Mastering Media Pitches with Joni Sweet

• Relevance matters most—don’t pitch journalists things they don’t cover
• Use small, targeted media lists instead of mass outreach
• Lead with a clear story idea (headline + angle), not a long press release
• Build relationships so your emails get prioritized in crowded inboxes
• Be reliable and responsive or you’ll lose future opportunities

If you want to know how to pitch a journalist, why not ask a journalist?

Joni Sweet is a journalist, writer, PR consultant, and coach who’s been featured in publications like Forbes, Time, Travel + Leisure, and many others. She also has a fantastic newsletter, where she shares upcoming stories she’s working on and offers some great tips for pitching.

She also has a workshop coming up called The Pitch Fix, which is “a 75-minute journalist-led workshop where you’ll test, refine, and perfect your media pitch with real-time feedback and connect with a supportive group of peers.”

Listeners can use code BUZZSTREAMVIP to get $25 off a ticket to The Pitch Fix Live through April 3.

(Also big shoutout to former podcast guest Britt Klontz, who recommended I reach out to Joni.)

I had a fantastic time chatting with Joni, and think this is a must listen for anyone in digital PR.

Here is a slightly-edited transcript.

What does a typical day look like for you these days?

Joni

Yeah, so no day is exactly the same, which I think is one of the nice things about being self-employed and being a freelancer, is that every day looks a little different.

Lately, I’ve been in a really solid morning routine, taking my mornings really slow.

I’m not a morning person at all.

So I’ve been really trying to lean into that instead of fighting it and trying to be like on this, you know, rigid nine-to-five schedule.

So yeah, usually my mornings have some red light therapy. I have a red light on my desk over there and I blast my face with it, which makes me feel really good. And I’ll do a guided meditation simultaneously. Lately, I’ve been liking the app Insight Timer.

I’ll do some meditation, then some journaling, and breakfast and coffee, of course. And then usually by like mid-morning, I’m kind of ready to roll.

So that’s usually my time of checking emails or doing small tasks like sending an invoice, that kind of thing. And then I’ll break for lunch. And then my afternoons are my focused hours. So that’s where I will schedule interviews. I will write my newsletter. I’ll work on any assignments I have for magazines or brands that I’m working with.

Yeah, I think I said I’ll work on my newsletter.

And then I’ll also schedule my consulting calls then too, because I feel like that’s when my brain is really on and fired up and ready to give my best ideas.

And then I usually wrap around five, six o’clock, maybe a little later, depending on what’s going on.

What does your inbox look like?

Joni

Okay, so I used to say I get about 150 pictures a day. Now it’s skewing like 200 or more. The balance between journalists and people in public relations has kept…the gap keeps widening.

There are more and more people in PR and fewer and fewer journalists. So that means those of us who are still doing this work get more and more pictures. So I do go through my inbox and I read most of the pictures I get, not all of them, but I actually do read most of them.

With that said, most of my stories right now are actually coming from assignments from editors. So I found in my business, I do really well building long-term relationships with editors and becoming the person they lean on again and again for high-quality work.

So often, the ideas are coming directly from my editors, and then I’m just looking for the right people or products to talk about in those stories or to interview.

So that’s a big chunk of it.

Some of it’s, you know, some of the pictures I receive are reactive based on my calls for pictures in my newsletter or just generally talking about what I’m working on and the types of sources or products I might need. And I’m still getting a lot of cold pitches. So I still occasionally pitch ideas to editors.

And I have a couple of platforms, like Forbes and Yahoo, where I can write about whatever I think is important or interesting.

So I am still very open to pictures for those platforms.

And I’m always scouring my inbox to see what is happening, who has an interesting story to tell, something that I could write up for one of those publications kind of on my own with my own spin.

What stands out in your inbox?

Joni

Yeah, so I will say, like most journalists, my inbox is indeed a mess right now. Like 450 unread messages because last week I didn’t last late last week I was on deadline for something and I didn’t have time to keep up with my inbox I usually do trying to get to inbox zero at the end of every day.

I use my inbox like a personal database of sources and story ideas so I rarely delete an email unless I’m really trying to make space in my inbox.

