How to Pitch Stories That Matter

Adam Weeks:
Hey Rae.

Rae Morey:
Hey Adam.

Adam Weeks:
Boy, have I got a story for you.

Rae Morey:
I can’t help but nervous laugh. What is this story?

Adam Weeks:
Well, before we get into that, I just, I’m curious, when I said that, what were some of the things that were going through your mind? Because I’m sure that’s not the first time someone has come to you with a story. What are some of the things going through your mind?

Rae Morey:
I’m kind of bracing myself to see what you say next and wondering, is it actually a story?

Adam Weeks:
Is it really a story?

Rae Morey:
Am I going to get excited about what you say next or I’m going to have to think of a way.

Adam Weeks:
To turn it down politely, to turn me down nicely?

Rae Morey:
Yes, what am I thinking about? Yeah, that’s a really good question. Because when you’re pitching, it really is important to think about, you know, when you’re pitching to someone, are they actually going to think it’s a story? Like, what are they going to make of your pitch? So let’s break it down. What am I thinking about? So, you know, essentially what does the media want? So if you’re pitching to the repository or any other media organization, you know, this takes me Back to journalism 101 when I was at university and thinking about how is a story newsworthy? What do media outlets and organizations, what are they looking for? What, what makes something, you know, exciting for people to read? A There are some really important elements. Firstly, impact, you know, how many people would this affect? Is this a story that three freelancers are going to be interested in or.

Adam Weeks:
My mom, my mom will probably be interested. She watched everything I do.

Rae Morey:
My mum thinks I still work. She thinks I work for Google because I’m on the Internet.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah, it’s Google. It’s all the same thing.

Rae Morey:
It’s all the same.

Adam Weeks:
Okay, so it can’t be enough to just be my mom and three people. What else?

Rae Morey:
It has to have an impact, you know, particularly and in this case in the WordPress community. And the next thing I would think about is timeliness, you know, why now? You know, timing matters. A pitch that Lands before a launch with enough lead time for me to actually write something is much stronger than something that’s already happened three or four weeks ago. If it’s old news, I’m just not. I’m just not interested. And then I would say prominence, you know, who’s involved? If someone like, dare I say Matt Mullenweg or, you know, more recently, Yoast or Karim are involved or a well known company in the space, you know, that gives the story more weight as opposed to, again, a freelancer that no one’s ever heard of. It comes down to the care factor. Who, you know, are people going to care about this story? And then I don’t know if it’s an unfortunate one. But conflict, there’s always some kind of conflict and it doesn’t mean that, you know, it’s bad. Conflict can be good in some cases, but in this case, you know, is there tension, debate, or some kind of disagreement? You know, conflict doesn’t always mean drama. It could be challenged to the status quo, you know, a shift in how things are happening, or some kind of other type of friction amongst businesses or in the community. Halfway through my list, then I would, I would say, you know, currency. Is this part of a wider trend? A story that kind of plugs into the ongoing conversation? You know, like AI, accessibility, sustainability, governance, they’re all really current topics at the moment and are more likely to resonate with people. What else? Originality? Is it original? Is it genuinely new? Is it. Are you launching a new business that has already been done before, or is it something completely new? Like recently I heard about Maroonie and I was like, huh, that’s really cool. I’m not going to explain what it is. People can go and find it or wait for a story in the repository soon. But that’s a really cool product that I’ve been waiting to write about. Yeah. And then kind of following on from that. Is a story bizarre? Is it cool? Is it amazing? Is it going to surprise people? You know, some stories are just quirky or delightful. You know, I’m really interested in those stories as well. And then, you know, human interest. Is there a really compelling personal angle here? Did somebody give up all their earthly possessions to launch this company? Did somebody, you know, just to do something really crazy to get their product off the ground or, you know. Yeah, I think that’s a pretty cool angle. But also, I guess the last thing would be just substance. Do I have actually enough here to write something? I just need information.

