The Business Pitch

"Reporting Local, Reaching Global" was a free panel discussion on business news hosted at Plant Zero by Aaron Kremer, founder of Richmond BizSense and notorious anti-Twitterite. (Can you be a Luddite if you operate a website?)

Panelists were freelancers Phaedra Hise and Maya Smart and former Media Generalists Robert Powell (now editing Virginia Business), Sean Ryan (now a PR flak with Hodges Partnership), and Pam Feibish, current activity unknown but former T-D business editor.

Here's what I learned.

Kremer wisely had several prepared questions to start the program. By the time they were answered, the audience was ready with their own, and if they had stiffed him and asked nothing, he still would have provided a substantial panel discussion, so that was good thinking.

Press releases, faxed or mailed, remain uselessly dead. Press releases sent as attachments to emails are on life support. Time of death will be called momentarily. Your best shot at a pitch now is in the SUBJECT LINE of an email, because most editors get so many emails, they can't open and read them anymore. Feibish said she used to get 300 a day.

Pitching your story in the subject line is shorter than an elevator pitch. It's shorter than a Tweet. It's a semi-tweet. All the more reason you should be on Twitter, learning how to say what you have to say in 140 characters or less, because less is not going to be more in this new media age. It's going to be ALL.

If you're pitching yourself or your client as a story, hang it up. Better to pitch yourself or your client as a source a la Larry Sabato who can be available to comment on any story the reporter is working on. When you call freelancers, ask only, "what are you working on?" and "what do you need now?"

As for being the story, you must have a narrative, a struggle, a trial by fire, from which you rise like the phoenix, triumphant and whole. You must be willing to divulge all your secrets and finances. You must contact reporters when you don't want anything from them and just be their friend. You must not call them on the phone because they are too busy. But you must call them when you have breaking news, especially if they are a frequent publisher.

You must never say "no comment" because it only makes them desire the words you do not want to say all the more. If you are in a scandalous mess, better to call the media yourself before they hear about it elsewhere, call all the media, and try to contain your bad news in one 24-hour news cycle. (In my opinion, confessing on Friday night is always good. The second-stringers are manning the media over the weekend and really don't want to work that hard.)

Panel discussions are always lighter learning experiences than one guy/woman with a PowerPoint and a laser light, pounding in the truths of our time, but this one wasn't bad and I went home with a new resolve to keep lobbying my workplace to give up the press release attachment. Also, the price was right and I had a Pepsi and some chips.