In the 2018 guide to pitching I wrote for Harvard’s NiemanLab, I included the text of what I thought was a perfect pitch. It was a cold email from star freelancer Anna Goldfarb — someone I had never worked with before — and it was about moving in with your partner. It immediately caught my attention thanks to a snappy subject line and compelling ideas, and that story became the first of dozens I commissioned from her.
How did she become a regular? How does she come up with so many successful story ideas? How does she keep track of them? And what does she charge?!
All that and more in this Q&A with Anna!
Tim Herrera: You’ve tweeted about your process for coming up with story ideas, and something you said that I loved was: “I’m organized because you never know when an idea will be a good fit for the news cycle.” What exactly do you mean by that, and how does it help you generate ideas?
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