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Best tips for a great story pitch
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Selling a story involves more than your great idea. You have to convince others that your idea is great, too. When trying to reach an editor who is working with smaller and smaller staffs, constant deadlines, managerial and writing responsibilities, and an in-box swooning from the attention of PR flaks, how do you grab more than the five seconds it takes to hit “delete”?
The first tips come from Carolyn DiPaolo, assistant managing editor/weekend at The Palm Beach Post and an adjunct instructor at Florida Atlantic University:
- I suggest freelancers start with local news operations in their area. I think an editor is more likely to connect with someone local.
- Email is actually better than paper for me.
- Find the decision-making editor. It will likely require a call to the newsroom to do it.
- Email her directly with a brief introduction, some local story ideas and a willingness to quickly turn around the editor’s ideas.
- Take any assignment you get. Work cheap at first, then ask for more money when you’re established.
Janet Rausa Fuller, food editor at The Chicago Sun-Times, also had this to offer:
- Know your audience. Read, or at least be intimately aware of, the paper/publication you’re pitching. It’s painfully obvious when a freelancer is oblivious. And then, know the audience of the paper you’re pitching.
- Develop your pitch so that there’s some sort of peg. There should be some reason for us to run the story. Not just, “Hey, this guy does interesting stuff with bread.” But maybe, “This guy is a third-generation baker who saved the family bakery from bankruptcy… and the bread is really good.” The newsier, the more timely, the better.
Finally, some advice based on my own experience:
- Follow up. Sometimes an email gets lost or goes to spam. I’ve lost projects because I thought the editor had declined, when she really just hadn’t seen my response.
- Meet deadlines religiously. If an editor you’re pitching to for the first time hears word on the street that you’re unreliable, you’re sunk.
- Be concise. You aren’t writing the story yet. Pretend you’re telling a friend about this idea while standing in a noisy bar. Deliver the best part—the part that will make her eyes light up—in the fewest, most descriptive words.
- Provide ample contact information. Give an editor an email and a telephone number. Include your mailing address, too. Then pay attention to that email address and your telephone, so you can respond quickly when your fabulous pitch scores you an assignment!
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