Lecture Comment: The Pitch

Getting others to invest time and money in you and your ideas can be difficult under the best of circumstances. But during these tough economic times especially, with fierce competition and tight budgets, it can seem next to impossible.

Working for a newspaper you get pitched to all the time from public relations professionals or groups seeking not money, of course, but the next best currency: publicity that might generate public interest, and eventually, capital for the business, person or cause being promoted.

Because space/resources/interest is limited, few of the pitchers will get much of a response. But occasionally, you’ll see a story idea that catches your interest. (The best ones for me are those that are timely or part of a new trend, and exclusive.) Now it’s up to you to make the pitch – to the senior editors – explaining why a story should be pursued and the angle to be presented. You’ll have to do a bit of research yourself to back up any claims. Freelance and staff writers will often have to do the same thing when pitching story ideas.

But all these parties must be prepared to give up custody of their pitches, too. And by that I mean, once an idea or proposal is presented to another party, it might be interpreted differently than you originally had intended, or you might be asked to modify or revise. Sometimes, too, questions generated by the pitchees might cause you to change course.

So while it’s important to present your pitch in a knowledgeable, credible and dynamic way, you must also be flexible to succeed.