Today, we’re joined by Alexandra S. Levine, a technology reporter for POLITICO focused on privacy and data issues in the U.S. and around the world. She covers the fights between Silicon Valley and Washington over companies’ handling of data — including efforts to create rules around the collecting, sharing and monetizing of Americans’ information as well as the tensions between what’s going on at the state, federal and international level. As of late, she has been most closely following political and policy debates around children’s safety online and AI tools like facial recognition. Prior to joining POLITICO in 2019, Alexandra spent three years as a staff reporter at The New York Times. Tech. And when not on deadline, Alex can be found ghostwriting wedding toasts under the pseudonym, “The Toastess.”

During the episode, Alex tells us about the wild array of pitches she receives, a lesson she learned from her professor in journalism school, her side career as a speechwriter, and more.

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

Her Work Inbox  

[00:03:28] BB: Mm-hmm. Helpful. Alex, as a tech reporter, how was your inbox? 

[00:03:34] AL: It's such a good question, Beck, because I was just having a conversation with my colleagues recently about how it's become incredibly difficult to actually get stuff in my inbox that is even relevant to my beat. I mean, I want to say I get probably just north of 100 emails a day. And if I take a few days off, or I take a week off for a vacation, I'll come back and it's probably closer to 1000.

“And so for me, I typically will mass delete emails just based on subject lines that I see is not relevant.” 

But I was just commenting to one of [inaudible 00:03:59] the other day about how, for whatever reason, I want to say in the past six months or a year, my inboxes become less and less relevant to me. And the pitches, for whatever reason, have become less and less relevant to technology more generally. So this morning alone, for example, I got pitches on restaurants, on wildlife policy, on music festivals, on the dangers of gas exposure. Those are just a few.

And so what happens is a combination of either I'm deleting. I find that I'm deleting so many emails before I even open them. Or the pitches that are actually really useful to my beat and to our coverage, I find they're actually just harder to get to and easier to miss because of the deluge of other material that's just not fully relevant.

[00:04:47] BB: What then do you do? You mass delete? Your file? What do you do? 

[00:04:51] AL: So I am definitely somebody who needs to have my inbox clean. And I know others, like with their text messages, they'll have 100 text messages or 1328 unread emails, maybe 14,000. I cannot allow that to happen for my own sanity and organization. And so for me, I typically will mass delete emails just based on subject lines that I see is not relevant. So if I see wildlife policy in the first three words of an email pitch, I delete that. I care greatly about wildlife policy, but it's not relevant to my beat.

And so I find that mass deleting is one thing. And then sometimes what I'll do is, when I actually do find the pitch that is more relevant to my beat, even if it's not something I'm covering immediately, if it's something more generally that's in my space, I will log the contact info or log sort of the theme of the pitch into an Excel sheet. It's not external. It's just like the little thing that I use to keep track of my own stuff. I'll jot it down. And I think a lot of times I'll return to that later.

Her Thoughts on Pitches 

[00:06:16] AL: I keep an Excel sheet. It's pretty embarrassing, actually. It's really low-tech. It's got a lot of colored headers. And the way that I think of it is sort of when you've got a really messy bedroom where your stuff is all over the floor, because it's all over the floor, you know exactly where everything is. And only you can know how to find everything. That's sort of the look of the Excel sheet that I've got going. So I have tabs for com people and PR people. Then I have another tab for experts on a given subject or people that might be particularly helpful for a specific story. Many of these people are sources that I've built up over the years. But many of these people are are also just contacts that I've never actually spoken to, but that I think would be potentially great people to speak to for a future story.

And so especially when I'm in a breaking news situation where I need to have somebody on-hand quickly to weigh in on something, I find that – Of course, going back what I've spoken to before, it’s extremely helpful. But if it happens to be on a topic that I have not covered in-depth so much, then having these names on-hand can be really valuable.

“I have tabs for com people and PR people. Then I have another tab for experts on a given subject or people that might be particularly helpful for a specific story. Many of these people are sources that I've built up over the years. But many of these people are are also just contacts that I've never actually spoken to, but that I think would be potentially great people to speak to for a future story.”

