{"id":2041,"date":"2020-09-03T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2020-09-03T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2020\/09\/03\/7-fatal-flaws-of-story-pitching\/"},"modified":"2025-02-14T15:54:07","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T15:54:07","slug":"7-fatal-flaws-of-story-pitching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2020\/09\/03\/7-fatal-flaws-of-story-pitching\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Fatal Flaws of Story Pitches"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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Too many great-sounding story ideas never go beyond that. They stop with an impassioned chat at a favorite watering hole, or are grumbled about, again and again, by a disgruntled colleague who can\u2019t seem to bust through whatever is blocking his brilliance. (The editors!) Maybe a freelancer friend calls you for a bounce and you give a sincere and enthusiastic Yes!<\/em> Then \u2026 nothing. Maybe another friend outlines a vague notion that you are sure has the makings of a hot book proposal if it had some focus. Then \u2026 nothing.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The reasons good ideas fail to bloom are many: Advancing news overtakes an idea, and renders it dated. Other work demands the writer\u2019s time. Insecurity undermines their ability to deliver. And yes, sometimes they butt up against a recalcitrant and unimaginative editor.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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But often the block is more basic:  The writer fails to sell the idea.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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A quick true backstory:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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When I was a reporter, I sucked at idea generation. I didn\u2019t know how to find stories outside the routine of institutional beats. I suffered a bit of shiny-object syndrome; the story someone else was doing often held more allure. And I was crippled by a severe lack of confidence. Fear motivated my reporting once I was in the field and my writing on deadline, but blocked me when it came to fighting for my own ideas. So I became very good at taking editors\u2019 lame-seeming ideas and, after bouts of bratty pouting, polishing them into gems with a bit of sparkle. And I lucked into a few editors who developed an instinct for which stories to send my way.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Then I became an editor. For some reason, I found it easy to believe in the ideas pitched by reporters on our enterprise team, and I was determined to lobby them onto Page 1. That determination deepened when I began teaching: I wanted my students to believe in themselves, and to get published. My job was to help them find their way to the fresh centers of their wandering, overdone story ideas, and get to the nub of something engaging and doable.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Along the way, I learned to pitch. Maybe more to the point (because I still don\u2019t always do it well), I learned what pitches take \u2014 and how even the best reporters struggle to do them effectively. It\u2019s akin to writing a good nut graf or section \u2014 something that vexes even the best of reporter-writers.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Help with pitching<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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The imperative to pitch is especially keen among freelancers, who rise or stall based on what they sell, and often have to sell cold. But even staffers in newsrooms, whose skills are known to the editors, have to convince the editors to support their most ambitious ideas. That\u2019s especially true as news organizations contract and collapse, leaving fewer people to do more work. Knowing how to sell a story idea \u2014 quick, sharp and compelling \u2014 is necessary coin.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Much is taught and has been written about pitching. One of my favorite places to refer writers is the Pitch Database on The Open Notebook<\/a>. The 200-plus pitches featured there include links to the resulting published story. While the site focuses on science journalism, the pitches hold lessons for all. Recently I was introduced to \u201cFreelancing with Tim\u201d on Substack; he has gathered pitching guidelines from more than 50 publications<\/a>. One of Storyboard\u2019s most popular features has been The Pitch<\/a>, in which we interview editors about what they are looking for in a good pitch, and then annotate a pitch that worked \u2014 sometimes after two or three drafts.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The Pitch<\/h2>\n\n
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Storyboard examines the elusive art of the story pitch. We talk to writers and editors about their tips, tricks and pet peeves, and annotate some real pitches.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more from The Pitch here<\/a><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n\t\n<\/div> \n

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Our pitch series was suspended for awhile, after the freelancer who proposed and pursued it moved to bigger magazine assignments. (Dare I posit that she mastered the art of the pitch?) Industry chaos also made it hard to know if the publications and editors we featured were still solid.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Now we\u2019re reviving it, urged on by conversations we see on social media, continued pleas we hear from working journalists, and the energy of San Francisco freelancer Carly Stern. Her interview with the managing director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project<\/a> is a great relaunch; it includes the annotation of a pitch that led to a story we annotated two years ago<\/a>. (By the way, no one has an exclusive hold on our pitch pieces, so if you have a proposal, pitch it!)<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Watch out for common tripwires<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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As a backbone running throughout, we\u2019ll be posting a series in coming weeks that focuses on the fundamental mistakes writers make when pitching, and offers suggestions on how to override them. I think of them as the Seven Fatal Flaws of Pitching. Forgive that title, but I grew up in the colliding worlds of religion, stories, construction and four-season weather. Numbers seemed to ground all, especially and oddly, religion: The Holy Trinity. The Eight Beatitudes. The Ten Commandments. The Twelve Days of Christmas. And of course, the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues. I don\u2019t know if those numbers themselves have some underlying meaning, but I find them helpful memory devices,<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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We\u2019ll explore each pitching flaw, and solutions, more fully in follow-up posts. As a tease, here\u2019s the list of common problems that can plague any pitch, no matter the specifications of any given publication or editor. Consider cutting it out and taping it  to your computer screen.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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  1. Failure to know the publication<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Failure to respect submission protocol<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Failure to honor the core: spelling, style and grammar<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Failure to do a basic clips search<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Failure to be interesting<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. Failure to focus<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  7. Failure to sell yourself<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    How to identify common mistakes that get in the way of landing that big idea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[407],"topics":[],"authors":[3],"issue":[],"class_list":["post-2041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-editor","tag-the-pitch","authors-jacqui-banaszynski"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n7 Fatal Flaws of Story Pitches - Nieman Storyboard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2020\/09\/03\/7-fatal-flaws-of-story-pitching\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"7 Fatal Flaws of Story Pitches - 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