Adam Weeks:
Okay, so when you first. Yeah, you hear that boy, have I got a story from you. Like there’s, you gave us a really good list of the things that make up a story. And I think part of what we can do is form this decision making process into a little bit of a story. And how I think of a story is we’re like setting the scene and let’s do specifically about the repository. Tell us a little bit about the repository, like how it works. Who is it for? Like set the scene a little bit.

Rae Morey:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. Because as well as those kinds of, you know, ingredients that make up what a story is. And I should add that you don’t need all of those things for a story, just one or two would be fine. But it also comes down to, you know, my resourcing. I mean, the repository is essentially for companies that pitch to me. I’m essentially one person supported by a couple of really great people. Mike who does proofreading for me, Michelle who’s just come on board as a contributor. And you know, week to week, if I’ve. Depending on what I’m working on, I might have, have time and space in my kind of schedule to work on stories. Other times I might be so flat out that I don’t respond to emails for several days because I’m just a very, very tiny micro business here. So, so that’s a consideration too. You know, there are, there are much larger companies in the tech space, you know, like The Verge or TechCrunch, that have better resourcing. But a lot of journalists these days are contractors as well who have lots of other work. So that’s something to keep in mind. If a journalist, reporter or someone else turns down a story, it might not necessarily be because your story isn’t a good one. It might be because they simply don’t have the resourcing or time to work on it. And I’d add to that too that like, if I don’t respond to a pitch right away, it doesn’t mean that I’m not interested. Sometimes, especially if someone emails me on a Friday, I’m on deadline for my newsletter. You’re not going to hear from me, I’m too busy. Or I might just take what you put in your email and put it straight into my newsletter because you’ve already sent me enough. So for anyone who is wanting to get something into my newsletter, just send me an email with all the details and make it, make it super easy for me to include your news. But yeah, I would say that’s, it’s Good to keep all that stuff in mind because, yeah, it’s important to provide all the information.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah. So I think that that. Yeah, that’s great. It sets the scene. That’s, you know, the repository is this independent news outlet focused on WordPress. It’s really you and a couple of people who help you out. There’s limited resources. You have your audience, your dedicated readers that you are thinking about as you’re putting these stories together. Are they going to care? You also have sponsors that keep this thing going like this. This only works because of sponsors. And keeping that in mind, these are all the things that you’ve got to kind of wrestle with as you’re determining is this a story? When Adam says, hey, Ray, boy, have I got a story for you. Those are the types of things that are going through your head. And I think that is something important for everybody to keep in mind as they are wanting to pitch to you. Or really any news outlet is. Understand that news outlet and this spray and pray where we’re going to send it out to, you know, 100 news outlets, like, all right, that’s not a good. Do you ever get things that people send you that clearly they didn’t do their research and they don’t know who you are?

Rae Morey:
I used to. I don’t know. I don’t really get it so much anymore. Which is nice, I think, as. Yeah, I think as the repositories grown more of a reputation, I’m getting more tailored pictures, which is really nice. People get it. And also because I’m probably very clearly, when I reply to everybody and I clearly say, this is why, yeah, I’d really love more or, sorry, this is not a good story. And I refer them to another kind of media outlet in the WordPress space who would be a better fit. So, yeah, yeah.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah, yeah. Perfect. So a person comes to you. Boy, have they got a story. Keeping all of these things in mind, These are the things that you are doing, juggling the timeliness. Okay. There’s a huge other story coming out right now and it’s really not time for this. Or they’re missing some key facts or details and you’ve got to keep all of these things in mind. What are some of the elements that you’ve got a good story? Yeah, we. Like, like, just as you are like this rising. I think of the rising tension and go back a little bit. Just specifically that. Right. That right fit. If you could summarize that.

Rae Morey:
I guess it comes at an important thing to keep in mind too. Well, for Me, what I keep in mind too is what else am I working on at the moment? A lot of it is currency and timeliness. There are. Those are probably two of the biggest elements, you know, what stories am I working on that are a similar kind of theme or, you know, kind of summarize everything that’s happening in the community at the moment? You know, like a lot of what people are talking about at the moment is AI. So I’m really interested in AI stories. Governance has been an ongoing issue for several months now, so I’m interested in those stories. WordCamps are a big deal at the moment because we have three a year and there’s been a few issues back and forth. So, you know, those kinds of things, I mean, what makes a story, It’s a kind of a merging of all those different kind of things, you know. So, yeah, I’m really interested to know what your pitch is.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah, so. Well, that’s the thing is you get that story written, you get it published.

