ABSTRACT
A pitch is a strategic message that attempts to persuade an individual journalist or blogger to write the story described in the pitch. A pitch—whether an email, phone call or social media message through a website such as LinkedIn—promotes, or “pitches,” a story idea. A pitch promotes a “soft-news” story idea rather than a hard-news story such as the announcement of a new chief executive officer. The subject line and first sentences of an email pitch must hook the journalist or blogger. Those opening sections should clearly relate to an interesting, exclusive story. Pitches increasingly include multimedia elements to show that the story itself could include multimedia features. Written pitches, like bad-news correspondence and sales correspondence, are unusual in that they don’t use the first paragraph to tell the recipient the main point of the message. Survey research shows that journalists and bloggers will accept one follow-up call about a well-written, appropriate, exclusive pitch.
