Let's Play Ball

Getting ahead with a solid team.

After attending a very successful and informative event 

hosted by Business Wire, called “Playing Ball With the Media – Throwing Your Best Pitch,” at the University of Miami, we have some great tips to share with you. The event hosted renowned Miami journalists such as Kerry Weston, Rick Hirsch, Terence Shepherd, Catherine Wilson, Teresa Frontado, and Amy Rey, who provided feedback to companies on the dos and don’ts of their media pitches. Their advice was extremely valuable, and in the long term will be helpful for any company reaching out for news coverage.

After a great introduction by Business Wire, the journalists split off into tables and each company representative had one minute to submit a media pitch.

The feedback that stood out the most were these three, key things:

1) Find something newsworthy about your story. Meaning, put a twist on it to make it timely and prominent to a journalist’s eye. This advice was provided by Kerry Weston, futures planner and assignment editor at WPLG channel 10.

2) Make sure you have a thorough idea of who the journalist is and what they cover. In response to the pitch, Terence Shepherd, news director at WLRN news asked, “Well what do you want me to do about it? How does that help or relate to me?” When you pitch a journalist, you must know what kind of stories they cover. If your pitch is tailored to them, they will be more passionate about your topic.

3) Be targeted and specific. This advice was from Rick Hirsh, managing editor at the Miami Herald. There are different goals in PR efforts, and not every story is destined to be the front page or a story cover. Make sure you target your pitch for the news section that best suits your story, whether it be lifestyle, neighborhood, people, latest news, but find the goal of the piece.