by Suzanne Hanney, IWPA President
Just Like Salesmen. . .
by Suzanne Hanney, IWPA President
I had covered Chicago Legal Aid for Incarcerated Mothers (CLAIM) many times
over the years, but 30 well-placed minutes and a good press packet netted them
a recent "Mother's Day in Prison" cover of the publication I edit,
StreetWise. A weekly paper sold by people who are homeless or formerly
homeless, it covers poverty issues for high-end, altruistic readers.
The moral is to know yourself and the publication you are asking to run your
news item, I said as part of a panel on "Pitching Independent Media"
during the Community Media Workshop's recent annual "Making Media Connections"
conference. Founded in 1989 by a journalist and a community activist, Community
Media Workshop seeks to help people of Chicago's diverse neighborhoods get their
stories into print and on the air.
I once thought journalism was about mastering English and politics, I told
our audience, comprised mostly of spokespersons for non-profits. Once I started
in the business, however, I realized it was about salesmanship and marketing.
Yes, she hated to admit it, but it was true, said one of my co-panelists, Anne
Elizabeth Moore of Punk Planet, a Chicago-based publication that explores
music and progressive issues.
Others on the panel included Cindy Richards, senior editor and travel editor
of Chicago Parent and Amy Schroeder, founder and editor of Venus Zine.
We pitch each other all the time in the newsroom, I explained. Reporters try
to sell their editors on stories; editors use salesmanship to massage reporters'
egos and bring out their best.
A winning salespitch from outside the newsroom is "this story is about
X and such and will appeal to your readers because it affects people in X way."
An excellent addition is, "it is similar to X story that you covered in
the past."
"It's important to understand the publication's voice and target audience,"
Schroeder had said in an earlier email. "For instance, it's not a good
idea for a writer to pitch a story about beauty tips to Venus Zine, because
we never publish anything about beauty tips. I can usually tell when a writer
is sending the same story pitch to a gazillion publications because it usually
sounds sort of generic."
The Mother's Day story took me less than two days after another cover story
fell through. CLAIM's Friday-before-Mother's Day press conferences had always
been wrong for my production schedule because I want to print the story beforehand,
not after. But since the event was a yearly certainty, this year I had time
in between other interviews to call their executive director an extra week ahead.
The next day, she sent their press packet rough draft and archive photos.
The combination of interview, background knowledge and press material meant
that I had a timely story but not a "canned one." (We never want to
use material verbatim, but rather to add our own touches much as a cook adds
vegetables to soup stock.) By the end of our time period, the other panelists
and I were getting one-sentence queries. One pitch on a lack of playground time
for kids in public schools intrigued both Chicago Parent's Richards and me.
She worried about little kids who needed a break from hard work, I wondered
whether inactive kids would be more prone to overweight, diabetes and heart
disease.
Another pitch represented a group of immigrant rights' hunger strikers that
included a drummer in a band. "That's a GREAT story," Punk Planet's
Moore said to me. And because she wanted it, I wanted it too.