Worst Pitch of the Week: The Team Pitch Doesn't Work

How Coverage Works 💻 | Worst Pitch of the Week 💀 | Best Pitch(es) of the Week 🏆

Welcome! If you’re new to Plot Twist, it’s a newsletter focused on words (I think?). Each month, we send a “Worst Pitch of the Week” newsletter featuring public relations tips, and a “one about” newsletter focusing on whatever’s on my mind (mostly publishing and fiction content). On with the show…

Teaching is part of my job.

Not in the journalistic sense, but in the comms one. I recently had an exchange with a publicist that highlighted the lack of uniformity across the industry. That’s not a bad thing, just an observation in comparison to my hometown. In Puerto Rico, publicists are a licensed group—make of that what you will—but that does provide some sense of uniformity to a role that is often neglected, or thrown to a marketing person, or not considered at all.

In explaining how coverage works, I ended up typing a brief overview that I’d like to share with the class. And please, correct me if I’m wrong.

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The below was edited to remove identifying details:

Newsroom editorial works independently from the business side. … Any editorial content we produce is NOT paid for, and we retain control of said content and our standards. That being said, no, we do not share stories in advance for approval.

The process, as it typically goes, is: company pitches editorial, editorial considers, we collaborate on interviews or experiences, editorial writes and publishes.

…

[Unless otherwise specified, we aren’t] looking for a specific study or new data set to be developed. It’s more helpful for us to stay in the loop on what you’re already seeing and planning from a communications standpoint—whether that’s upcoming campaigns, insights you’re sharing externally, or trends emerging from your existing materials.

If there are moments where your team is putting something out into the world or noticing interesting patterns in your data, those are often the kinds of things that can spark editorial ideas on our end.

Something that’s incredibly helpful to us is if you see a booking trend/emerging destination that connects us with travelers. … Here are three recent examples: Example 1, Example 2, and Example 3

Would love to know if there are opportunities in that (above) to better collaborate. If there are colleagues with better processes, I’d love to learn about them.

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This one’s upsetting because…

I’m not sure whether I can reply yay or nay to this pitch because some of those are not staffers and others are in different departments with their own goals.

Here’s the thing: I understand that some of my peers are not super helpful when asked, but personally, I’d prefer a “who’s the best person to pitch this?”

When a pitch is to everyone, it’s for no one.

(Note: I personally liked the pitch. It’s just not a fit for my section.)

The best pitch of this week is one I typically don’t respond to.

If I’m traveling for an assignment, I don’t like to add more to that schedule. But when I’m in charge of my schedule during personal travels, I can take detours.

In this case, I knew I’d have some time during different stops in my upcoming summer trip, so I searched my inbox for the destinations I’d be visiting in case there was something interesting for a story. Indeed, there was. So, shoutout to the publicists who are consistent, even when there’s no immediate answer, because—as I like to say—the inbox sometimes serves as a search engine.