Colleen DeBaise is the Executive Editor at The Story Exchange–a publication dedicated to elevating women’s voices– along with being a podcast host and published author.
During the episode, Colleen talks about her process of skimming pitch subject lines, an example of how a story took shape based on a press release, why she’s excited for in-person events to return, and more.
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Click below to listen to the full conversation and read below for highlights from the interview:
[00:06:09] BB: Mm-hmm. Okay. So, tell you what's inside the subject line. Yes. Give you the preview. Okay. Now, once you are inside with the pitch, are there any elements you like to see consistently? I know, you have a couple of examples you were going to share with us.
[00:06:24] CDB: Yes. So, I'll talk about one –
[00:06:27] BB: Not naming names.
[00:06:27] CDB: Well, no, unless you –
[00:06:27] BB: Hey, if you have a great shout out for publicist friends, yes, great name.
[00:06:33] CDB: I don’t even know who the publicist is, actually. But in this particular case, I can tell you why it got my attention. So, I can tell you the content of it, if that works. Because we have a focus on women, we like to look at entrepreneurial women, and we're always interested in what like a woman business owner, or what any sort of woman entrepreneur is doing. If it's a well-known woman, we know that that could make a nice, easy, quick take for us where we can write that up, and it's something that might trend well for us, and might bring some traffic to our site, so that some of our longer pieces also get some eyeballs on it.
But for instance, we got a press release the other day, and the subject line said, “PRESS RELEASE”, all in caps, so I knew right what it was. It was about Giada De Laurentiis, who's a celebrity chef. Right away, there's a name I know, and it was about her announcing a line of pasta. That hit a lot of sweet spots for me. I knew it was a press release. I saw that was a well-known woman, and that she was announcing a product line. So, there's an entrepreneurial woman doing something innovative, and that made for a very easy turnaround of content for us. We did a quick little piece on it. Something that was also nice when I opened it up is that not only was there a press release, but there were photos. Everything was just made so, I guess, maybe you could call it turnkey. Everything was very easy and it was just easy to turn that into a short post for our site.
[00:08:21] BB: Okay. Oh, that was a great example. Do you have another?
[00:08:25] CDB: I do. Let's see.
[00:08:27] BB: We love examples.
[00:08:28] CDB: Another one that I think is just – actually, I have two other examples. Well, let's see how much time we have. Something that I actually have been eager for, especially since we are post pandemic now, is I am really eager for media invites. I really feel like my networking took a hit in years we're all working remotely. I still spend a lot of time working remotely. So, I'm really eager for media invites and I don't see half as many events as I used to see. But I really want to see events coming back, and invites where the media is welcome to attend, or maybe it's an event for media.
One that caught my attention, this was last year, actually. The Collision Conference which is a big conference in Toronto, the organizers of that reached out to probably thousands of journalists but they did the reach. They reached out, they put in the subject line. They put Collision 2022, Media Pass, making it clear that here if you are a member of the media, we want you to attend. We are your point person. This is what you're going to need to do. If you want to attend, here's the form you need to fill out. Here's the link to the schedule of events. Here are the speakers. It was all right in there and made it very easy.
So, I ended up going to the conference and ended up doing a lot, got tons of story ideas, did quite a few pieces that I filed from the conference and ended up following up and doing a lot of profiles of really cool innovative women that I had met or heard at the conference. Yes, so things like that have definitely been catching my eye. I always like to kind of joke about this. But journalists can totally be bought by free drinks or coffee or something like that. If there's anything like that, stick that in the subject line too, that will definitely get the journalist attention. I'm kidding about being bought, by the way. We can't really be bought.
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[00:11:34] BB: So, you gave us some great examples. Wonderful. Are there ever exclusives or embargoes you're interested in?
[00:11:41] CDB: Not in my position now. I formerly worked for some pretty big-name publications. I'm a former editor for The Wall Street Journal, and I also worked for Entrepreneur Magazine and Inc., and Business Week. When I worked for those more high-profile publications where the competition is pretty intense, I think that was always of interest. Although, if memory serves when I was at The Journal, there were a lot of rules about whether we could agree to embargoes and things like that. But I do know that when you work for the bigger name publications, that's always, always attractive to know that you're being offered something exclusively.
[00:12:31] BB: Oh, of course. Okay, good. For everyone to note. Colleen, you already mentioned actually a little bit of like, “Hey, I like events. I want to be there if they're good quality stuff.” Is that the way to make a relationship with you? Or do you have a technique you prefer over that?
