Guide for pitching stories

I've found myself giving this advice to quite a few people over the past year or two, and while I don't by any means claim to be an expert in this, or have all the answers, I've learned a few things in my freelance career thus far.
So, here are my suggestions for wannabe freelancers trying to get a foot in the door, or just someone with a great idea for a story but not sure what to do with it.

Step one:
Be very clear in your mind why your story is interesting. It has to be more than the fact that it's something new - what it is about the story that interests you? That will help you work out what about the story will interest other people, and who those people might be (which helps with Step Two).

Step two:
The next step is to think about exactly the sort of publication that might be interested in your sort of story. The main thing to consider is the audience. Is your story going to appeal to the readers of women's magazines, science magazines, national or local newspapers, news magazines, financial mags, international magazines, national websites etc? Are you aiming for an audience with a special interest in your subject eg people with an interest in science or medicine, boat owners, environmentally-conscious people or tabloid newspaper readers?
A good way to answer this question is to go to your local newsagency, and buy a whole pile of magazines that loosely cover your subject area. For example, if you have a story about a scientific discovery, the obvious choices are mags such as New Scientist, Scientific American and Cosmos, but some women's magazines also run science stories, as do news magazines, popular health magazines and newspapers.
You should also think about whether your story is better suited to be a news article, a feature article or even a column-style piece. This isn't always easy to work out but generally a feature article is going to need a lot more substance beyond the immediate facts of the story. Lengthwise, a news story can range roughly from 300-800 words, while a feature can be anything from 1000-4000 words and even longer.
It's also worth checking out if any of your target publications have writers' guidelines available, as these can really help you work out if that publication is going to be interested in your story.
And it's also worth checking to see if any of your target publications have already covered your story idea. This is easy to do - just pick a few keywords from your idea and search their archives. There's not much point in pitching a great idea to a magazine if they have done a feature on it the week before.

Step three:
Now write a summary of your story. If you're thinking it will lend itself to a news story, then I would summarise it in 100-200 words, making it as punchy, sexy and succinct as possible. Tackle it as if you are writing a short news piece on it. If you're aiming for a longer feature then I would write a 400-500 word summary, with the same principles in mind. In both cases, it's worth including a list of suggested interviewees - even if you don't have specific names beyond the main subject themselves, think about what other voices might add to the story eg if it's a medical story and you're writing for a mainstream newspaper audience, maybe a patient voice will help, or having another expert opinion in there to add weight to the research.
It's also worth putting a bit of info about yourself at the bottom of your summary (if the editor you're targeting doesn't already know who you are) so they know who you are and your background and experience.

Step four:
Work out who you need to send the story to. You want the story to go to the right editor for the section, so if you send it to a generic email address there's a chance it might not get to the person you want to get it to. Have a look at the publication's masthead and find the editor you want to target eg the news editor, health editor, features editor. Even if you only have a generic email address to send to, at least you can mark it to the attention of someone specific.
If you can find out the name of the editor you're trying to contact, then either look for their email address or if you look at some of the other email addresses for that mag or company, you can usually work out what their personal email address will be.
Cold pitching stories to an editor you've never met can be tough and unless your story is a good one, there's a good chance you won't hear from them. But editors are busy people so if you haven't heard back in a couple of weeks, send a follow-up email and just check they received it and maybe ask if they found it of interest. Just because they haven't replied doesn't necessarily mean they're not interested.

Step five:
If you do get a knockback from an editor, or don't hear from them for months, don't consign the story to the scrapheap just yet. It may be that there are other publications interested, it might have more legs overseas than in Australia, or you might be able to rework the idea for a different audience and with a different emphasis. Have a look at your idea from lots of angles and repeat all the steps above.

These are just some loose suggestions that I have found have (sometimes, but not always) worked for me - hopefully they might prove helpful.
Bianca

Coconut: good fat or bad?

