Why over pitching damages long term access
Launch library · evergreen read
Access to a journalist is built slowly and spent quickly. Every pitch sent without genuine relevance withdraws a little from that balance, whether or not the journalist ever replies, because it teaches them that messages from this source are worth scanning less carefully next time.
Over pitching often comes from an understandable pressure: a client wants coverage, and sending more seems like the safest way to demonstrate effort. But volume is a poor substitute for relevance, and a journalist's attention is finite regardless of how much material arrives in it.
The practitioners who protect long term access pitch less often and more precisely, matching each approach to something the journalist has actually shown interest in covering. It feels slower in the short term, but it preserves the one asset that cannot be rebuilt quickly once lost: a journalist's willingness to open the next message.
It is worth remembering that access, once damaged, rarely returns to its previous state quickly. Rebuilding trust with a journalist who has learned to skim past a source's emails takes far longer than the modest short term gains that over pitching was ever likely to deliver in the first place.