I spent twenty years deleting pitches. I know which ones I kept.
Start a conversationTelevision is the hardest placement to earn and the one most organizations pitch worst. A producer decides in about six seconds, on a morning when forty other things are also on fire.
I know that morning. I ran it. What I bring is not a media list, which anyone can buy. It's twenty years of relationships in Canadian newsrooms and the judgment to know which story is worth spending one on. I will not pitch a producer a story I wouldn't have taken myself.
Some stories are print stories. Television needs a person, a picture and a reason to go today. If two of the three are missing I'll say so before you spend anything.
Almost always they're already in your building or on your donor list. The work is finding them and getting them ready to carry a segment.
A relationship in a newsroom is capital and it spends down. I use it on stories that are worth it, which is why the ones I pitch tend to get taken.
You can, and it will be one of several hundred that morning. Broadcast desks work on people and on trust. A pitch from someone the producer knows and has never wasted their time gets read. A cold release usually doesn't get opened.
A person and a picture. Print can carry an argument. Television needs someone whose life is different because of the thing you're announcing, and it needs something a camera can see. A number on its own will never make it to air.
No. If I don't think it's a story, I'll tell you, and I won't spend a relationship on it. That's not me being difficult. It's the reason the pitches I do send get taken seriously, and it's what you're actually paying for.
Let's talk
Send it to me. If it's not, I'll tell you that, and it'll be the cheapest advice you get this year.
Start a conversationor email me