Reading a journalist's past work before reaching out
Launch library · evergreen read
A pitch sent without any real awareness of a journalist's recent work risks suggesting a story they have already covered thoroughly, or missing an obvious connection to something they wrote just days earlier on the very same subject. Reading their past work first is one of the simplest ways to genuinely avoid this immediately obvious and avoidable mistake.
This kind of preparation also helps a practitioner tailor a pitch to the journalist's actual interests and personal style, rather than sending a generic version of the same message to everyone on a list at once. A pitch that references specific past coverage clearly signals genuine familiarity rather than a mail merge with only the name changed.
Journalists notice this kind of preparation, even when they never explicitly comment on it directly to the sender. A pitch that clearly demonstrates real familiarity with someone's existing work tends to be read with considerably more attention than one that gives no indication the sender has ever encountered their writing before at all.