It is all about connections. A family member of mine used to work for a nationally published magazine. I was asked if I knew of any non-chain, non-franchise stores that carried products of type X. I did and recommended my local store that I had just been to. The next week, they got an email "out of the blue" from an editor at the magazine asking if they would like to review products of type X from several manufacturers. They would have liked to participate but it didn't work out (there is a process, they're not just asking one store - they're looking for the store the best fits their target reader demographics)
If you don't have connections, you'll have to pitch. Pitching is much easier if you have attempted to make a connection previously.
Jeremy Olson of Tapity talks about how one of the reasons he is a relatively successful app developer. Even as a teenager, he went to conferences and made friends with some of the people there. For instance, if he met one of the editors of a well-read publication and they got along, he would follow-up. And when the time came to 'pitch', he would send an email about 'This is my latest app. It does X. Would you please check it out?'. Sometimes, the pitch would be colder.
"When the app gets approved, I’ll send an email to all the people who have written reviews letting them know its publish time. I’ll also push the news to Tapity.com, Twitter, and the mailing list (right now 65 people have asked to be notified but I hope to grow that significantly before launch). The key is to get as much buzz as possible in a 1-4 day window—enough buzz to put you on the charts or get noticed by Apple, starting the snowball effect."