Welcome to Pitch, Please. My name is Steph, I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’m so grateful you’re willing to watch as I figure it out.
I’ve been a digital journalist, writer, copywriter—whatever the heck you want to call it—since 2013. Before I entered the industry as a doe-eyed, 21-year-old baby writer fresh outta college, I interned at Seventeen, Us Weekly, and Shape Magazine.
From there, I became the web editor at M Magazine—which you may know as the even younger version of J-14. After that, I pivoted into social media, doing digital strategy for Parents Magazine. Of course, as a childless millennial—thanks, Kate Kennedy for my new favorite identity descriptor—working in parenting didn’t last too, too long.
I quit my 9 to 5 and went freelance in 2016. Yup, that’s right, well before coronavirus and well before it was cool.
Since then, my bylines have appeared on Parade, Newsweek, Web MD, INSIDER, Green Matters, Brightly, World Economic Forum, Eat This! Not That!, and more.
So, needless to say, I’ve seen my fair share of pitches from publicists. I’ve seen the good, the bad, the ugly: what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what’s been downright WTF?!
And after chatting with someone in PR at length during a recent press trip, I realized that as a journalist/writer/whatever, I have like, valuable information publicists could potentially use to increase their likelihood of a) getting a response b) finding placement for their clients.
Like, How do you pitch me? How do you place your clients in features, roundups, etc.? What the fuck works and what the fuck doesn’t?
And so, Pitch, Please was born. I wanted to name it after a baseball analogy but I actually know close-to-zero about America’s pasttime so it didn’t work out. But I think we can all agree that Pitching Aces would have been cute, even if it apparently doesn’t make sense because it’s not a thing in baseball. UM CHILD ANYWAYS, SO…
So, let’s do this. You’re in PR, I’m a writer—AKA exactly your audience—and we each have something to learn from each other. Each week, Pitch, Please will examine the art of PR pitching. And I’ll spare no detail, either…
I’ll show actual examples of what I would or have responded to as well as real examples of the just-didn’t-cut-it-pitches that go straight to the “digital slush pile” if you will. I’ll give my not-so-humble opinions about what makes a good pitch as well as what makes an awful one (and, boy, do I have OpInIoNs~).
I’ll give actionable tips on how to grab the writer’s or editor’s attention, provide meaningful do’s and don’t’s, and even share some insider resources and hot-goss about how writers really feel about pitches (and those insistent follow-ups).
You ready? This is Pitch, Please.
Instagram: @stephosmanski
LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/StephanieOsmanski