Jared Newman is a Freelance Technology Journalist at Fast Company
In this Coffee with a Journalist episode, tech journalist Jared Newman shares pitching insights, inbox management tips, and the role of LinkedIn and Slack in his workflow.
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Linkedin: Jared Newman
Mastadon: @Newmy
Author Page: Jared Newman
Jared's Newsletter's: Cord Cutter Weekly and Advisorator
Click below to listen to the full conversation and read below for highlights from the interview:
[0:07:14] BB: Okay. Jared, a little bit to demystify the pitching process that you go through, could you give us an example of that? You get a story, you go like, "hey, I like this pitch. I could use this." What happens then?
[0:07:31] JN: Depends on the outlet. But for something like Fast Company, I might even, if it's short enough, just copy the body of the pitch and be like, "Hey, is this of interest?" Or sometimes I might add a little spin to it if it's – depends if it's like a product of interest and they're coming out with product news, that might just be more directly like, "Hey, is this worth covering?" Versus sometimes it's a little more like, "Oh, this company is pitching this and kind of ties into some other stuff I've been thinking about, and maybe there's a story there that is pulling on a few different threads." But I'll just go into Slack and, hopefully, we'll have a conversation about it that will –
[0:08:09] BB: Oh, wait a second. Do you pitch via Slack to your editors?
[0:08:13] JN: Yeah, yeah. I'm freelance, but I'm kind of like contract for Fast Company and for PC World. And so both of those outlets, I'm like in the Slack and have that kind of direct relationship with the others.
[0:08:25] BB: That's efficient. That's awesome.
[0:08:28] JN: Oh, yeah.
[0:08:29] BB: How great is that?
[0:08:29] JN: If you can get that as a freelancer, don't let that go, you know?
[0:08:33] BB: Yeah. Yeah. I think you're the first I've heard say that. Just let me just drop a Slack and see what the – wow, awesome. And just, I think, a showcase of how dominant Slack is. I mean, everyone is on Slack, in my opinion. Maybe those on Teams and so forth, which I cannot stand Teams and all that crap. But for those in the current century, Slack is where it's at. So that's good to know.
[0:08:55] JN: Yeah, I consider myself lucky that we all kind of moved to one thing. I think one of the outlets was on like – what was like HipChat for a while? Which I didn't have a problem with it, but I just wanted – I have a Slack for my friend, like my high school friends. And then I have a Slack for newsletter subscribers. And I have a Slack that I'm in with some tech journalists. And so just having that all.
[0:09:18] BB: Wait a second. Wait a second. You have a Slack with your friends? Not a text chat. You have a Slack with your high school friends?
[0:09:26] JN: Yeah, I read an article about it once. It's great. I don't know.
[0:09:29] BB: Oh, I didn't see that. When is this article? I didn't see this.
[0:09:32] JN: This is a while ago.
[0:09:32] BB: I was going to say, I didn't go deep into the archives. Okay.
[0:09:34] JN: Yeah. No, I'll send it to you.
[0:09:36] BB: Please. I love this.
[0:09:37] BB: I don't know. There's something – I think, I don't know exactly how it came up. I think it was because a bunch of us were using Slack already for work. And I think what's kind of nice about it is that we have these like rooms, right? Like we have like a general room, we have like a video games room that some people are less tuned out of. And there's like music. What music are you listening to room? And so we have these kind of threads that some people are more interested in than others. It kind of works out, you know? I kind of like that. It's a different adaptation to just the random text thread because some people will be like, "I don't want to hear about the sports game. I'm not interested in that."
[0:10:15] JN: Yeah, yeah. And you can have the threading and all that. And some of us are Android people versus iPhone people. And so we don't like to discriminate iMessage versus –
[0:10:23] BB: The green versus the blue, yeah.
[0:10:25] JN: Yeah.
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[0:13:00] JN: Do you remember E3? The video game?