From ABC Health and Wellbeing, 25 September 2008:
Much can be said about the pleasures of coconut. Certainly the cuisines of a large number of countries, from India to Indonesia, would be much the poorer without it. But would they be healthier?
Coconut is one of those foods that seems to ping-pong between the 'good food' and 'bad food' list, and if you're confused about this, don't worry – even the experts can't quite agree.
The confusion starts because of the differences between the use of coconut oil in cooking, and the use of coconut milk or coconut flesh. Both the American Heart Association and the National Heart Foundation recommend avoiding the use of coconut oil for cooking, but both their websites include recipes that contain coconut milk, albeit a reduced-fat version.
Despite the fuzzy perception that all things plant must be better for us, oil made from coconuts actually contains a whopping 85 to 90 per cent saturated fat. Saturated fats, usually the dominant type in animal foods, are generally regarded as the baddies when it comes to heart disease. Read more.

Drug closing in on Alzheimer's

From The Australian, 20 September 2008:
BETA-amyloid protein isn't really much to look at. A tangle of amino acids, for much of our lives it exists harmlessly in our brains.
But occasionally, something goes wrong. As we age, beta-amyloid can start to accumulate, building into deposits or plaques that somehow interfere with normal brain function in a way we are yet to fully understand, but are all too familiar with: Alzheimer's disease.
Pathologist Ashley Bush, head of the Oxidation Biology Laboratory at Melbourne's Mental Health Research Institute, has a theory about what goes wrong. If he's right, it could not only lead to the first disease-modifying treatment for Alzheimer's disease, but it could also produce Australia's first home-grown blockbuster drug. Read more.

Chlamydia vaccine 'needn't be perfect'

From ABC Science Online, 15 September 2008:
A vaccine against the sexually transmitted infection chlamydia could wipe out the disease even if the vaccine is not perfect at protecting against infection, according to Australian researchers.
According to a paper presented today at the Australasian Sexual Health Conference in Perth, the researchers predict that a 100% effective chlamydia vaccine could eradicate the infection within 15-20 years.
Using data on the prevalence of chlamydia, how it is spread, and the sexual behaviour patterns of a typical heterosexual community, Dr Richard Gray and colleagues were able to create a model that they then used to predict how different styles of vaccine might work.
They add that a less protective vaccine, which makes a person less infectious or shortens the duration of the disease, could still have a dramatic effect on infection rates. Read more.

Phone health an elusive call

From Swinburne Magazine, September 2008:
How do you look for a health effect when there is no scientific precedent, no obvious physiological or physical mechanism to explain it, and the effect is likely to be so small that you will need extremely sensitive testing processes? This is the challenge facing researchers at the Australian Centre for Radiofrequency Bioeffects Research (ACRBR), which is investigating whether mobile phones and base stations affect people’s health.
Although there has been public concern and debate about mobile phone health risks, there is little scientific basis for this fear, according to centre director Professor Rodney Croft from Swinburne University of Technology. "One of the big difficulties is that physics doesn’t provide a mechanism that explains how a mobile phone or base station could have an effect on a person," he says.
Therefore, in the absence of a clear starting point, ACRBR researchers have tried to cover every possible base, says Dr Vitas Anderson, Associate Professor of Bioelectromagnetices at Swinburne and associate investigator at the ACRBR. "You name it, just about every biological endpoint you can think of is being investigated with respect to radiofrequency (RF) exposures." Read more.

Cultural collaboration to better meld communities

From Swinburne Magazine, September 2008:
It has been more than three decades since the first wave of Vietnamese migrants arrived on Australia’s shores in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Since then they have become an established component of modern, multicultural Australia, but it was not always a smooth journey – either for the new arrivals or for local community agencies such as the police.
Understanding and working with different ethnic communities can pose challenges for community stability and, in particular, for policing – different cultural values and language barriers tend to create mutual mistrust. It has been a particular cross for immigrants to bear, so to bridge the misunderstandings and communication gulfs that often exist, Swinburne University of Technology has launched an innovative project that aims to build trust, communication and cooperation between two test groups, Melbourne’s Vietnamese community and Victoria Police. Read more.

Good vibes need a body clock on song

From Swinburne Magazine, September 2008:
Underneath the normal disorder of everyday lives there is a steady, strong and immutable beat that never changes. It is the pulse to which every living thing on the planet sets its rhythm of life, and it has been there since the very creation of our planet – the rising and setting of the sun.
The biological clocks of humans, animals and even plants are intricately linked with day and night. But occasionally our body clocks fall out of sync, and research shows this can have potentially serious psychological consequences.
Swinburne University of Technology researcher Dr Greg Murray has keenly studied the body clock or, in technical terms, the circadian system, and found its rhythms can have profound effects on human mood. Read more.