I already pay Google extra money for storage. I don’t want to pay them more than I already am. So, you know, occasionally I’ll delete emails, but generally they live in that inbox for a really long time. So,

There have been times when I’ve searched my own inbox for a relevant source or a brand that I need to get in touch with.

And I’ll pull emails from 2016 and start emailing those folks who emailed me and say, ” Are you still working with this brand, or can you connect me with someone who is? So it’s sort of a managed chaos, I would say, in the inbox.

But yeah, with that said, I get a lot of irrelevant pictures too.

You know, one of the biggest mistakes I think people make is not knowing who they’re picturing and what they’re writing about.

They’re trying to use a spray-and-pray method of picturing, and I really don’t think it works.

So, you know, two areas I don’t cover are baby products, child care stories, and anything related to dogs. I’m a cat person. I like dogs too, but I’ve never had one, and it’s not a lifestyle I’m really familiar with. Being a dog mom isn’t a lifestyle I’m really familiar with. So I, I don’t, I’ve never written about dogs. I’ve never written about babies, and yet people pitch me dog and baby products all the time.

As much as there are great pictures in there that really do help me do my work and stay informed about what’s going on in the industries I care about, there’s also a lot of junk in there that isn’t relevant to me.

How closely should you PRs track relevance?

Joni

Yeah, I mean, look, I don’t fault any PR person who’s trying to do their job and get in touch with the right people. I think, you know, not to criticize my colleagues too much, but I think people can be really precious about this work and not recognize there’s a whole business behind it.

And I don’t get mad when I get pictures of babies or dogs, especially when they are kind of, like, not quite aligned but adjacent, like you were talking about.

I’ve actually covered cat litter boxes before, so why not cover like donkey bags? I mean, there is sort of a relationship there. But I generally think you get better results from being more specific, but you know.

If you really think you have something that might be adjacent to what I cover, don’t mind the pitch. know, the worst that can happen is I read it, it’s not relevant, and I don’t respond.

That’s it. So, you know, to that end, don’t think, you know, you’re right.

There is a difference between like straight spray and prey, about like, just have this list of 1,500 journalists, I’m going to send it to all of them, versus I have a targeted list of about 50 that I think maybe might be interested in this.

Can you explain pitching to an editor?

Joni

Yeah, so if I’m gonna pitch a story to an editor, the first thing I do is, like, let’s say I have some great idea for a story.

The first thing I’m gonna do is see which editors I’ve already worked with who might be interested in it.

They’re the ones I’m going to go to first because we have a warm relationship.

Anybody who sent a pitch knows that a warm pitch is better than a cold pitch, right?

The chances of success are much higher when you’re pitching to somebody who already knows you and likes your work and what you’re up to than if you’re reaching out of the blue.

So that’s the first thing I do.

The second thing I would do is if all of those editors said no, thank you, I would start researching other editors who might be interested. So, I might have a couple of public ideas off the top of my head.

Like if I had a travel story, I might be going to Conde Nast Traveler, Travel and Leisure, Afar, those, you know, the core kind of brands that are in this space and introduce myself, right?

So, my cold-pitch emails are usually three paragraphs.

The first one is extremely short, just like, hey, I have an idea for you.

And I might even get a little bit more specific and say, possibly for this section or this feature that you usually run.

And then I will pitch my idea. This is like the most important part of my email. It will include a sample headline of how I think, or a sample headline of what I think could possibly appear at the top of the story, and maybe a three to five-sentence description of what the story is.

You know, the basics. Who, what, where, when, why.

That’s what they teach you in journalism school: that every story needs to cover.

I’ll also include some potential sources that I think could be a fit. Either people I’ve already kind of lined up interviews with or thought of, or am in discussions with, or people who I’ve come across in the course of my research, who I think could be relevant, but I haven’t talked to yet.

And then any other core details I think are important, such as proposed length or access to images, just kind of logistical stuff. And then my last paragraph is a mini about me. So what you see on my website is a very long biography about me. Nobody has time to read that, even on my website, but especially not in your inbox, right?

So I pull out my, you know, the core basics about me, like I’ve been doing this work for more than 15 years.

I’ve been published in X, Y, and Z publications, and I’ll name-drop the biggest ones that are in the beat that I’m pitching for right now.

