On the podcast today, we’re joined by Meghan Walbert, managing editor at Lifehacker. She is also the co-host of The Upgrade podcast by Lifehacker, a podcast that shares insights about how to “upgrade” your life.
During the episode, Meghan shares the perspective Lifehacker takes on breaking news stories, how she funnels sources to her team of writers, her process for responding to pitches, and more.
Click below to listen to the full conversation and read below for highlights from the interview:
[00:04:25] BB: Take a look around, everybody. Okay, Meghan, what's your inbox like?
[00:04:30] MW: So my inbox, I am one of those people who I don't read every email but I at least read it or I delete it every day. So I will end the day with not an inbox zero in terms of there are no emails in there but in terms of it'll all be read or discarded as necessary. So I get a lot of pitches that just aren't right for me or right for Lifehacker in general. Because I'm the Managing Editor at Lifehacker now, I'm not writing on a daily basis anymore, but I'm often feeding topics and pitches to our writers. A lot of this stuff – So I saved some to kind of give you an idea of what I mean.
[00:05:14] BB: For us right here, right now?
[00:05:16] MW: Yeah. So this is just from today, and it's been driving me crazy. So as soon as we're done recording, I'm going to be going through and deleting a bunch of these but to give you an idea. I get a lot of product pitches, and we're really not a website that’s going to tout specific products very often, unless it's something that we personally use all the time and really, really love.
“I know there are some journalists who open every email, and I just can't fathom it because some of these are just very clearly.”
[00:05:41] BB: And it helps with the hack, I imagine too.
[00:05:43] MW: Yeah, right. It's from personal experience and really enjoying this one particular thing, but we're not going to accept a bunch of free samples and write about products. It's just not what we do. I’ve got in my inbox seven products for your at-home fitness journey. I've got a lot of emails about so-and-so joins such and such organization as such and such title. So I've got somebody who just joined the –
[00:06:09] BB: Just general announcements.
[00:06:11] MW: Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association, like I don't – Not relevant.
[00:06:37] BB: There are some pro on the show, which is why we even get into the subject line because that's your key to get the email open. So then do you make it? Are you just subject lines? Are you just going the skim of the subject line?
[00:06:51] MW: I am. So I first look for things like that, like those surveys, and I've got –
[00:06:55] BB: You didn't even open it.
[00:06:57] MW: I got an email from Porsche, like it's just not – So I will go through and I will delete those. Now, if I'm not sure, if I can't tell from a subject line, I will open it and read it. But for the most part, I'm pretty good at reading the subject lines. For the most part, I'm sure things slip through the cracks. But for the most part, I can kind of tell what might appeal and what's definitely not going to appeal.
“So the combination of knowing there's an expert voice in this, plus it's an interesting angle we maybe haven't covered before, that was one [email] that I start as come back and read this later because I'll do that a lot.”
[00:07:18] BB: Now interestingly, you said if you don't know, and it sounds ambiguous, you're going to open it. Is that right?
[00:07:26] MW: I do most of the time, unless I'm really in a rush and just feeling like I need to clear stuff out. But, yeah, if I'm not sure, and if it's a name I recognize because it's somebody that I've worked with before, I will always open that.
[00:07:39] BB: Got it.
[00:07:40] MW: But, yeah, just a one off from a name I don't recognize that is very clearly not for me, I will just delete.
[00:10:07] MW: I do get a lot of embargoes.
[00:10:11] BB: And what do you – How do you feel about those?
[00:10:13] MW: I love embargoes. I will always say yes to an embargo, simply because – Sometimes, it's just out of curiosity to see – You don't know what they're going to send you, so I see no reason to turn one down because – A lot of times, it is things that we will, particularly if there are things around like popular apps that are maybe coming out with new security features for kids or things like that, and we're definitely going to be interested in because there's a real service angle to that where we can say, “As soon as the embargo lifts, and we can write about it and give people the step-by-step instructions for how to implement this new feature so that their kids can be safer online.” Things like that are always going to be interesting to us. Yeah, I always say yes to embargoes.
[00:10:55] BB: Okay, thumbs up on embargoes. What about – Especially since you've just looked at some emails that came fresh today, maybe there's one that fits this.
[00:07:46] BB: Also, I think something important to distinguish is you are a managing editor. You're not a reporter who's necessarily churning out the stories and doing that. So you're a bit – Tell us a little bit more about your role and how you funnel pitches to the right people. What's that process like?
[00:08:02] MW: Yeah. So we have a morning pitching meeting every day from 9:00 to 10:00 AM, and it's informal. It's just over Slack. But we will basically all be skimming the news. We will all be going through our inboxes and just pitching ideas. So we've got a writer who writes exclusively health content. We've got a food writer. We've got a technology writer. We will all be going through. It's my responsibility as much as it is their responsibility to be going through the news of the day and seeing what we might want to write about.
“What sets us [Lifehacker] apart from a lot of other digital media is we're not necessarily covering news. We're using the news to inform the topics that we would write about, but we always want to come at it from a service journalism standpoint.”
What I often funnel to our writers more than anything are sources. So my favorite emails to get, I don't love a pitch that has a specific angle so much because until you've worked at Lifehacker for a long time, it's hard to hone in on that Lifehacker angle, and we've just gotten really good at it. So I don't necessarily want people pitching me specific angles because I'm always going to be better at that I think than the PR person is, just because I'm so immersed in the Lifehacker ethos. What I like is pitch me a source. Say I've got a child psychologist who is an expert in anxiety and children five and younger.
[00:09:18] BB: There you go.
“Yeah, it's a lot of conversation that we have. It's also just – I mean, life around us is inspiration, especially for a site like Lifehacker, where you are seeking to solve little daily annoyances, and you are yourself, walking through life, having all these daily annoyances. So how are you solving them?”
[00:09:19] MW: …“Oh, okay. How could I use this person? That sounds like somebody that could talk on any number of topics that we might write about.” So I really love – Or like if there's some big news event that happens, pitch me an expert, and then I'll find the angle. I'll figure out. We might even write multiple pieces. So that's usually what I'm funneling to our writers most often is here's a source I think might be good for the next time you're writing about diet culture or something like that.
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As a managing editor, Meghan is assigning and reviewing a lot more stories than writing them herself. She says subject lines with recognizable names are great and that rarely does she cover news stories given the perspective and audience of Lifehacker.
Learn more about previous guests on Coffee with a Journalist and their pitching preferences, relationship building tips, and more in our journalist spotlight videos.
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