Things I've worked on have been featured in the NYT, TechCrunch(IT), Forbes & Readwriteweb. In my experience - reporters/journalists are often looking for stories, usually on blogs or through search engines.

In one instance - I reached out to a pretty small blog and got put on the map that way (NYT).

In another instance a Forbes writer was searching google and we kept popping up.

Also - I've offered favors to bloggers + try give them "story" flow. I believe this may have had a partial influence on our TechCrunch coverage.

Also - I have a VERY good feeling that bloggers/press check out the front page of Hacker News often...