Joni

And that’s kind of it, right? Because they just think, basically, I’m trying to prove to them that I’m qualified to write this story. And that’s it.

Then I send it, and I wait, and usually get no response because editors are even busier and have even busier inboxes than I do. And then, you know, there’s the art of the follow-up.

So it’s actually like, I think there’s a lot of synergy between the way PR people pitch and the way freelance journalists pitch. And I think the more that PR folks can align their pictures with how journalists need to pitch their editors, and the more success they’ll have.

What are the things that will make a pitch get through an editor?

Joni 

Yeah, so I think we’re talking about two different things here, and they’re both important.

The first is like, how do know what the editor might even possibly be interested in?

Editorial calendars are historically a way that journalists and PR folks could look ahead for the year at what the themes of a magazine are, and usually those carry over to digital as well, a little bit more loosely, but if publications covering farms in August, you might see more farm-related content on their website that time of year as well.

So that’s something you can use to look ahead and start playing with story ideas for your clients and pitching journalists.

For a print magazine, we’re usually talking six months ahead of time, sometimes a little longer.

In addition to the editorial calendars, sometimes editors will also let either the general public or a core group of writers know the types of stories they’re looking for right now.

So if you can spot one of those calls for pictures that go out to writers, you can sometimes backdoor it and go to the writer directly and be like, “Hey, editor at Business Insider is looking for these types of stories. I actually have one that you could potentially write about.”

But then, when I’m working for places like Forbes and Yahoo, I’m almost working in an editor role.

I’m not an editor at either of those publications, to be clear.

But what I mean by that is I am selecting what I want to write about. I don’t have a gatekeeper giving me the green light to write about something or not.

So I do put on my editor hat when I’m thinking about stories for those publications, and I get paid based on traffic.

So I want to look for stories that will drive traffic, and for things people have done to be successful pitching me are looking at Google Trends data.

For example, somebody representing a chocolate company pitched me in late August, saying that searches for advent calendars were spiking in late August, which is far earlier than I would think, but that piqued my interest.

And then his pitch included a few advent calendars that were already available from his client, and he was basically like, “hey, the stats are there, like, let me know if you want to work on a story.”

And I immediately picked it up, and I did a roundup of Advent calendars, and it was pretty successful.

Even my, my edit, that was for Yahoo! and my editors reached out to me. like, hey, do you want to consider pulling this story down?

It’s actually, it feels too early to us.

And I told, I replied, yeah, I replied to them. I was like, yeah, it feels early to me too, but here’s the data.

I said, I totally respect it if you want me to pull it down and wait a couple of months to republish it, that would be fine.

And they said, ” Nope, actually, you have good instincts here. This is good. Leave it up.”

So yeah, any sort of data that you can pull in that shows me, there might be like strong reader interest in this, is compelling.

Is it better to have one piece of targeted coverage or a lot more general coverage?

Joni

Mm-hmm. There’s always a balance between quality and quantity, and I think one thing I’ve learned from consulting with so many PR folks is that clients have different goals, right?

Like some really want that breadth of coverage.

They want their link and their story in 10-20 publications.

Obviously, the better the publication, the happier they are, but they just wanna be out there.

And others care a lot more about, like, one really high-quality story in one prestigious publication. And for them, that would be a mega win.

So I think the strategies are very different for each approach.

If you had to do PR for a cat food brand, what is more important?

Joni

I think for something as commodified as like cat food, I would want to be everywhere, right?

I’d want that brand recognition.

I’d want to be building that with my customers.

I think, a lot of times, customers don’t care much about the background of commodity products.

They just want to know what the product is. Does it work? Is it better than what else is on the shelf, right?

So the more you can prove that, the better. And I also don’t think any, I think there’s such a low likelihood of any reader wanting to read 500, 1,000 words about a cat food, like one specific brand, that I think like it’s just impossible.

But like, perhaps if there’s like a really compelling backstory of the founders, like, let’s say I founded a cat food company because I was feeding my cat commercial food and it made my cat really sick or something like that.

Okay, that all of a sudden gets a little more interesting. maybe I can’t, maybe because this cause is so passionate for me, I want that story told and I’m willing to wait for the right publication to tell it.

