The alert arrives at 10.15am.
It is clearly relevant. The organisation has a good expert. The journalist is exactly the kind of person the team wants to reach. Someone forwards it to a colleague. Another person suggests a spokesperson. The expert is in meetings until lunchtime. A short discussion starts about whether approval is needed.
By 2pm, the journalist has filed. Nothing went badly wrong. The opportunity simply moved faster than the organisation. That is the opportunity gap: the space between spotting a useful media moment and being ready to act on it.
The problem is rarely lack of information
Most established communications teams already have plenty of sources: media monitoring, alerts, newsletters, social feeds, agencies and colleagues forwarding links. A good opportunity may be seen several times. But seeing it is only the start. Someone still has to decide whether it is worth pursuing, identify the right expert, check any sensitivities, work out who owns the response and decide how to approach the journalist.
Each step is reasonable. The friction comes when every one of them has to be worked out from scratch.
Preparedness changes the response
Teams that move quickly are not necessarily making faster decisions under pressure. More often, they have made some of those decisions in advance. They know their priority themes. They understand what their spokespeople can actually speak about. They know which journalists matter to them and where the approval boundaries sit.
When a live opportunity appears, they are matching it against an existing map rather than building that map while the story develops. That also makes it easier to decide not to act. A relevant story does not always need a response. Sometimes there is no useful contribution to make, or the window has already closed.
A deliberately declined opportunity is very different from one that disappeared because nobody quite knew what should happen next.
Look at what happens before coverage
Coverage tells you something about results. The steps before it show how well the process is working. How quickly are good opportunities reviewed? Where do they stall? Which experts keep appearing as a strong fit but rarely get activated? Which themes consistently produce worthwhile openings?
Those questions can reveal where the real delays are. Closing the opportunity gap does not mean chasing every story. It means making good decisions with less unnecessary delay.