[00:12:47] CDB: For me, that's still how I prefer to meet a really great PR person and begin a relationship with them. I feel that maybe it's old school of me, but I do really like being able to put a face with a name, and it's just – I just think it's the best way, still, to build that relationship, with some exceptions. I have quite a few. I'm thinking of different PR people I've worked with over the years. And yes, but I think at this point, I think, all the ones that have really been great, I have met with at some point or another, so I still really value that in person connection. I just said there's nothing like it.
[00:14:09] BB: Great. Video or phone interview?
[00:14:11] CDB: Video Interview.
[00:14:14] BB: Oh, bullet points or paragraphs?
[00:14:16] CDB: Bullet points.
[00:14:17] BB: Okay, yes. Do you have a why?
[00:14:19] CDB: They’re just easier to see.
[00:14:21] BB: Yes, me too. Short or long pitches?
[00:14:24] CDB: It depends. If it's something – well, gosh, this is supposed to be rapid fire. A short pitch to get me interested, but maybe even an attachment that's a press release that has all the information I might want, or a link to where it can find more information. So, you don't want it to be too short.
[00:14:46] BB: Okay. Images attached or Dropbox zip file? You're just alluding to that.
[00:14:51] CDB: If it's one or two images, they can be attached. Anything more than that definitely Dropbox.
[00:14:58] BB: Email or Twitter DM?
[00:15:00] CDB: I don't do Twitter. So, email.
[00:15:02] BB: Actually, we got to update that, by the way.
[00:15:05] CDB: Yes. What is the now? Freaking X or whatever?
[00:15:08] BB: X. I was just like Threads, no, X. Jesus. Okay.
[00:15:12] CDB: I am using LinkedIn more now.
[00:15:15] BB: Me too. Yes, yes.
[00:15:17] CDB: There's just too many issues with Twitter. I've been getting some pitches on LinkedIn and I feel like there's a professionalism to LinkedIn. Yes, so I would be receptive to LinkedIn of any of the platforms.
[00:15:31] BB: One follow up or multiple?
[00:15:34] CDB: Multiple because –
[00:15:36] BB: Oh, multiple?
[00:15:37] CDB: I miss half of them. They fall through the cracks. Yes, it's fine.
[00:15:42] BB: Wow, I almost spilled my coffee for that one. Okay.
[00:15:44] CDB: I'm just being realistic, because I'm going to miss so much stuff that it doesn't hurt to do multiple.
[00:15:52] BB: There you go. Direct or creative subject lines?
[00:15:54] CDB: Direct.
[00:15:55] BB: Press release or media kit?
[00:15:58] CDB: Both.
[00:15:59] BB: Time that you usually read pitches, or NA, all the time?
[00:16:05] CDB: Well, the time, like, how much time do I spend reading a pitch? Like one pitch?
[00:16:10] BB: Yes. This refers to do you have like, you know what, at 8am every day, eastern standard time, I go through, I do the whole thing? Or is it just like constant? Some people are just like, “Yes, it’s just constant. Just constant.”
[00:16:22] CDB: They're constantly coming into my inbox, which in for my particular purposes, if I were a PR person, I wouldn't bother to send me anything between the hours of like 6pm and 8am, just because I don't check my emails much at night. But I do a big search in the morning when I'm reading all my newsletters and things like that. But throughout the day, if things pop up, I'll be in front of my computer. ad I'll be looking at my inbox. So, I miss a lot of stuff that comes in like overnight.
[00:16:59] BB: Good to know. So, don't send it overnight. Sounds like? And then what types of sources do you look for, if any?
[00:17:07] CDB: Actually, this reminds me of the third pitch I was going to share with you, which was an expert source and it made it clear. Well, I really liked this one. It was, I got pitched earlier this year, when there was sort of a big news story that Target, the big chain store had Pride merchandise, and it was being – which was great. It was for Pride Month, and nice to see. Then, there were a lot of complaints about it from I think in certain states. Then Target was moving some of the merchandise to the back of the store, and then that was causing some controversy.
Because we write content for entrepreneurial women, some of whom are running businesses, we like to sometimes provide services or tip articles about should you put Pride merchandise in your stores? Or how do you best celebrate Pride in your store? So, what was nice was that when I – so, I got a pitch that was that reference, the Target's sort of bad decision to be moving its Pride merchandise, and the subject line mentioned Target and mentioned Pride, and it mentioned that there was an expert who could speak on this. I thought that's great. So, that caught my attention. It was nice to know that there was an expert available, and I think that even in the pitch there was a very good quote that we could use as we're kind of building out a story that we can use in the story too.
[00:18:44] BB: Good.
[00:18:45] CDB: Yes. I forgot what your original question was. But I would say expert is great.
[00:18:49] BB: Yeah. Experts. Do you like experts? Clearly delineated why et cetera.
[00:18:54] CDB: Yes, as long as it makes sense for our coverage area.
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