Now again, let’s be realistic, we’re talking about cat food.

I don’t know if this has exact application in this context, but I think you get what I mean. It depends on what the story is and what the brand and the product, if there is one, what are we even talking about?

You know, I stayed at a really amazing resort in Dominica, a great island in the Caribbean. It’s called the Nature Island.

That’s its name.

And I wrote some, I wrote a few stories about the experience, but the one that this particular resort was very excited about was this in-depth hotel review I did for Travel and Leisure.

They felt that I really captured the heart of what they were trying to do.

I interviewed the owner and how his wife’s father was an architect and that he gave them designs for these bungalows for their wedding.

It was such a beautiful backstory. They were so happy with that. Now, obviously, that’s also a very prestigious publication and wonderful brand recognition for them.

And while I can’t speak for them, I think, I feel in my gut that they would be happier with that one in-depth review that really tells their story in a great publication rather than me putting it in five different roundups and writing just a short blurb.

I think they would be happier with the coverage in the first place.

Should you always be pushing your clients?

Joni

Yeah, I mean, I think clients are hiring you because they have a particular goal in mind, whether it is those backlinks that they think are really important for the SEO, whether it is like we want to increase sales and we know that PR is part of that, or whether they are like we have a strong story to tell and no one’s telling it and we want your help making that happen, right?

Then your job as a publicist is to go in and advise on like, hey, what’s possible, right?

Do we have the best approach to meet that goal, whether it is strong storytelling, sales, or whatever?

And then what can we do to increase the chances of hitting this goal? Like, what are some strategies that you, the client, haven’t thought of or haven’t tried yourself yet?

Is building relationships with journalists helpful?

Joni

I think that statement-“I see that floating around on LinkedIn a lot “-like, the relationship is great, but it’s not a guarantee.” Like, yes, I agree with that, but I think it’s a huge door opening for you that people without that relationship don’t have.

And for a few reasons.

The first is, like I said, I’m getting 200 plus pictures a day, right?

Which ones am I actually gonna give my time and attention to?

Like, obviously a subject line matters, right? And that might encourage me to open and read the email.

But if I, you know, let’s say the subject line is whatever, I’m looking at who’s sending it to me and thinking, do I know this person?

Do I recognize their name?

Like, do we have a relationship that warrants me giving them attention?

Right?

And if I have limited hours in the day, who’s getting my attention?

It’s the, I’m going to prioritize the people I do have relationships with. It doesn’t mean I’m ignoring emails from everybody else, but it means like, this is where my attention is going first.

It bumps you up the list.

And then, you talked about trust, right? It is about trust. There’s so, so much in this industry that is out of all of our control, including our editors, right?

That knowing who you’re working with and knowing you can trust them is so, so critical to, you know, maintaining that mindset that everybody’s operating in good faith and that we can, we’ll work together really effectively.

I’ve sometimes, you know, put out a call for pictures for doctors or dietitians or something in the health space and a PR person will email me who I don’t know, but he or she will say, I have this amazing client.

They can speak to X, Y, and Z.

them for your story and I’ll say yes and then they fall off the face of the earth they don’t even respond with like possible interview times or like I will send interview times and I cannot get them to like respond at that point or if we’re doing an email interview and I say hey I need answers by noon on Friday and 4 p.m. on Friday those answers still haven’t come in, I’m in a real bind now because now I have to find somebody over the weekend and convince them to give me the time of day so that I can meet my deadline on Monday and still make my editor happy and get paid, right?

So, you know, if let’s say, let’s say I’m looking at two potential sources and they’re both pretty compelling, but one is coming from somebody I’ve worked with a million times and she always delivers and, you know, when her client flakes out, she’s found me backups and gone above and beyond to make sure I can do my job versus somebody I’ve never worked with before, I’m going to choose the person I know is reliable because it means I know I can get my job done.

So I think in that sense, the relationship matters a whole lot, even though it, no, it doesn’t guarantee you coverage. Even if we’re friends, like, I wish I could cover everything my friends’ clients were doing. I mean, that would be great. Like, everybody would be so happy.

