Pitching: An Outline for Writing a Pitch
An adult red-cockaded woodpecker returns to the nest with an invertebrate for the chick to eat. Photo and story by: Annalise Kaylor
I made myself a cup of honey and chamomile tea, opened the blinds to let more natural light flood my office, and sat down at my desk to work. I had a story that I wanted to pitch and today was going to be the day that I pitched it.
I knew the story was interesting and I knew my work was good, but the feelings of self-doubt and imposter syndrome kept flooding my brain. Would anyone care about these woodpeckers the same way I did? Was this really a good story or am I allowing my bias to cloud my judgment? Are they just going to laugh and send me some autoresponder rejection?
Then I looked over at my wall and read a piece of yellowing, aging paper that has been tacked for years to my bulletin board. Upon it, I wrote a quote from Ira Glass, host and producer of the NPR series and podcast “This American Life.”
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it is normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.
Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
Every time I read that bit from Ira, I’m reminded that the only way to get from Point A to Point B is to start. Just start. It won’t be perfect and that’s okay. It took me 19 pitches before I landed my first “yes.” I could have given up, but instead, I gave myself permission to “fail forward,” using what I learned from the rejection to improve my odds the next time around. Rejection is part of the process.
I’ve refined the way I pitch over the years. I won’t reinvent the wheel with every pitch. I keep the structure the same (unless their submission guidelines dictate otherwise) and change up the customization.
Below you’ll find the general outline and framework I use to pitch a project. I think through all of these questions when I’m writing a pitch and then once I’ve written out a thorough summary, I go back and edit for brevity and clarity.
Editors’ time is precious and I want to be viewed as someone who is easy and thoughtful to work with. Most editors I know agree that they will always choose a good photographer who makes their lives easy over a great photographer who makes their work life more difficult. I aim for 350 words or fewer in total.
Before Your Write Your Pitch
Make sure you read the submission guidelines for the publication you’re pitching. Some publications only accept pitches via their website, some will have an email address for you to use when submitting, and others won’t list any criteria. If they don’t have submission criteria on their site, a brief email pitch is appropriate.
The single biggest mistake photographers (and writers, for that matter) make is not following directions. My friend Max is the photo editor and visuals director who heads up the photo team for the Indianapolis Star. He recently shared that his biggest source of frustration is that he receives letters and pitches that never follow the site’s guidelines. And, that pitches that do not follow protocol go right in the delete box without even a read.
I asked another photo editor friend of mine what her biggest complaint was about freelance photo pitches and she said, “I hate when I get two paragraphs about how experienced a photographer is instead of two short paragraphs about why this story is important, why my readers will care, and why it matters now.”
Anatomy of a Pitch
In simple order, the framework is:
Subject Line
Introduce yourself
Introduce your story
Tell them why they should care
Ask them to accept your pitch
The Subject Line
Short. Simple. No more than 5-6 main words.
Subject lines are your hook. This is how you convince them your email is worth opening. These should be similar to headlines you read in the news - enough to pique interest while still being true. No need to be overly outlandish or use five exclamation points, just be interesting. I also always include the word “PITCH” up front to alert them to what my email is. I didn’t always do this, but another photojournalist suggested it to me and my response rates greatly improved.
BAD SUBJECT LINE
PITCH: Feature story on red-cockaded woodpeckers rebounding in the southeast U.S.
BETTER SUBJECT LINE
PITCH: The Unlikely Ally of the Endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker
Introduce Yourself
In a brief introduction, describe your focus area of photography and photographic interests, and include a quick mention of your location and where you work. A lot of assignment-based work revolves around where you live or frequent, so putting your location on their radar is always a good idea.
Example: I’m a conservation photojournalist based in the southeast U.S., covering narratives that showcase the intersections where wildlife and people meet.
This is one sentence and it sums up the vast majority of the work I like to do and want to do more of. I leave it broad because there are endless stories that can fit into the way our relationships with nature and wildlife intersect. If I am at a conference or a dinner party and someone asks me what I do, this is a sentence you’re likely to hear me repeat. It’s one sentence and easy and sums it up without much explanation.
Introduce Your Story
This part of the pitch is where you set the stage and introduce your idea. Don’t ramble here. If you find that you’re having to explain the project in more than a few sentences so they can “get it,” then the development of your story is not ready to pitch. The same thing for a photograph - if you have to explain why a photo is cool or what is going on that makes the photo interesting, you should question if this is a good photo. Good pitches and good photos stand on their own without explanation.
