Tips on Pitching the Media

PRowl Public Relations has started a new way of holding our weekly staff meetings. We do client updates and then will hold a general workshop of tips for writing and dealing with the media. Yesterday's workshop was about pitching the media.

Here are some tips we went over:

• A “proposal” to the media outlet is intended to “sell” a story idea on a specific topic.
• Do your research before anything else. Keep in mind the audience demographics, the reporters’ beats, past articles written and keep current on changing media positions.
  Read the news to keep current on issues and trends that you can “react” to.
• Pitch should be targeted to a specific medium and should contain specific, unusual story angles.
• Pitch should open with an interesting statement that grabs the reader’s attention and makes them want to read on. A good way to engage the reader is to ask an unusual question.
• Explain why the media should be interested in what you’re pitching – how does it benefit their readers, viewers, etc.
• Pitch should be one page or less, with clean, sharp sentences.
• Address the letter to a specific person (that covers the topic you're pitching!), not just “Dear Editor.”
• Come up with a creative subject line that makes the receiver want to open the e-mail.
• NO SPELLING OR GRAMMAR ERRORS!
• Be proactive. End the pitch saying when you will contact them to follow-up.
• Be persistent. Always follow-up with a phone call. A voicemail should only be left after the first call.

Do our readers have any other tips they'd like to add to the list?