How to Pitch the Media: Inside Tips From a Journalist Who Has Deleted Thousands of Pitches
Imagine receiving 300 emails a day, opening one or two of them, and deleting most of the rest. That is the inbox your media pitch is landing in.
Few people know that inbox better than Bryce Corbett. Across his career he has worked as a reporter, gossip columnist, TV producer and executive editor at some of Australia's biggest media outlets, from The Daily Telegraph and The Times in London to Sky News, The Australian Women's Weekly, The Australian Financial Review and 60 Minutes. He has also crossed to the other side, working in corporate PR and crisis communications, so he has pitched stories as well as fielded thousands of them. He has even ghostwritten bestselling biographies for well-known Australians.
I had Bryce on my podcast to unpack exactly what makes a pitch land, and what gets it deleted on sight. Here is what every business owner should take from that conversation.
Do not waste a journalist's time
Bryce's first filter is brutal and simple: has this person actually read, watched or listened to the thing they are pitching?
When he was executive editor at the Women's Weekly, pitches would land that made it obvious the sender had never opened the magazine. Same at the AFR. Those pitches were relegated straight to the bin, and the sender's next email probably was not opened either.
Doing your homework is the minimum entry requirement. Everything else builds from there.
In a full inbox, your name is the subject line
What makes a journalist open one email out of 300? Before anything else, the name it is coming from, and whether that person has proven themselves a trusted source of information or a good source of stories.
That is why relationship building is not a nice-to-have. It is the whole game. Journalists are asked to become instant experts on new topics every single day. They cannot possibly know everything about everything, so they rely on a network of contacts to get up to speed fast.
Establish yourself as one of those reliable contacts, then deliver when they call. And deliver means fast. If a journalist asks for a case study or a comment and your answer is "I'll need 48 hours to get sign-off", you have missed the opportunity. You do not get to set the timetable. If you want to be part of the news agenda, you play by its rules.
Newsjack: insert yourself into the story that already exists
This might be the single most valuable idea in the whole conversation.
It will always be far more effective to insert yourself into an existing media narrative than to try to drag the media over to whatever you want them to talk about. Bryce calls a pitch with no connection to the news agenda a pitch made "in splendid isolation". It is never going to happen.
The practice is sometimes called newsjacking. Look at what is dominating the news cycle right now. Then work out what unique insight or perspective your business has on it. Whatever sector you are in, when that sector is in the news, newsrooms need people on the ground who can speak to it. If you have built the relationship beforehand, you are the person they call.
A journalist plants a stake in the ground on an issue. Anything you can add to it, elaborate on it, or even credibly counter it is of interest. If you read a story about your industry and find yourself thinking "that's not quite right" or "I've got a case study that proves that", that is your pitch.
Decode the formula
Every media product runs on a formula. Read six issues of a magazine and you will see it: they always have at least one of these stories, at least one of those. As Bryce puts it, these products are painting by numbers to a large extent, because they have hit on a formula that works.
So decode the formula, then work out where you slot into it. The Women's Weekly formula is completely different to the AFR's, which is completely different to a breakfast radio programme's. But none of them is hard to crack once you consume enough of the product.
Stories are about people, not facts
Whether it was the Women's Weekly, the Financial Review or 60 Minutes, Bryce says it was always about story, and before that, about people.
Facts and figures are fine, but a specific human experience will always trump them. It is why every property or inflation story in the newspaper is illustrated by a young couple trying to buy their first home. Editors know a human face makes an issue land.
So before you pitch, ask yourself the question a journalist will ask you: if we run this, who do we photograph? Who do we film? If your answer is "me" or a customer you can produce at short notice, you are ready. If you have no answer, you do not have a story yet.
It is not advertising, so never ask to proofread
Here is where a lot of business owners burn credibility without realising it.
You will never be given the right to proofread or edit an article before it runs. Not by any journalist worth their salt. Asking shows naivety and insults the journalist, because what you are describing is advertising, and if you want an ad, the advertising department will happily take your money.
What you can do is offer to be available for fact-checking. Good journalists will often come back to confirm they have understood you correctly or to check a quote, and you should always make it easy for them to do that. That is your opportunity to correct the record. Just never expect it as a right.
The flip side: things will occasionally run that you wish had not. A quote drops out in editing, a headline lands wrong, the story takes a different shape. Do not be petulant about it. Media is a long play, and torching a journalist relationship over one bad caption is a terrible trade.
Why bother, when you have social media?
Bryce's answer to this one is worth framing on your office wall.
You can absolutely tell your own story on your socials, and you should. But post an achievement on LinkedIn and most people will read it as self-serving. Have a masthead like the Australian Financial Review put that same achievement through its editorial filter and decide it is worthy of its pages, and it becomes vastly more powerful than anything you could ever say about yourself.
That is the credibility money cannot buy. Traditional media outlets have spent decades building trust with their audiences, with fact-checking and real accountability behind every story. In a world drowning in misinformation, Bryce predicts audiences will keep rushing back to trusted sources. Being featured there transfers that trust directly onto your brand.
Build the relationship like a human
Bryce's parting advice: invest in relationships with the journalists and editors covering your sector. Every industry has trade publications or a dedicated round reporter at a newspaper, TV station, radio station or online outlet. Find yours.
If you get a journalist out for a coffee, do not turn up with nothing but "I just wanted to say hello". Bring them something useful. And above all, read the last story they wrote before you meet. It is a quick search, it is a great conversation starter, it is genuinely flattering, and it marks you in their mind as someone who is across their brief.
The takeaway
Getting media coverage comes down to a handful of disciplines: consume the product before you pitch it, build the relationship before you need it, tie your story to the news agenda rather than pitching in isolation, lead with people rather than facts, move at newsroom speed, and accept that you are playing by the media's rules, not your own.
The rewards are high. The risk is real. But walk in prepared and, as Bryce says, you go into it with a far greater chance of success.
Liz Nable is a former TV news journalist and the founder of Media Masters Academy, where she teaches small business owners how to land free media coverage and build their reputation as industry experts. This post is based on an episode of her podcast. Listen to the full conversation with Bryce Corbett for even more inside knowledge.