Rae Morey:
Published.

Adam Weeks:
And how often do people, like, comment back to you? Like how? Like how? What kind of feedback do you get on your stories?

Rae Morey:
I usually get fairly positive feedback, to be honest. I mean, I put a lot of work into making sure that, you know, people feel heard. I think that’s the important thing, you know, operating in a community environment, like, I’m not writing, you know, political news or, you know, in a. In a community like this or any community, really. Like, you have to be conscious of who your readers are because they’re the ones also telling the story. And, you know, I guess we’re all in this together. So just keeping that in mind. Yeah.

Adam Weeks:
So we won’t keep people waiting any longer. I do truly have a pitch and so I’ll share. We’re going to get into It I got permission and is there is something called the Secure Hosting alliance and the i2 Coalition, you kind of maybe heard a little bit about them?

Rae Morey:
Yeah, I’ve heard, I’ve heard a lot, but I don’t think there’s been a lot of promotion yet. Share some more. Who’s part of this coalition and why does it exist?

Adam Weeks:
So I became aware of them at Cloud Fest this year. Actually got to interview Christian Dawson and David Sneed, gentlemen, who have been in this advocacy place for a long time. And a lot of what they’re doing is trying to make sure the Internet stays open. And you’re like, what does that mean? Like, well, for hosting companies there is risk that the things that they are hosting are going to be illegal, are going to be detrimental and regulators are going to say, hey, you can’t host child pornography. Like, that’s not okay. Well, what process do companies have to remove that? What does that mechanism actually look like? Because all the hosting, I’m like, sure, yeah, we don’t think that needs not be on there. We’ve got to get rid of it. Well, you’ve got thousands of clients. What does that look like? And having the i2 coalition and the Secure Hosting Alliance. So we’ll jump in. ITW is actual like lawyers who are advocating on behalf of hosting companies. There’s a bunch of hosting companies that are in both WordPress and then outside of WordPress that I say, yep, we kind of all need to stick together and this is the organization that we are going to put our weight behind. And what’s exciting now is this Secure Hosting alliance is a fairly new initiative and what’s coming on fairly soon is this trust seal, how it’s been described to me as companies hosting companies are going to say, these are the things that we agree to do and are going to be policing of each other. And that in order, like we commit to this, in order because we committed to it, we will have this trust seal that our clients and partners will know that, yep, this is how we handle these very difficult things. And. But that’s not an easy thing to do. And just like, hey, we have this trust seal. Well, what does that mean?

Rae Morey:
All right, so let’s break it down. Right, so impact, obviously there’s some impact because, you know, there’s. Remind me who’s involved in this coalition.

Adam Weeks:
So there’s a bunch of companies. What came to my attention specifically is that Big Scoots is someone I work with and they are one of the newest supporters of this Secure Hosting Alliance. And so, and they have a vested interest a bit, a little bit of put your money where your mouth is. Like we need this thing to exist to protect all of us.

Rae Morey:
There is still I guess a rising star in the, in the hosting world at the moment. So there’s working with a little bit of prominence there. Conflict. You mentioned child pornography. I guess that comes to mind as well is, you know, I remember, I think it might have been automatic in the past to shared data around, not data, numbers around the takedown requests they’ve received. You know there’s, it’s interesting to see those kinds of numbers, you know what hosts are actually dealing with. You know if this story, if this pitch could include numbers around what kind of what are we, what are hosts actually dealing with that we need to see this coalition come to existence rather than just a press release full of words like what are some of these, what are some of the numbers around the number of takedown requests around like maybe issues in particular countries that they have to deal with where there might be some. Like what are we seeing in some countries compared to others? What else? So yeah there’s the conflict, the currency, wider trend. We’ll have to come back to that one. Bizarre. Cool. Amazing. Now for this story it would be great like it’d be great to like this could be very dry but it could be also really interesting if there were some anecdotes like particular examples or anecdotes that these scoots could provide. Like a particular instance of where they had to deal with a case that was tricky or just bizarre. That would be a really good hook to get people reading a story.

