Today on Coffee with a Journalist we’re joined by Elisabeth Buchwald, a personal finance reporter formerly for MarketWatch and now reporting at USA Today. Elisabeth started at MarketWatch as a reporting intern in 2018, and previously was a news desk & production intern for CNBC. 

During the episode, Elisabeth shares specific tips about subject lines, her honest thoughts on exclusives vs embargoes, random places she gets inspiration for her stories, and more.

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

Her Work Inbox

[00:02:52] BB: Good. Okay, now that we got the win-win on that, your inbox, what is it looking like these days with pitches?

[00:03:00] EB: Oh, my god. It's all across the board. I'm a zero inboxer. I love being that way, which means I'll delete things as they come in, simply based on subject line. Then there's the emails that I kind of saved. I put them in reserve for when I’ll need them on a rainy day or not really rainy day. But there’s news, and you're kind of in a crunch, and you're like, “Okay, who do I reach out to?” So I’ll kind of search around in my inbox and just pull up. Supreme Court hearing on vaccine mandate, yeah.

“​​The way I think of a subject line, and this is kind of extreme, but every time I watch the Superbowl, and I'm not a huge football fan, so I'm watching for commercial and for the halftime show. But it always amazes me each year. When the stats come out, I'm like, “This is how much a 15-second ad costs.” So you really got to make the most of that time.”

[00:03:33] BB: Yeah. You kind of have a hybrid approach, which, first of all, you are in the extreme of the inbox zero because there's few in the podcast that actually ascend to that level. So there's that one. But secondly, you also do a filing of some sort. Now, some people have said they've got flags and color coding systems and folders and all this whole thing. Do you do that? Or is it more just like a running file of stuff, and you just use your search within your inbox is how to find people? 

[00:04:03] EB: Yeah. It's way more. But I think in my earliest days, I was like, “Oh, my god. I'm going to be so organized with folders.” Actually, I still have folders from some of my first stories. I thought it would be cute to do like, “Oh, the gig economy story that I'm working on. Let’s put all those emails there.” It just got too cumbersome. So it all kind of stays in the inbox, which sounds like a bad plan, but it works really well for me because I can search around easily.

Her Thoughts on Subject Lines

[00:05:32] EB: If you're wasting those 15 seconds with garbage, that's a lot of money out the door. So it started that my inbox was not that extreme at all, but I think, and it’s probably the case for a lot of journalists, that your subject line or the subject line you receive is valuable real estate. You don't want to waste that with words that are taking up space that aren't helping you understand precisely what the person is pitching about. So I gave a couple examples in the video, which I'm happy to give again. I never understand why pitches need to say pitch, and it's usually in capital letters, brackets. I don't know who decided that that was the style. For some reason, it's that. Study, reveal, news, exclusive, survey, all that is junk. So if you've cut that out, you're probably going to get to your pitch a lot faster. All caps is not necessary. That also takes up more space. Capital letters, in general, isn't that necessary maybe for your first word.

But the other one tip I have, which I believe mentioned on the video was that it should – If there is a company that you're pitching on behalf of and you only know them because you're working with them as a client and you're pitching because they're the client, all of that, but you wouldn't know them otherwise, that means that the company should not be in the subject line. If you wouldn't know them, otherwise, I don't know them otherwise. I strongly believe that you should just cut out as much garbage and tell me. There's a survey that says this or we have experts available on X stuff, pretending that your company's like something I should know about, to put one point.

[00:07:16] BB: Yes. That's a good tip. So now, what is the best subject line you ever have received? Or maybe one recently where you like, “Damn, that was good.”?

“I never understand why pitches need to say pitch, and it's usually in capital letters, brackets. I don't know who decided that that was the style. For some reason, it's that. Study, reveal, news, exclusive, survey, all that is junk. So if you've cut that out, you're probably going to get to your pitch a lot faster. All caps is not necessary. That also takes up more space. Capital letters, in general, isn't that necessary maybe for your first word.”

[00:07:28] EB: Well, okay, so there's a couple. Sorry, I'm excited because it's so hard to think of things off the top of your head. But the things that kind of make me laugh and are memorable to me is where people – So I have in my Twitter bio proud midnight snacker, which I really am. It's kind of a problem, and I've recently owned up to it, which I'm happy about. People used to be like, “I heard you eating at night,” and I was like, “What? You didn't hear me.” I'm like, “You know what? Proud midnight snacker.” So I found some people pitching me. It's very smart and crafty but kind of like put in the subject line like, “Hello from a fellow midnight snacker.” 100% chance that I will click that email, even if it's not a pitch that ends up being useful to me. But I'll usually respond like appreciate the personalized effort. I think –

Her Thoughts on Exclusives & Embargoes 

[00:08:16] BB: Yeah, that is super personalized. Okay. So like the midnight snack drop in there. Okay, that is valuable real estate in the subject line but effective real estate. So I'll go with that. Okay, I like that. That's good. What about exclusives versus embargoes, a hot topic amongst the journalists’ crowd?

