My credentials: I've earned coverage for myself and clients in hundreds of international, national, local and niche publications and blogs including the LA Times, Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, Popular Science, CNN.com and many more.

Once you understand the mindset of the folks who work in the media, you'll know the answers to all of your questions. You have to understand that newsroom staffing has dropped dramatically over the past several years. Editors and reporters have even less time to do their jobs, and shorter deadlines, and the PR consultants who earn coverage for their clients are often the ones who do most of the journalists' work for them. This includes finding the angle, writing the press release to Associated Press standards, supplying relevant quotes, background information, and anything else a journalist needs to cover your story.

Stories appear in a newspaper (or any other media outlet) for one reason: to increase readership/viewership so the newspaper can charge money for advertising. The more readers, the more they can charge.

Keep in mind--these media outlets do not care that you have a new website. Their readers don't care. They only care about "what's in it for me."

So your job is to convince the editor and/or journalist that your news is incredibly relevant and appealing to their audience, and (ideally) has the potential to become a viral sensation on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

This means you really have to intimately know your target audience so you know what they're interested in, and find out what publications and websites they to go to get their news.

Other folks have given you good advice about finding contact information. However, you may also want to consider working with a freelance PR consultant who can purchase a verified media contact list tailored specifically for your niche. This may seem pricey, but you are far more likely to reach the correct contacts than if you try to distribute your releases through generic contact forms on their websites. It will be a huge time-saver for you as well.

A freelance PR person can also help you find the newsworthy angle to present in your pitch (and yes, you have to do this yourself.) I find this is the area that my clients struggled with the most before coming to me for help.

In ten years of helping entrepreneurs promote their online businesses, I have never found a single one with a "newsworthy" website. But I managed to earn media coverage for virtually all of them by creating the right PR strategy.

I just recently helped a client position his website as the leader in his category in New York City, one of the most competitive media markets on earth. We did it--and he was thrilled with the results--but we didn't promote the website per se. I created a PR campaign for him that was newsworthy by itself, and the website got significant traffic and media exposure as a result. It was a very cost-effective campaign, and accomplished his goals in only about six weeks.

There's a lot more advice in my article, "When (and why) should you send out a press release?" available on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140403192525-3482913-when-and-why-should-you-send-out-a-press-release?trk=prof-post

Best of luck to you with your new site. If you'd like more personalized and specific advice, please don't hesitate to schedule a call.