Pitching for Rookies

May 25, 2011 2:13 AM

I have the pitch for a freelance story idea, now how should I throw it?

Hello! I've read all the previous posts about the content of pitches, and had success using mediabistro's "How to Pitch" series. But now that I have other ideas for other magazines not included in mediabistro's listings (and ones in the UK/Ireland that aren't listed), I'm not exactly sure exactly the mechanics of pitching to these unknowns. Is there someone's name on the masthead I should be looking for? Or if there are no emails for anyone or submission guidelines, what should I do next? Is there some super secret resource about this somewhere?

Thanks again for everything! All the answers to my previous questions have been amazingly helpful.

posted by caoimhe to Writing & Language (2 answers total)

On the masthead, you should generally be looking for the editor. Sometimes there are specific department editors -- for example, if you have a story about a business, you might want to pitch it to the business editor. You'll want a line in your pitch explaining why you thought this person would particularly be interested.

If you can't find any submission guidelines or email addresses, I've found the good old-fashioned "call the office and ask the office manager where to direct pitches" approach works pretty well. Good luck!
posted by jeffmshaw at 4:43 AM on May 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

The best way to do this is by referrals, for the most part. Identify someone who's written there, in the department you're interested in. Ask them who to pitch.

Also, you can pretty obviously ID editors on the mastheads. ("Senior editor" is usually a good bet; not top of the masthead, but not "contributing editor" either. (Contributing editors rarely have anything to do with the magazine.))

And the good news is that most companies have uniform email address formulas.

But there is no secret resource, pretty much! Magazines think that they don't want to hear from "outsiders," which is their mistake usually.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 6:58 AM on May 25, 2011 [1 favorite]