[00:08:38] EB: Yes. I find that embargoes are helpful. But I think they're used. They're overused in journalism. In terms of pitching journalists, I think people or PR people think that that kind of makes it more compelling if there is an embargo. That word, I remember learning it as a kid. It was like trade stuff and the British and the US and all of that, the colonies. It's weird hearing it so much now, but obviously I'm used to it. I think it's not that important, but it's just something that we've gotten used to. Sometimes, it's quite helpful to be like okay if I'm in between stories today, and I have some random piece that's on embargo. At least I could get a jumpstart on that. It'll make the editors happy if I get a story done that they can set to pre-publish. It’s kind of nice. I do think it's overused. It's never actually an exclusive in my experience.

“Sometimes, it's quite helpful to be like okay if I'm in between stories today, and I have some random piece that's on embargo. At least I could get a jumpstart on that.”

I mean, there are some times when I had before – Actually, I once worked with a company that did like an exclusive survey to help support my story that I was working on, and that I really appreciated, and that I knew was exclusive. But the other stuff that I get, it doesn't. First of all, I've never spoken to them before in most cases. So we don't have that relationship for them to like exclusively deliver me pitches. Even still, I know you're sending it to other organizations. Again, it's not necessary to say that you're giving me an exclusive when it's not.

[00:10:12] BB: Yeah. So just to be clear on that, because this is like somehow debated, which kind of blows my mind, exclusive should just be you're giving it to one person, one person. That's it. Not one person with this tip and then one person with that angle and then one person with this thing. But it sounds like, Elisabeth, for you, you're not down with embargoes and not really down with exclusives.

[00:10:35] EB: Yeah. I mean, embargoes I have more flexibility with just it comes in handy. But I think it's just overused. I don't like people using it just to – What is the purpose of the embargo in the first place? But, yeah, again, I'd rather kind of just have the information without it trying to appear more elite or whatever.

How She Writes Stories

[00:11:21] BB: I'm glad we demystified that. So, Elisabeth, for the stories you do, and maybe it comes in the midnight time when you are snacking, how do you come up with the stories you like to pursue and do? You have one on inflation right now, for example, which of course that's a topic on everyone's mind. You have a lot of about millions of people are quitting their jobs. There's all these other topics and stuff. So inflation seems to be a topic of sort right now that you're covering. But are there times and inspiration that hit you for a more like in-depth story you want to do, or how did the stories come about to you?

“I didn't quite get on because there's some overflow but minimum for max six or seven [stories per week]. On a really, really busy news week, like eight.”

[00:11:57] EB: Well, first, midnight is not my like hour that I'm really able to think about anything besides snack. I’ll literally wake myself up in the middle of the night and grab a snack. But it’s so unhealthy. I'm trying to get out of the habit. But anyway, I get story ideas from other stories sometimes. There's sometimes an interesting stat in, for instance, a Wall Street Journal story, and I'm like, “Oh, I wonder why they didn't expand upon that more. But, hey, maybe I could.” I also get story ideas from just listening. I used to kind of put my headphones in all the time when I was on the subway or leaving my room, and I try to actually use those opportunities to hear what people are talking about on the subway or waiting in line for COVID test or at Trader Joe's where I was yesterday. But a lot of story ideas too come from just personal experiences. For instance, again, when I was at Trader Joe's yesterday, the shelves were entirely bare. I even tweeted about it, and it was crazy. It was flashbacks to March 2020. Thinking about it now –

00:14:06] BB: That is a story indeed. Okay. Of all the stories you do, right, and you pump out a lot, by the way, Elisabeth, you're like rolling. How many stories do you do in a week, by the way, average?

[00:14:19] EB: It totally varies. Yeah. I'd say at the most I would do six. But usually, I'll try to do a story tonight. I didn't quite get on because there's some overflow but minimum for max six or seven. On a really, really busy news week, like eight. That hasn't been the case for a while, and they're not always like huge, long form stories. Sometimes, it could just be something really quick and brief. We call them like little keywords stories. So it's not always like paragraphs and paragraphs. It's just here's what's happening. Here's why you should care.

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Be mindful of the subject line and how you format it if and when you’re pitching Elisabeth. It also might help to consider pitching her an embargo during slow news cycles to increase your chances of working with her.

Learn more about Elisabeth’s pitching preferences and more by watching her journalist spotlight videos.

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