Example: For the last two years, I’ve been documenting, with photos and video, a colony of endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers from courtship to raising their young. Declared endangered in 1970, these woodpeckers are on the rebound largely thanks to the efforts of an unusual ally: the U.S. military
Two sentences. In those two sentences, I’ve told the editor that:
I have photos of these endangered birds
I have video content (great for upselling for online and social media)
I have a robust collection of photos and videos thanks to two years of work
The collection covers the entirety of their breeding season, allowing them to showcase a timeline or make it part of a series
A twist - do most people think of the U.S. military as a partner to endangered species? Probably not.
Tell Them Why They Should Care
As author and speaker Simon Sinek says, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy WHY you do it.”
This is the part of the pitch where you show why the editor needs to care about your work. Why their readers will care. Why your angle is the one their readers will enjoy? Why it is relevant and timely.
Example: When the military leaders at Camp Lejeune, the main East Coast base of the Marine Corps, found out that their ability to continue military training exercises on their base could come to a grinding halt because of a bird, they realized they needed to reach out to an unlikely group of collaborators - conservation groups, local governments, and private landowners. Through their combined efforts across the southeast, the endangered woodpecker has grown from fewer than 1,500 family clusters to nearly 7,800 today.
The population of the red-cockaded woodpecker has rebounded over the last 50 years, enough so that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to lower the bird’s endangered status to “threatened.” But biologists and conservationists, including the biologist who manages the red-cockaded program at Camp Lejeune, disagree, arguing the Fish and Wildlife Service hasn’t even met the targets in its own recovery plan.
The red-cockaded woodpecker can only live in longleaf pine forests of the south/southeast region, of which Georgia has many. The renewed controversy over the status of this bird is a timely update to a story you ran about Georgia’s own investment in the red-cockaded woodpeckers back in August of 2018.
In this section, I’ve laid out what the heart of the story is in my first paragraph, and I’ve included one of the most important elements of a catchy story: the stakes.
When you’re writing your pitch, ask yourself, “What is at stake?” When we have something at stake, when our subject is taking a risk, it heightens our connection to the subject. It builds some tension and is why whenever we’re watching a movie or reading a book and we start “rooting” for someone, we’re drawn into that connection even more.
Stakes don’t have to be explosive and over-the-top or complicated, like a Hollywood film. The stakes in our photography can be as simple as a bird wanting to cross the water but an alligator is in the way. Or one bear chasing another because he wants the fish in the other bear’s mouth. Or, it could be like my story above. My stakes are two-fold: that the military was worried it would lose vital training grounds and that after the investment of billions of dollars and all the progress to help the red-cockaded woodpecker rebound, we could start moving backward with a new designation that’s on the table and all would be for naught.
The Ask
Once you’ve summarized your work and illustrated why it is a good fit for their readership and publication, you add the ask. This is a good time to highlight any key info that adds to the value of this pitch - interviews, if the project was part of you receiving a grant for it, etc.
Example: I have available a previously unpublished reported piece about this unusual partnership and how the life and behavior of this one bird species impact the entire health of the Georgia longleaf pine ecosystem. I interviewed two representatives from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a rep from the Longleaf Alliance, and Chuck Leavell, keyboardist for The Rolling Stones and a private longleaf pine conservationist here in Georgia. The gallery of photos and videos that complement the story is linked below.
The work is available if you are interested and if I do not receive a response by July 15, I will begin reaching out to other publications.
In this example, I’m going for a few things. First, when I tell the editor it is previously unpublished, I am adding value. No other publication has run my story or my photos so it’s unique work, not a remix of previous work. I also want to add value, so I show that I’ve already done some of the legwork with interviews with key experts and people involved. And, because I’m pitching a regional publication in the hopes it may get picked up nationally, I name drop Chuck Leavell, who is a client of mine and who was kind enough to take me on a tour of his longleaf pine farm while I interviewed him for this story.
I include a simple link to my gallery of images they can peruse and I add a tone of urgency by putting a deadline of five days later on it. Editors don’t always have time to follow up. Adding the date gives them an out to not respond with a rejection, but also lets them know I’m actively pursuing other publications if they don’t respond that they want my story. I gave them five days so they have time to see where it might fit and run it up the flagpole if needed. When an editor wants the story, they will usually write back within a day, if not faster. Five days for a big project felt like enough for them to consider the story, but not so long that I lose the time factor to pitch another publication.
