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Note: I wrote this for my Reporting class. Feel free to adapt it for your own purposes.
Writing a Pitch for Popular Press
Pitching is a necessary part of being a working writer. At minimum,
your pitch should include:
1. A hook that gets us interested in the story
2. An answer to the question, "Why this story?"
3. An answer to the question, "Why I a good people to cover it?"
4. An answer to the question, "Why do this story now?"
5. An answer to the question, "How do I plan to research the story?"
Looking for more thoughts and guidelines on writing a pitch? All these links
have great insights:
For newspaper stories
in general
For magazine
stories (specific instructions on how to pitch for Book Magazine)
Example of
what's on MediaBistro.com (a site of choice for working writers in
New York)
For radio stories
From the other
side of the fence: Public Relations advice about how to pitch to editors and
reporters