In the midst of the pandemic, we sat down with chief tech correspondent at Insider, Eugene Kim, and talked to him more about his role covering Amazon, and more, on the Coffee with a Journalist podcast.
For those that don’t know, Eugene has covered Amazon for quite some time during his stints at The Information and CNBC. While the company is a focus for Eugene, he also covers the various spaces Amazon is “dominating” including e-commerce, cloud computing, wearables, and healthcare.
Read below for our list of 6 tips you can reference to pitch Eugene Kim from Insider:
He doesn’t cover broad news
Eugene starts off the episode by sharing with us more about his senior role as chief tech correspondent. It comes with “big shoes” to fill being in a senior position and he says, “You have to kind of live up to the title in some ways.”
What that also means is that he isn’t covering just any ordinary story about Amazon. He is more focused on background intel and insider stories, and any sort of tie-in to the company or related industries.
It doesn’t need to be an exclusive
Eugene told us 9 times out of 10 he’s writing about Amazon and that if you’re sharing information with him that’s relevant it doesn’t need to be a scoop or an exclusive. Unique data points about the marketplace, for example, are viable and distinctive enough for him to sink his teeth into.
Data is good
Building off the tip above, Eugene shared with us an example of an agency Amazon works with that pitched him at the time of the recording. Here is what he shared:
“In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, one Amazon agency that works with a lot of Amazon sellers reached out with a pretty interesting data point, a couple of charts. And I thought that was pretty interesting. It wasn't reported elsewhere. So, we got some comments from their VP and turned it into a quick post.”
Desksides or in-person meetups are ignored
At one point during the interview our host, Beck Bamberger, asks Eugene about receiving an email from a potential source offering him a desk side. If you’re not familiar with what a deskside is, it’s a term used in the past to describe someone literally sitting at a journalist’s desk to speak with them.
Nowadays, these have been replaced with coffee chats, Zoom hangouts, or even happy hours, However, for Eugene, it’s not something he’s open to. Instead, he’d rather speak over the phone.
Competitors have a chance at the spotlight
As most of us know, everyone is trying to compete with Amazon when it comes to the many industries they operate in. He mentions that other large corporations like Walmart and Shopify generate huge readership and are of interest to him.
After peaking on his author/bio page, I saw he’s covered other companies like Uber, Starbucks, Google, and even El Salvador within the last 3 months.
Keep it short
Eugene says, “...usually the good ones [pitches] are actually shorter. They’re straight to the point maybe they have bullet points.”
There’s a reason we designed OnePitch with a journalist in mind. Although many journalists have their own unique preferences we continuously hear that shorter pitches that are easily scannable tend to have a higher success rate than those that look like a page out of a novel.
________
If you missed our episode with Eugene, you can listen to the full recording here and view notes from the episode about his inbox, pitches, how he writes stories, and more.
To subscribe to our semi-weekly podcast newsletter, head to the podcast page and sign up now, and be sure to check out our new journalist spotlight video series.
Want more tips from journalists?
Click below to subscribe to Coffee with a Journalist and receive emails highlighting reporters, journalists, and editors and their individual pitching preferences.