Adam Weeks:
It feels like there needs to be a threat to the industry. It’s you know like maybe the number like of lawsuits, you know, what companies have been put up against and then how this might actually be a solution. I love the angle of big scoots kind of leading the way and saying hey everybody, we this is all in our best interest and it’s less about. It’s an alliance, it’s a secure hosting alliance. It’s the hosting companies who are often obviously competitors but saying hey it’s in our best interest to work together on this.

Rae Morey:
Yeah. And that’s a nice thing too. There’s the, I guess the human interest angle there like these companies working together whereas in the past a lot of them have just worked very separately dealing with these issues.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah. So what are some of the other things? What would we talked you know earlier about? You’re primarily a one person show and the More that is provided to you. What would be kind of a bullet point list of. Hey, Adam, if I’m gonna do this story, it’d be really helpful if you got blank. Blank. And for me, what would be some of those?

Rae Morey:
Well, I guess, like. Like I said, like, this story could go either way, right? It could be super dry and boring. Kind of like new kind of governance coalition being launched. Nobody really cares, unfortunately. Yeah. Or it could completely go the other way. Like these hosting companies are joining forces because they’re tired of, you know, the constant lawsuits, the takedown notices, you know, this is the way that they can really clean up the industry or something along those lines, you know, so, you know, it’d be great to have anecdotes. It’d be great to hear, like, what was the origin story for this coalition getting started? Like, how did it form? Was it two people getting together at, you know, at an event or like, something happening that sparked the shift? I see a lot of press releases for this kind of, like, launch of this kind of, you know, entity with really vanilla quotes I really love. Just really kind of not a motive, but somebody just speaking authentically about. Yeah, like, this happened. This is why we did it. Just being straight up about why the need for this, you know, enthusiastic.

Adam Weeks:
I think people being excited about it.

Rae Morey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you read a story, you can tell when a quote is really just. It’s been made up with. ChatGPT phoned it in. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, what you’ve essentially done is a pitch, Right? So. So to. To complete this pitch, this. Those things are kind of mentioned. I’d say go back to Big Scoots and find these things. But also, you know, it. You explained, like, I know who Big Scoots are. You’ve explained what’s happening, why it matters, you know, and how it fits into the bigger picture of hosting companies and how they work and they compete, but they’re also, you know, working together and. Yeah, quotes. A contact that I can reach out to if I need additional information. Something. You know what? Something that I struggle with that is so ridiculous is imagery. I’m always looking for feature images for my stories. I spend way too much time combing through the Word Camp, European, WordCamp, Asia, Flickr accounts, and I wish WordCamp US had a Flickr account too. Maybe they do. I don’t know about it, but. But yeah, what really brings stories to life is visuals and seeing the people that are part of the story. So if you have imagery of Big Scoots, some. Something as Well, I would. That would make my life easier and save an hour of time looking for imagery.

Adam Weeks:
Some of the people that are involved in this meeting together because yeah, they were there together at. Actually, I think I got a photo of David, you know, David and Christian and different people at Big Scoots during Cloud Fest. So maybe a photo like that, it.