You don’t want to pitch the same story to multiple editors at once. If both accept, you’ve not created a major problem for yourself and have gone from being “someone with a great pitch we want” to “someone who created a problem.”
The Ask (when you’re pitching photos only)
In my sample pitch, I’ve already written a piece to go with the photos, but that’s not going to be the case all the time. There are many of you reading this who aren’t interested in writing and want to pitch only photos.
When I’m pitching photos, I still go through the entire previous process and give some background and context to why I’m sending the photos, I just wrap it up a bit differently. Here is how I would have written my “ask” if I were pitching my photography only.
Example: I have available a collection of previously unpublished photographs of these birds through their entire breeding season, from courtship to the chicks fledging. As well, I have photos and video (raw and edited into a piece), that show their unique cooperative breeding behavior, where last year’s juveniles help the parents feed and tend to this year’s chicks.
The work is available if you’re interested and you can view the entire collection here: LINK TO SITE
That’s really all I change. Now they know that if they are working on a story about it at the publication, they have photos and video available, and if they weren’t planning a story yet, but found my pitch interesting, they have a collection of photos they can access. Many local, regional, and state publications don’t have the time or budget to send writers all over the place for every story. So by pitching my gallery, I’ve also given them a story idea their writer can do all via phone calls and email, no field time needed.
Putting It All Together
Here’s what the final pitch looks like as a whole:
To: Editor
From: Annalise
SUBJECT: The Unlikely Ally of the Endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker
Dear Editor First Name,
I’m a conservation photojournalist based in the southeast U.S., covering narratives that showcase the intersections where wildlife and people meet. For the last two years, I’ve been documenting, with photos and video, a colony of endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers from courtship through raising their young. Declared endangered in 1970, these woodpeckers are on the rebound largely thanks to the efforts of an unusual ally: the U.S. military.
When the military leaders at Camp Lejeune, the main East Coast base of the Marine Corps, found out that their ability to continue military training exercises on their base could come to a grinding halt because of a bird, they realized they needed to reach out to an unlikely group of collaborators - conservation groups, local governments, and private landowners.
The population of the red-cockaded woodpecker has rebounded over the last 50 years, enough so that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to lower the bird’s endangered status to “threatened.” But biologists and conservationists, including the biologist who manages the red-cockaded program at Camp Lejeune, disagree, arguing the Fish and Wildlife Service hasn’t even met the targets in its own recovery plan.
The red-cockaded woodpecker can only live in longleaf pine forests of the south/southeast region, of which Georgia has many. The renewed controversy over the status of this bird is a timely update to a story you ran about Georgia’s own investment in the red-cockaded woodpeckers back in August of 2018.
I have available a previously unpublished reported piece about this unusual partnership and how the life and behavior of this one bird species impact the entire health of the Georgia longleaf pine ecosystem. I interviewed two representatives from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a rep from the Longleaf Alliance, and Chuck Leavell, keyboardist for The Rolling Stones and a private longleaf pine conservationist here in Georgia. The gallery of photos and videos that complement the story is linked below.
The work is available if you are interested and if I do not receive a response by July 15, I will begin reaching out to other publications.
Kindly,
Annalise
Final Thoughts
My pitch is about 350 words long, which means it should take about a minute and a half for most people to read. If I were pitching photos only, it would be even shorter.
I originally pitched (with a different pitch and angle) this story to Audubon magazine. It was rejected, but the photo editor said she loved it and I should pitch it again with an update in a couple of years - they had run a story three years ago that had a similar bend to it and they like to leave about five years in between feature topics if possible. Not wanting to wait that long, I pitched it to a newspaper in Atlanta and they ran the story in their digital edition, along with a shorter version in their print edition. They licensed 10 of my photos to use with the piece and licensed three for social media use. They also licensed two “social media cuts” of my video work (those were a 30-second video I made and a 45-second version I edited).
A photo editor at CNN read the story and months later, they licensed three of my red-cockaded woodpecker photos directly from me, vs. stock photography sites. I never saw anything published, though, so I suspect the story they were working on was killed. NPR licensed two photos, one of which they used on their social media channels about a similar story a couple of months after my story went out.
In my case, every rejection I’ve had was worth going through to get the results this piece did. I put a lot of time and effort into that story and had no guarantees that it would amount to a paid opportunity in the end. But it was a personal project that paid
Pitching gets easier the more you do it, especially if you aren’t used to promoting yourself and your work. But you can’t expect anyone else to believe in your work unless you do.