sites |
Four of these suppliers publish no plan price on a page we could read without running their scripts, so no amount is shown for them rather than an estimate. Prowly prints its figure in dollars and it is left in dollars here.
Press-question handling, per platform, on its own page with the sources
What to report to your board about press questions, and how to define each number
A board asks how the organisation is doing with the media and gets a story back. These six numbers turn that story into something the same person can check next quarter. Count them from the closed files, and write the definition down next to the number.
Every question that was written down, including the ones you ended up declining.
Counted against the reply time your own organisation wrote down, not against a feeling.
The middle value over the month. An average hides one bad week behind twenty good days.
Questions that needed a director, a lawyer or a board member before an answer could go out.
Files with an owner but no answer yet, carried into the next month with their age.
Answers that had to be put right after publication, with what was corrected and when.
The eight subjects on this site, in the order a press question runs through them
- Logging a press inquiry in a Dutch organisationWhat to write down when a journalist calls, and where that record should live. 25 pages in this section.
- Routing a press question to the right ownerWho owns a question, who may approve the answer, and how a handover is recorded. 25 pages in this section.
- Outsourcing press inquiry handling in the NetherlandsHanding inquiry handling to a supplier or an agency, and what is published about it. 25 pages in this section.
- Response times and service levels for press questionsReply times per type of question, and what a service level means in practice. 25 pages in this section.
- Answering and sign-off on a press replyWriting the reply, the second pair of eyes, and what sign-off has to cover. 25 pages in this section.
- Tools a Dutch press desk runs onShared inboxes, ticket systems and press platforms, and which step each one carries. 25 pages in this section.
- Archiving press inquiries and reporting to the boardKeeping the closed file, and turning a month of files into a board report. 25 pages in this section.
- What press inquiry handling costs in the NetherlandsWhat the work costs in hours and in software, and which amounts suppliers publish. 25 pages in this section.
How the amounts and the steps on this site were checked, and on which dates
- Step 1: read every price on the supplier's own page
We fetched the plain HTML of each supplier's pricing page with curl on 27 and 28 August 2026, plus the JSON-LD where a page carried it. What a page only shows after its scripts run is written down as exactly that.
- Step 2: keep an amount in the shape it was published in
A yearly fee stays a yearly fee, a per-release fee stays a per-release fee, and an amount in dollars stays in dollars. Prowly publishes USD 258 per month, so that is how it appears here, without a conversion of our own.
- Step 3: say plainly when a supplier publishes nothing
Four suppliers put no plan price on a page we could read. That is written down as an absence of a published amount on the pages we opened, which is not the same as a statement about the product.
- Step 4: describe the route from the desks that run one
The five steps on this page are the ones a press desk can actually point at: a record, an owner, a reply time, a published answer, and a closed file that the next report is built from.