Rae Morey:
Doesn’T have to be a photo shoot, but yeah, just people together. I use all kinds of quality photos. Yes, but visual people that puts a face to a name and you’re more likely to remember the story for some people. So that’s an important element as well. But you know, when it comes to pitching, you don’t need to have a huge volume of information a lot of the time. Pictures can start fairly small and you can build out. I might share an example if now’s a good time. So I think one of the. One of the best pictures I’ve had recently is from the Linux foundation about fair. Right. So they reached out to me a week before the announcement and they’re the head of PR and said this is what the Linux foundation is doing. This is why it’s important. I’ve attached a draft press release which is actually kind of unusual. And I should say before they actually sent all this information, they reached out first and said, we have this launch coming up, it’s embargoed. Do you agree to the embargo? And I said, yes, that’s fine, I agree. And then they shared this information with me. They shared this draft press release that had all of the information about what was being launched together with quotes from several different people laid out really nicely. And I was like, sweet, this makes my job really easy. I can write something in time for launch because you’ve given me a week. So. But importantly, at ending before they, you know, wrapped up the email that this woman said, you know, I’m happy to share, you know, additional quotes, source additional interviews for you, gather other responses. So I was able to get additional information. So that just made things really easy. And while you don’t have to get all that stuff off, you know, from the get go, it is nice to offer that as an additional to media outlet so they know that if everything they need isn’t there, they can access that.

Adam Weeks:
I think that’s really important. And the fair discussion that was out in the community because that you and all these other media outlets coordinated and they all kind of came out at the. At the same time where FAIR itself, like they had their own kind of like their part of the story. I Was seeing different, like multi dots, had a nice write up fairly quick thereafter, like, what does it mean to enterprise? But it was well coordinated. And I think that’s one of the things that we miss sometimes, especially when it comes to a product launch, is that people have been working on this for so long that as soon as it’s done, they’re like, hey, we did a thing. And they put it on their Twitter and like, oh, hold on, give it another week, two weeks. It makes a big difference. People have all been talking about FAIR because of how it was done. This could have been a much smaller story, a much. With much less impact if they had put on their Twitter, hey, we did a thing. And that as far as pr, I think they’ve done a good job with getting a lot of eyeballs. Well, honestly, without doing any advertising.

Rae Morey:
Yeah, 100%. I mean, it was. And like you say, they didn’t just, you know, post a couple of little tweets as a promotion, they actually made. And, you know, that was supported by the Linux Foundation’s team. But I also had outreach from Karim and Joost offering their time as well. So they put in the effort, like, they. They did like, essentially rush this development in eight weeks, but then they took a week just. Well, they decided they wanted to launch during WordCamp Europe and they took a week to prep. And it did have impact because they did it in a very coordinated way. And it’s not like I didn’t coordinate with other outlets. The FAIR team was coordinating with everybody, making sure we all had the information we needed to be able to publish when the embargo lifted. And you’re welcome to publish. And most media outlets don’t want to be the last to publish. So we all published at the same time. So that’s just how these things work. And it happens in a regular news world as well.

Adam Weeks:
And, you know, definitely from a PR standpoint, I like that they used an event. I think that’s something that I would encourage is utilize an event where people are there, because then you can also get more photos of it. You can get those actual visuals that we talked about, because someone sitting at a computer just isn’t very interesting. But when they’re in this. The room and they’re having a thing that gives more depth to that story.

Rae Morey:
Yeah, absolutely. And I guess that’s. I’d also. That reminds me of Bob, who watched Open Channels FM at WordCamp Europe as well. So he typically uses, you know, WordCamps to launch, you know, any changes to do the work which is now Open Channels fm. And I think it’s a smart move. It does allow for visuals.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, Bob’s done a great job with that. And that is neat to see that using that event to pivot this very beloved, you know, do the woo to now Open Channels and utilizing that event because then you have people in person talking about it and it’s going to be more meaningful and in real time, he can be there talking about it, answering questions and. And you’re just going to get more pr, more goodwill when you do it that way.

Rae Morey:
Yeah. That’s not to say that you can’t launch something online.

Adam Weeks:
For sure. For sure.

Rae Morey:
You just have to think about all these elements a little bit differently.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah, those are good. All right. Well, speaking of Open Channels, that’s where we are at. And thank you so much, Ray. This has been an incredible time. Thank you for sharing this insight. A little peek behind the curtain of how some of this PR and stuff works. It is very valuable and really, really helpful for a lot of these companies.

Rae Morey:
Yeah, really. I’m stoked to talk about it. It’s been a lot of fun. Thanks, Adam.

Adam Weeks:
Yep.