Having patience when pitching
Monday, May 26th, 2008One of the most annoying periods of a freelancer’s working week is the wait in between the pitch and the commission/rejection. With some editors you can have a reply (for better or for worse) within the hour. With others you might spend a few days talking to their voicemail before you get them and that elusive answer.
This can be a pretty frustrating venture as you’re very much in the air until you get a response and you know exactly what you’re doing (or not as the case may be). If you’re not working on anything else at the time you tend to feel a little udder-less and aim-less during this wait, which is compounded by the fact that you have a good idea (in your opinion, at least) but nothing to do with it.
Once you do get the response many of your ideas will inevitably get the thumbs down. If the answer has been a particularly tricky one to obtain it means you may have spent your time chasing an editor for absolutely nothing - the prospect of having to start again on the same path with another editor quickly becomes very unappealing.
At times like these it’s easy to lose patience and to undertake a more scatter-gun approach to pitching, throwing the idea to anyone and everyone in one go and hoping to that someone will bite.
Do not do this.
Just like a fisherman with 10 lines cast will have a hard time catching anything at all, you too will likely find yourself worse off in the long run if you take the seemingly quick fix to pitching.
There’s an interesting thread on boards.ie which goes into one or two of the reasons why you shouldn’t pitch far and wide at once, but the reasons are pretty obvious. If you pitch the same idea to a number of rival publications at once and more than one comes back with a commission, you’re going to be in trouble.
Of course you don’t have to pitch the same story at the same time to make a balls of it - you can find yourself in a similar quandary if you pitch a story without finalising the status of a previous attempt elsewhere.
This is the mistake I made a few months ago. I submitted a story to a daily, left it a day or two (but - and here was my first mistake - didn’t follow it up on the phone). I then went to a Sunday with the same story pitch, only to get a call from the daily nearly straight afterwards telling me they wanted to use the piece. So there I was with a daily newspaper picking up the same story I was in the middle of pitching elsewhere and as I had pitched to them first (and not followed up in any way) it’s only fair to say that they had first refusal on it. So back I went to the Sunday to tell them someone else had picked up the story and I got an understanding and polite response, coupled with a polite bit of advice telling me to be careful not to put myself in that position in the future. I was mortified and all apologies but thankfully the Sunday editor didn’t seem pissed off… the whole thing just stank of “rookie mistake” because that’s exactly what it was.
Just to make it even worse the article was never published by the daily. Just my luck.
The moral of the story is to have patience when pitching. Do not pitch the same idea or story to more than one editor at once and be sure you know where your pitch stands before you move on to the next editor. Yes, this can double or triple the amount of time it takes to turn an idea into a commission but it’s worth it. The last thing you want is to have two rival newspapers both commissioning you for the same article - it’s a sure-fire way to ensure that you don’t get a look in with either ever again.
Blogs elsewhere
May 26th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Freelancing and the art of pitching
Journalism is often described as a trade, but freelancing is more like an art. Or at least the process of pitching to editors is an art form. Adam Maguire talks about the it here, following up on the boards.ie News
May 27th, 2008 at 8:54 am
[…] I read some useful advice from Adam Maguire on this very topic. Posted in Experience Club | Leave a […]
May 28th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Very useful advice — it’s happened to me when I got too frustrated about a target’s inability to make a decision and/or return my phone calls, and chalked the non-response up to indifference. Pitched the idea to someone else and the first person came back to me and I had to say it was too late — second person was looking favourable and I couldn’t withdraw the offer. I was lucky that the second situation did bear fruit, but I learned a lesson about not getting frustrated. And, while it may sound pushy, I have found that leaving another last message that a decision really had to be made by x time and that I needed a yes or no does work most of the time — as long as you’re not unreasonable or demanding.
Thanks for the advice.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I am in EXACTLY that phase right now…twiddling my thumbs waiting for a reply to some pitches. Good to know I’m not alone!
May 31st, 2008 at 3:01 pm
The point about not pitching to several papers all at once is crtical. I worked in it recruitment at one stage and we would see the same CV come in over and over for certain positions that it was nearly suited for but that the candidate should have realised was not for them. Eventually we got tired of their cv and it probably affected their chances of landing consultancy work. I guess the message is realise that you are selling a service and that a newspaper is buying it, act professionally and be up front with editors and they will appreciate working with you. The situation whereby two editors want the one pitch is a great case of where you lose the professional mind and panic.