Wanna learn how to write story pitches editors will actually read — and commission? Join me this Sunday @ 3 p.m. Eastern for a live workshop on what goes into a fantastic story pitch. How do you structure it? What must be in it, and what should you leave out? How much pre-reporting should you do? How can you head off the follow-up questions an editor will inevitably ask? How do you even find editors to pitch or know what publication to shoot for? We’ll cover all that and much, much more in this session.
Hello friends! Today we’ve got another entry in our ongoing series of #pitchesthatsold, in which we take a look at a successful, well-thought-out pitch that resulted in a great clip and a paycheck.
In this edition, we’re featuring new friend of FWT Ashleigh N. DeLuca, with a pitch she sold to STAT in March for $1,800 (!). She sent it to a new editor at a new publication on an underexplored topic, so lots of firsts here.
“This was the most difficult story I have worked on in my time as a freelance journalist,” Ashleigh said. “The story was about the significant gap between what we know about female and male puberty, so I was essentially trying to find out why information on male puberty doesn’t exist, which was tricky. On top of that, I am the first to cover this topic (to my knowledge), which meant there was no prior reporting I could use as a starting off point.”
That meant she was mostly flying blind when starting her pre-reporting. “I had to figure out the path forward entirely on my own. Not having a commission also made pre-reporting conversations with sources more difficult,” she said, adding, “It took months of digging and pre-reporting just to get the version of the pitch you see below.”
After multiple rounds of revising the pitch, Ashleigh said, the STAT pitch was “the first version where I knew I had finally connected all the dots.”
Check out Ashleigh’s Authory, LinkedIn, Substack, Facebook, and a newsletter she co-runs, The College Dream.
(Do you have a pitch that sold recently? I’d love to feature it in a future edition of FWT’s #pitchesthatsold series! Email me at [email protected] and put “#pitchesthatsold” in the subject line. Can’t wait to see ’em!)
Some data about the pitch process
Rate: STAT is very open about their payment rates in their pitch guide, and I was paid $1 a word for 1,800 words, so I received a total of $1,800 for this story.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
This post is for All Access subscribers. Upgrade your subscription to keep reading and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
Start trialA subscription gets you:
- Get the standard 4 free newsletters per month plus 4 additional paid-only newsletters every month
- Access to the full FWT archive, including all past paid posts and select Zoom workshops
- 50% off registration to all workshops, 33% off one-on-one coaching sessions, and invites to subscriber-only events