[00:07:22] BB: I love this Excel sheet. This is some novel and old school. But hey, it's working for you. Usually I've heard more people do kind of, okay, they had filings. Some people, some people I should say, have attempted to do coding and filing. And then others have just used a very basic, “Well, I just search my inbox.” Forget the filing, forget the organization. It's just a landline of just all my sources in there somewhere that I just search for. And I'm like, “Well, efficient.” I do that too.

“You don't want to necessarily pitch things when people aren't paying attention to them. But at the same time, there is something to be said for sometimes surfacing things when it doesn't feel like everything is exploding or you're stepping on a minefield.”

[00:07:53] AL: I find that I really am a creature of habit. And I like to joke that as a tech reporter, as far as tech reporters go, I'm probably one of the more low-tech tech reporters as far as the way that I stay organized. I love writing things down on paper. I love using – And I love using my Excel sheet, which is just extremely analog. And there's no there's nothing hype about it whatsoever. There's no code. There're no formulas. There's no equal signs and asterisks and stuff like you got on other Excel models. It's very, very 101. But it really helps me stay on top of things.

How She Writes Stories 

[00:02:11] BB: You're good to go. All right, we're fueled up. I'm drinking coffee here in my lovely glass mug. So half of us have coffee here. This is good. Alex, could you tell us – Actually I've been starting this with a couple people more frequently on this podcast. Just to make sure everyone's on the same page. Tell us about the coverage of Politico. What would you say Politico covers?

[00:02:35] AL: Politico’s coverage, Politico’s bread and butter is really policy and politics. So we differentiate ourselves by really gearing our coverage toward D.C. insiders and people who are interested in going deeper in various policy areas from technology, which is what I cover, to healthcare, to education, to transportation, to agriculture and climate, to energy, to many other issues that are front and center in Congress and in Washington, DC more broadly.

“What are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are the challenges you're facing? What is technology doing to make everything in your practice better? What is it doing to make your experience at the hospital worse? All these sorts of things.”

[00:08:26] BB: Oh, okay. Okay. So within that Excel sheet, let's just play this out, when have you used it to execute a story? Just to give people an idea.

[00:08:37] AL: I've used it to execute a story when I'm looking for a very specific source to speak to. So one of the issues that I cover a lot, for example, is facial recognition technology. I was pursuing a scoop late last week that I really was intent on pushing out before the weekend hit on facial recognition. And when you hit – I've always been told this about reaching out to either editors to pitch editors. I've also been told us about reaching out to sources to comment on a story. And I feel that it's probably like a helpful thing as well from the PR side of things.

“...I really believe like speaking to people who are living and breathing this stuff every day during a time when you're not in an emergency fire drill situation is the best way to find story ideas. And a lot of times people will say things that they think is not all that interesting to them...”

One of my professors in journalism school once told me never reach out to anybody before noon on a Monday and afternoon on a Friday. And I think that in the 24-hour news cycle, you have to assume that many people are certainly going to be responding to emails before noon on a Monday or afternoon on a Friday. But I think to maximize responsiveness, it really is a good rule of thumb that I've tried to stick to

Last Friday, though, I was pursuing a story. And I knew that getting anybody to comment on something late on a Friday afternoon, when it was already dark outside on the East Coast, was not going to be easy. And so I sort of went through my Excel sheet and I looked for all of the people who I either have spoken to on facial recognition or people who I've been meeting to reach out to on facial recognition. And I really pinged a good at least half dozen people. 

[00:09:59] BB: Okay. What was the response? 

[00:10:01] AL: I got what I needed. I should say, I don't think that that's the best strategy always. Like I don't believe in mass emailing people just to get a soundbite. I really don't believe in that. But I think that because of the timing of it and because it was time sensitive, and it was a scoop, and I wanted to make sure that it got out sooner than later, my best bet was to just really try like half a dozen people at the same time.

________

For Alexandra, subject lines can make or break your chances of her opening your email pitch. If you’re lucky enough to catch her attention then you may end up on her spreadsheet of sources. She also recommends keeping an eye (and ear) out for breaking news and to make sure your pitch does not catch her during these peak news events.

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