[0:13:08] BB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[0:13:10] JN: I think maybe it was like the first or second E3 that I went to. And I was like a nobody. I was writing for a tiny blog. There was one thing that I was – I was trying to see this one video game. I was doing more video game stuff back then. And a writer from like a big outlet came in and cut the line and I wasn't actually able to see this thing. That was one experience. And then there was like another experience where it was actually like a Sony booth and this like one PR person was like, "I'm just going to get you everything you need. I'm gonna take you around and make sure that you see all the specific things that you wanted." She was just like, "I'm just going to –"
[0:13:49] BB: I'm going to adopt you.
[0:13:50] BB: Yeah.
[0:13:52] JN: I remember that person.
[0:13:52] BB: Yeah. That's great.
[0:13:55] JN: I appreciate it.
[0:13:56] BB: Yeah. See? Look, you remember her name.
[0:13:59] JN: Yeah. It was, I don't know, 12 years ago.
[0:14:00] BB: Wow. Wow. This is what I love. These are the impressions that you can make on someone that you don't even maybe know. She might not even remember this. Right, Jared? But you remembered it. And I love stories like that because there's people you impact in ways you're never going to know. A little tiny way. We're all helping each other out. We're trying to, at least for the most part. And I love something like that because you're never going to forget her. Probably. I love it. I love it.
[0:16:33] BB: Jared, I have a rapid question list that I'd love to tee up to you. First one is video or phone interview?
[0:16:43] JN: Oh, yeah, phone. It doesn't happen anymore. Because the thing is that I've been working from – this is maybe a longer answer than you want. I've been working from home since 2008, whenever I started freelancing. And so video calling was not the standard for long-distance interviews. And I kind of like the phone. I feel like I'm more relaxed when I'm asking questions. I don't have to worry about my posture or what I'm looking at or my appearance. I can just focus on the conversation. I kind of like that, but it's kind of gone away because now everybody just expects –
[0:17:17] BB: But phone is – I'm finding, by the way, when I get to have someone just on the phone, it's almost this like new dimension. And you're like, "Oh, I'm just so into this voice." And I could be looking at my books and who cares? I'm looking over here. Is that funny how that kind of works?
[0:17:30] JN: I have kind of like a posture when I'm on the kind of –
[0:17:33] BB: Yeah, exactly. I could be like, "Who cares? I'm emptying the dishwasher. Okay? That's what I'm doing right now." And it doesn't matter because you're good and you're on the call too. Okay. More calls. More calls. Bullet points or paragraphs in pitches?
[0:17:47] JN: I don't think I have a strong opinion about that. But short paragraphs.
[0:17:51] BB: Okay short paragraphs, which is the next question, short or long pitches? And short. I want to do short. Images attached or a Dropbox zip file?
[0:17:59] JN: Okay, I'm going to say Dropbox zip file, but don't put tracking links on it. That's another thing. I didn't mention that earlier. Don't track my email. Don't track that I opened it. Don't track that I clicked on it. Just don't do that. Don't do that.
[0:18:12] BB: Yeah. How do you know?
[0:18:14] JN: Oh, how do I know that it's –
[0:18:16] BB: Yeah, yeah.
[0:18:16] JN: Well, sometimes there's – I used to have an extension that blocked the open rate thing. Now I have a different extension that still does that, but it doesn't like call it out explicitly when it's been detected. I don't know that as much. But if I hover over a link in Gmail, I can see when it's going to the link versus like going through a bunch of tracking junk. So I can tell when – and sometimes I won't click on something because I see that that's happening and that just annoys me.
[0:18:44] BB: Oh, good tip. Okay, I haven't heard that one lately. Good. Email, or Twitter DM, or any DM, whatever, any DM?
[0:18:51] JN: Email.
[0:18:52] BB: One follow-up or multiple?
[0:18:53] JN: One.
[0:18:54] BB: One and done. Direct or creative subject lines?
[0:18:58] JN: What do you mean? Direct or creative subject lines? Direct. Yeah, yeah, direct.
[0:19:02] BB: Do you ever want a press release or a media kit?
[0:19:05] JN: I like a link I like that, if it's linked. I don't necessarily need it all in email. But a short pitch that's like, "Here's more information."
[0:19:13] BB: Okay. Okay. Okay. Good. What about the time you read pitches, if at all? Is there a time?
[0:19:20] JN: When time permits. It doesn't really matter.
[0:19:22] BB: When time permits, yes. Night time, day time, all the time.
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