Aarthi Swaminathan from MarketWatch. As the housing reporter, Aarthi covers real estate and travel.

During the episode, Aarthi talks about specific pitches she’s looking for related to housing, where you can find her source callouts, why she’s on the lookout for new data, and more

Follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Click below to listen to the full conversation and read below for highlights from the interview:

What She Covers

[0:02:49] BB: Then specifically, more into your beat. You mentioned personal, so housing, student loans. I'm looking at a few of your pieces of coverage, for example. You're talking about, oh, gosh, home sales falling. Are home price is also going to be doing that? I saw also, you had a piece, only a tenth of mortgages have an interest rate above 6%. Blah, blah, blah. What do you want to get pitched?

[0:03:15] AS: For me, anything and everything to do with housing, I like to get pitched. Recently, I put out something on Twitter saying, I'm looking for pitches from academic. If you represent an academic, or a professor, their research, I want to know. Anything to do with mortgage rates, home prices, home sales. I'm very interested in insurance rates, homeowners insurance, flood insurance, stuff like that. Anything to affect the homeowner today and the aspiring homeowner, that's something that I'm looking for.

[0:03:46] BB: Got you. To double tap on that a bit, you mentioned academics, or people who have research. Can you expand a little bit more into that? Perhaps, for instance, not a company who's like, “We have thoughts about mortgages. They're going to go up.” Not that. Drill in a little bit more on what precisely that expertise would look like.

[0:04:07] AS: Yeah. A lot of the data I work with is very complicated, right? Housing starts and home sales and everything. I need to explain that to people. I have talked to people with the leading housing companies. What more senior colleagues and I are thinking of is looking for independent commentary, academics who spent an entire year looking about what are ideal mortgage rates should be. Someone who is not so much interested in selling. You talked to a mortgage company and they give you great insights, but you're always going away thinking, “I think you're saying that to improve sales.”

I want someone who's just more independent and again, just has very, very deep knowledge. That's why I put it out. I put out all these calls on social media. To be honest, I don't know which is the best medium these days. I don't even know if Twitter, people use it.

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Subject Lines that Work

[0:06:52] BB: Many people do. Many people do. Okay. Then is the subject line at all important? You said, you look at pretty much all of them. Do you open every email?

[0:07:02] AS: There are some subject lines immediately that turn me off. Just a sampling. If it's just a press release about something, like a new launch or something, I just immediately archive it. If it's a company, FOMC preview, I'm not going to read that, because I just – unless, I search it and housing is within that node. I'll read it. Most of these, I just immediately archive it. Future of mass transportation, those are not on my beat. I just archive it. Stuff that I do read anything with the word data, or MarketWatch in the subject line.

[0:07:40] BB: Oh, okay. Good tips. It says MarketWatch and it says – so it'd be like, “Aarthi, fresh data on housing market for MarketWatch.” That would be one you're like, “Yes.”

[0:07:49] AS: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[0:07:50] BB: Look at that. Look at that. Okay.

[0:07:54] AS: Any new data. Just the word new data. If it's really new data, don't trick me by giving me data from someone else.

Rapid Fire Pitching Preferences

[0:13:03] BB: It's okay. It's okay. All right, Aarthi. I have a rapid-fire question section here, and just give us your quick response for these. Are you ready? Video or phone interview?

[0:13:16] AS: Phone. Phone interview.

[0:13:18] BB: Bullet points, or paragraphs?

[0:13:20] AS: Paragraphs.

[0:13:21] BB: Paragraphs. Why? This is a rare answer.

[0:13:28] AS: Because I can see the sentence in its full construction. If you just give me bullets, it's just like headlines. Paragraph, I can get your point fully.

[0:13:38] BB: Okay. Okay. Short, or long pitches?

[0:13:41] AS: Short.

[0:13:41] BB: Images attached, or Dropbox zip file?

[0:13:44] AS: Images attached.

[0:13:47] BB: Okay. Email or Twitter DM?

[0:13:50] AS: I don't use Twitter anymore. Email.

[0:13:51] BB: Okay. That's email. There you go. One follow-up, or multiple?

[0:13:56] AS: Oh, just one.

[0:13:56] BB: Just one and done. Direct, or creative subject lines?

[0:14:00] AS: Direct.

[0:14:01] BB: Press release, or media kits?

[0:14:04] AS: No. Press release.

[0:14:04] BB: Time you read your pitches. Or let's just say, most likely, optimal time.

[0:14:11] AS: In the morning.

[0:14:12] BB: 24/7 in the morning. Morning. Morning. Early morning.

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