Everybody would love me. Like, what would be better than that? But it’s just not the way the industry…

Vince Nero 

You probably have a lot more “friends” too.

Joni (31:29)
That is true, friends.

But it’s not the way the industry works. So, you know, I think that it’s a very nuanced discussion, and I think it often gets really glazed over in these like viral LinkedIn posts about this.

Have you encountered “fake” experts?

Joni (32:14)
This has been going on a very long time, like well before generative AI became available to the public.

I remember writing some personal finance articles for a loan company I did content marketing for, but they expected me to act like a journalist, vet sources, and interview them. People would, or like companies, I don’t even know who these entities were.

I would get pictures about people and I would say, okay, this person sounds good.

Let me just like do a quick background check on them, look up their LinkedIn or whatever. And like all of a sudden, like everything starts falling apart.

Like, this person doesn’t seem to exist or like not in this context. So this has been going on a really, really long time.

And you know again I think that goes back to the relationships that you know there are certain people I know aren’t gonna do that to me. I would be absolutely mortified if I wrote a story that ended up having a fake expert in it. I would be so mortified.

So I am pretty careful about vetting people.

And now, with generative AI, I don’t mind people using it as a tool, but some of my editors have included clauses in my contracts that say I cannot submit AI-generated content. So if one of my sources is doing an email interview with me and sends me an AI-generated answer, it could put me in hot water with my client.

And this is a hard industry.

I need to maintain my relationships with editors in order to make a living. So it’s something I’m so careful about. I’ve always preferred phone and video interviews. I’ve always done them instead of email interviews whenever possible.

But even now, so many people are using generative AI for all their writing.

I’m even more insistent on like let’s meet face to face and have a conversation.

Like, not only will the answers be more compelling because they’re, you know, generated through a conversation, but I know for sure that they are not written by a chatbot.

Do you care about AI-written pitches?

Joni 

If they’re not saying anything, they’re pretty easy for me to just ignore as a bad pitch.

I don’t really care, but I will say when you use AI a lot, and I do, I use it as a tool a lot for my own purposes, I can see AI-generated content right away. Yeah, so it just doesn’t connect with me very well.

Do you think PR pros should send and or paste a press release right in a pitch email or is that overkill?

Joni

I think it should have a mini pitch up top, like an actual good quality, like quick pitch, and then you can put the rest of the press release, like at the bottom for more background information, but I probably won’t read it.

Should people include images in their pitches?

Joni

No, for the most part. I think if you’re going to include images, I think include them as a Google Drive or Dropbox folder that I can just click into and make sure that the permissions are set that anyone with the link can view them.

Does it matter what time you get a pitch?

Joni

No, it does not matter to me at all.

Well, mean, timing matters if you’re pitching breaking news, right? Like timing matters a lot.

Or if you’re pitching for a newspaper and you want a daily newspaper and you want it out in tomorrow’s issue, well, you better send that pitch as early in the day as possible so they have time to consider it and then cover it. But for me, go pitch me at 4 AM on a Sunday. I don’t care. Like, I’ll read it when I get to my inbox and it makes no difference, positive or negative, when you send it to me.

Vince Nero 

Right, so journalists aren’t sitting there looking at their inboxes and be like, this one just came in. This one looks great, right? It’s not like that.

If you if you have 250 unread emails like you’re saying, yeah, I don’t see that being an issue.

Should you or should a PR professional ever pitch via social media?

No, don’t pitch me over social media.

One, it’s annoying and kind of like violating, but more importantly, it’s not where you want your pitch to be.

It caught my attention in a bad way, but also I can’t search my Instagram inbox for a source. I’m gonna go to my email inbox. So really like get your pitch in my inbox, my email inbox, and that’s the best place for me to go to find it. I’m not searching Instagram for product pitches or a source pictures.

Vince Nero

Vince is the Director of Content Marketing at Buzzstream. He thinks content marketers should solve for users, not just Google. He also loves finding creative content online. His previous work includes content marketing agency Siege Media for six years, Homebuyer.com, and The Grit Group. Outside of work, you can catch Vince running, playing with his 2 kids, enjoying some video games, or watching Phillies baseball.

More Posts by Vince Nero
Website: https://www.buzzstream.com