How to Pitch a Journalist — According to a Journalist

I receive 50–80 pitches daily as a journalist, and I may send one to an editor per day. This post will tell you everything you need to know about being the one golden email that turns into a story.

To be 100% real with you, most of what journalists receive is garbage. This is good news because standing out isn’t as hard as you might think.

As a former PR person turned journalist, this guide is everything you need to know about how to get a journalist’s attention (for the right reasons).

Subject line is everything.

Grabbing attention in a busy inbox is critical. Journalists are overworked and underpaid, we don’t have time to read every last word in our inboxes. So if your hook doesn’t grab attention, it’ll get deleted.

Your subject line should be: [PITCH] Hook-driven preview of contents.

Example: [PITCH] Audio erotica star’s top dirty talk tips

This real subject line came to me. It was clear and concise. I pitched it, the editor loved it, and it’s an article on Business Insider.

A good subject line should entice someone to open your e-mail and read more. It’s the exposed underboob of pitching — tantalizing enough to want to peek under the hood, but not enough to give you the full story.

What makes this newsworthy today?

If you can’t answer this question, don’t pitch. You have a topic, you don’t have a story yet.

This is the #1 mistake that PR people and entrepreneurs make. That’s great that your California-based organization raised $100k for St. Jude’s with a golf tournament, but why is Chloe in Topeka, Kansas going to care about that and take time out of her very busy day trying to care for her two snot-faced children to read about it?

As journalists, we usually have to tweak the angle, but don’t just info dump and expect us to do all the work. Give a clear sense of why this might be interesting and why it’s the right time to tell this story now.

The time and place to pitch the golf tournament would be local news about two weeks before it’s scheduled to happen, not two days after it happens.

The now element is critical. What about the media cycle, public conversation, or political climate makes this a story that must be told today and not yesterday or three months from now?

A good pitch will have a clear perspective and one or two central characters. For instance, I’m collecting sources for a story right now about women getting cosmeceuticals and cosmetic surgery to appear younger so they can work longer. It’s an age and gender discrimination story that was pitched to me by a PR representative.

I have a lead character, I have her doctor, and now I’m working to find other sources and experts because I know this is a story worth telling. So I’m making moves behind the scenes to get this story together and pitch it.

Often, when I find a good source, I’ll work on a different angle than what they give me, too. For instance, I randomly had Khloe Kardashian’s homeschool teacher and Kim Kardashian’s dentist presented as sources on the same day.

I didn’t like the original pitch angles, but I’m now working on a story combining both sources about attracting celebrity and high net worth clients and the weird realities of working with people in the public eye.

Why this journalist?

Spray and pray is a losing approach. Any journalist worth their salt knows when they’ve been mass-pitched. It’s an instant delete. Same for press releases. Unless you’re Apple or Amazon, most journalists don’t care.

Make it clear why you’re pitching a particular journalist upfront. What expertise do they have or what about their writing style makes them the fit for you?

It has to be more than the article or vertical they cover. Many people write about the topics I cover, so why me specifically? Do you like my witty and irreverent approach to writing about relationships? Do you want an LGBTQ+ perspective on this adult toy?

Make it clear what outcome I can provide that fits in with your goals. Journalists have a duty to the story above all else, but if I know you want a particular keyword backlink or a link to a specific product and not the homepage, I can do my best to work it in.

Show a journalist that you’ve read their work and you’re looking to collaborate with them rather than meet some backlinks or pitch quota.

Here’s an example of how to do this well:

“I loved your article about how Disney World helped you find joy in your disability for Travel+Leisure. I also know from your writing that you’re a huge fan of Paris — I am too — so I was hoping you’d be interested in picking up a story about a recent accessibility initiative we’re launching in two months at Disneyland Paris?”

This is a fictional example, but it clearly shows that this person knows who I am, what I write about, and has a clear motive for contacting me and me specifically based on my previous work.

Keep your pitch to less than 250 words

Nobody has time to read novellas. I’ve had pitches that are 500 words long come into my inbox. Most articles these days are only 600–800 words long.

Pitches should be less than 250 words and easy to skim:

• Section 1: Introduce yourself and the source
• Section 2: Explain the idea and why it’s newsworthy, linking to data if relevant.
• Section 3: Explain why this journalist is the right one for the job

Putting it all together — an example pitch

As I mentioned, I used to work on the other side of the PR-journalist divide. This is a pitch I sent to a journalist at a major beauty publication on behalf a Black-owned haircare brand that follows this format and got turned into a story.

All people & brand names have been changed so I don’t break the terms of my NDA.

Hi Tiffany,

I’m Ashley Couto and I represent Jacqueline Bergeron, the BIPOC creator of French haircare brand Boucle.

After two decades as a hair stylist on movie and television sets, she started the brand to fill a gap in the French high-end haircare market for Black curls.

Curly hair products by Black founders are still a relatively small portion of shelves in luxury retailers, but Boucle is on a mission to change that globally.

In this section, I clearly state who the client is and what about her makes her not just another founder of another haircare brand in a saturated category.

Launching at Sephora on February 1st, I’d like to offer Runway an exclusive opportunity to profile Jacqueline in connection to the launch. We’re hoping to link to the products throughout the article, which earns Runway affiliate commission too.

This is a timely and relevant tie in for Black History Month, but also ties into the larger cultural conversations at Runway and other places around Black hair in the workplace.

Jacqueline has a largely team and she’s worked hard to foster an environment where everyone feels welcome to come as their are hair wise — whether it’s locks or afro or rainbow colored hair. As Black women have so often had to do, she is leading the charge of change.

This section clarifies why this conversation is relevant for the upcoming editorial calendar.

I was so moved by your personal essay about feeling out of place as the Black kid in a white family and how moving to an HBCU gave you access to other Black women who could finally help you care and nurture your hair for the first time. Jacqueline was also adopted and I think this would be a synchronous story for you.

Let me know if you need any further information.

Best,

Ashley

This section gives a very specific reason for reaching out to this journalist. It’s clear that I know who she is, what she writes about, and why she’d be a great fit for this story.

So there you have it! This is everything you need to know about writing an effective media pitch to a journalist. Pitching an editor requires a different approach (especially if you’re a writer), so let me know below if you’d like me to write an article about how to do that.

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