Categories: OLD Media Moves

How to better pitch business journalists

The public relations staff at Thomson Reuters interviewed some of the company’s business journalists about what they prefer in receiving in terms of story pitches from PR staff.

Here is some of the advice:

1) Do background research on your journalist first. Monitor their Twitter stream and their blog. What do they write about and whom do they respond to? Which social site do they dedicate much of their time to? Are they posting on Twitter hourly? Do they update their blog daily? How do they respond to comments on their blog? After better understanding their activity and preferences, start to engage them through these channels to build a relationship rather than pitching them blindly.

2) Get your influencer hooked using simple, short pitches. Grab attention in 20 seconds or less—an email/tweet with a link to video or image that tells a story is more interesting than plain text.

3) Write like a journalist. If the journalist bites on a pitch and asks for more, tell the story in a way that is most easily accessible for the journalist. If they are forced to strip out the jargon and spin, they may also strip out the main points as well. Credibility is lost and relationship is damaged if main story has to be altered.

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

Next Reuters names new deputy Washington editor »

Previous « Bloomberg Businessweek names new Etc. editor

View Comments

Theo Francis says:
September 27, 2011 at 3:34 pm
Don't forget: Make sure you're pitching a *story*, not just looking for free advertising or publicity for your product or service.
The distinction should be clear to anyone in the business, but just in case: Stories tend to reflect more than one point of view, and include some kind of tension, disagreement or question; they also typically have a beginning, middle and end. Advertising and marketing, by contrast, are all warm and fuzzy stuff just about your product or service.