End of the line

From Australian Doctor, 4 September 2008:
For some infertile couples, IVF can become a long and agonising process. Who decides when it is time to step off the conveyor belt and give up hope?

GIVING up on IVF is a little like turning off life support, says Dr Christine Read. The comparison may seem callous, but Dr Read, medical director at Family Planning NSW, has seen enough desperate women to know the anguish of this scenario.
"People invest so much in getting pregnant, [that] when they're told they aren't pregnant or [the pregnancy] lasts for a short time, then fails, it's devastating," she says.
It is three decades this year since the world's first IVF baby was born, in England. Two years after that, Australia's first IVF baby arrived, and the country's assisted reproductive technology industry has not looked back. In 2005 alone, there were more than 8000 IVF success stories in Australia. However, amid the tens of thousands of happy couples, there are some for whom IVF does not deliver. Read more.

Chain reaction leads to Nobel Prize

From Pathway magazine, Autumn 2008:
Six months before the 1993 Nobel Prizes were due to be announced, Kary Mullis' mentor, University of California Berkley biochemist Joe Neilands, suggested to him that "you'd make it easier for the [Nobel] committee to give it to you if you didn't talk to the press so much". Not that Mullis' work was in any way controversial - far from it. He had developed the polymerase chain reaction; a technique for amplifying segments of DNA that was soon to revolutionise molecular biology.
What had Neilands on edge was his protege's openness about his use of LSD, and to a lesser extent, his enthusiastically proclaimed fondness for women and surfing. Thankfully, the Nobel Committee saw fit to overlook these apparent transgressions, and in 1993 awarded Mullis the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the polymerase chain reaction.
Mullis is an intriguing character. Raised on a farm in rural North Carolina, he studied chemistry then completed a PhD and lectured in biochemistry, before joining biotechnology company Cetus Corporation as a DNA chemist. While working here, he made the discoveries that led to the polymerase chain reaction. But far more interestingly, he has also been tabled as an expert witness in the O.J Simpson murder case (although was never called to the stand), he has stirred controversy with his views on climate change and the link between HIV and AIDS, he has been quite forthcoming about his use of LSD in Berkley during the 60s and 70s, apparently believes in astrology, and is a keen surfer.
Kary Mullis’ entire Nobel autobiography is unusually dedicated to a portrayal of his family and upbringing. At the very end of the document, a single, brief sentence acknowledges his momentous role in scientific history: "I worked as a consultant, got the Nobel Prize, and have now turned to writing. It is 1994."
What this sentence fails to capture is the significance of his discovery, and why it was judged worthy of one of science's greatest accolades. "It has been absolutely transformative," says microbiologist Dr David Smith, Head of the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at PathWest Laboratory Medicine WA. More in magazine.

Exercise keeps dementia at bay

From ABC Science online, 3 September 2008:
Regular exercise in old age not only reduces the risk of physical problems such as heart disease and hip fractures, Australian researchers have found it may also slow down memory loss as we age.
A study of physical activity in patients with early memory problems found 150 minutes of walking per week led to improvements in memory, language and visual skills, as well as giving patients a boost to their confidence.
The results of the study, published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggest that physical activity could be more effective in improving memory and mental function than drugs, and without the side effects. Read more.

Delaying dementia next best to a cure

From The Australian, 30 August 2008:
AT this stage of life, Jane and Michael d'Arbon should be looking forward to retirement, long holidays, seeing their four children set off to make their mark on the world, and watching the next stage of their life together take shape.
Instead, they're giving interviews on the devastating impact of Alzheimer's disease. They can't make plans beyond the next 10 years, because Michael is unlikely to survive that long.
D'Arbon used to be a successful criminal barrister in Sydney, crossing swords with the best and worst of them. He loved his job, especially the camaraderie of fellow lawyers. But three years ago, at age 49, "that was shot to pieces". A diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's disease ended his courtroom career. Read more.

Living green for less

From G Magazine, September 2008:
There are plenty of ways to go green without going into the red. Bianca Nogrady shares simple ways to make your eco-ideals a reality - for a fraction of what you might expect. Read more in the magazine.