Crafting winning pitches

Hi folks. Welcome to the show, my name is Toba. Today on Artwork, we're going to be discussing how to pitch to international publications, and what exactly makes a story worthy of being published. To help me with that is Ayodeji Rotinwa.

Ayodeji is a journalist and editor whose byline has appeared in The Financial Times, CNN, The New York Times, and even Vogue. He's also worked as a communications director, movie scriptwriter, and is currently the Deputy Editor of African Arguments, a Pan African platform for news - investigating stories that matter while amplifying African voices.

Yup. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ayodeji.

All right, so let's jump right into it. I’ve reeled off your bio, and spoken about the interesting publications that you've appeared on. Do you have any type of writing you prefer?

When I started out, I was a bit of a generalist. I was at the metro desk, I covered fashion, covered lifestyle, covered the arts, and then as I went on, I started to sort of drill down and found what I really, really enjoyed documenting, which was arts and culture, just for the reason that there's not enough of it being documented currently.

In your capacity as both a writer and editor, what would you say makes a good pitch? What would you see and say, I want to publish this story, I want this story to be told.

Pitches typically have a sort of standard template, an industry standard to follow. First is to introduce yourself to the editor, because the presumption is they don't know who you are. And second, you can say, what you have written in the past, and then go into your story. “This is the idea that I have, or this is what I want to investigate or explore.” And then tell me what’s your connection to it and why you’re the best person to write it.

What makes a good pitch for me, particularly as an editor now is something I call, “when the story turns the corner.” What that means is it's not enough to have a single story. The best stories typically would have three or four interesting angles and overlaps and intersections. A South African writer pitched a story about how we're seeing increasingly, a collaboration between Nigerian and South African artists, and how Afrobeats and Amapiano's overlapping, and how that’s also increasing tolerance between South Africans and Nigerians when it comes to xenophobia. This is essentially a music story, but also a political story. It's a sociological story in a sense, so stories like that ideally have turned the corner. It’s also important to be able to communicate that in the pitch as well.

If I wanted to pitch to a company in the next ten minutes, what are five things that I need to know to be able to get in or at least get in the front door?

The first thing is to know what that publication typically covers. You need to know if or whether they've published a story similar to yours before. You also need to have the story already. This is a mistake I’ve made in the past as well, I pitched something with just a question in my mind, but I didn't have any answer whatsoever and I pitched hoping that I would discover the answer as I was writing the piece. I think that's like working backwards.

So you need to have a sense of what you are going to discover, what you’re going to write about, and the way you’ll put it all together in the piece before you pitch. It also shows the editor that you've done the groundwork. You’ll also need to prove in your email why should I commission you for the story. And also why that story is relevant. I think people automatically assume that just because something is interesting to you, it will be interesting to the editor. I would say that pitching is — literally as the dictionary definition means — selling an idea to someone. So you need to be convincing because you’re sort of marketing to them.

You've written for a wide range of publications from the Financial Times to Vogue. Is there a difference between pitching to those different types of organizations? And if there is, what types of difference exist?

For me, I don't think any particular publication is more difficult than the other, it’s just thinking of the pitch like the synopsis to the story you’re eventually going to tell. However, for different publications you might want to understand the language or nuances. For instance, if you’re pitching to a tech publication, there might be some things that they want to see in a pitch that's relevant to them, like some tech language. Maybe they’re the type of publication that is particular about statistics or data, so you want to include that in your pitch.

You also need to be conversant with the language. The typical publication has its own guidelines about how they want to be pitched, so that’s something that's also worth reading. At African Arguments, we have a standard “How we want to be pitched,” even down to how you should structure it. What should come first, second, third, and what you should include, so that would always typically guide you.

If I pitched a publication, they tell me no, but I can see a link that shows how they want to be pitched, I’ll most likely click that link, see what I did wrong, what I could have done better, and then possibly pitch again.

Sometimes you can just cold call in a sense. I can follow an editor of a publication I really want to write for - online, and just directly ask them ”How open are you to receiving pitches? What kind of pitches are you interested in?”

I can't begin to imagine the number of pitches that you see in a day, what is a common mistake you find that young writers or writers at large make?

A common mistake that I can't understand why it’s so common, is people do not include links to their past work. Links to past work is very very important, It shows me what you are capable of and it also shows me where you’ve been edited before. If someone pitches me a story and they say they've been published by Al Jazeera, Guardian, The New York Times, or The Financial Times, I would most likely pay more attention because I know that it is not easy to be published by those publications. So if you have, it means that you're capable, or there’s some merit to your work.

What is something that you know now about pitching that you wish you had known when you started out?

One, being able to prove or convince or clearly express, why any reader — other than you — should care about this story. The second point is writing the pitches in a sort of storytelling format. Instead of saying there's a climate crisis in Ondo state (Nigeria), say, “…three women planted 10 crops last year, and those crops grew well and produced whatever... they went on to harvest, it was fantastic. They planted 10 crops this year, but only two survived, they didn’t have as much of a harvest, and because of that, it means no food on the table, and their kids can’t go to school....” In the pitch alone, the story's already there, you can even say a plot is already sort of brewing. So you’re waiting for is what happens next? Why is this relevant? What does this mean?

What are some insights you've gleaned from pitching and writing for some of these international publications?

Don't be afraid to negotiate! Publications typically have a budget for what they want to commit to a story or commit to a batch of stories for a given month. We have a budget as well, but that budget is typically always a band. There's always a range. Some publications are really like, this is what they can offer, and that’s it. Some bigger ones will say they have like a per-word rate or whatever. But there's always room to push for a bit more.

So my rule is if someone offers you — to use Naira — 100 Naira, cut it by half and add it to their offer, essentially you're going to have 150. You’d be surprised at what you’d get, I think I've had examples where a particular publication offered a particular amount of money and I asked for double and slightly more and they said, yes! So that's how I would have taken half of this amount when there was actually room for double. I mean, that's not always the case, some publications are a bit more strict. The New York Times for instance will say they only pay one dollar per word but some will typically have a band.

At African Arguments, we typically pay two hundred dollars per reported piece, but one of the stories we published recently, we paid three hundred because I knew it was going to take a lot, she was interviewing a lot of people. It was a lot more work and she asked for it as well. Always ask! They could come back and say they can't give you, or that this is beyond what they can do. But yeah, it's on you to always, always ask.

All right. I had such a great time. Thank you very much for that. Where can people find you if they want to reach out to you?

I’m @ayodejirotinwa on Instagram. If you want to pitch, we're open to stories of economics, business, politics, and culture on [email protected]

All right. Thank you very much for joining us today, this has been absolutely amazing.

Yes indeed. That's all, folks. Thank you very much for joining us today on the show. Until I come your way next time, take care and bye bye.