
The Art of Pitching: How I Got Published in The Atlantic - mike2477
https://www.upupgrow.com/blog/2017/1/5/the-art-of-pitching-how-i-got-published-in-the-atlantic
======
pieterhg
There's more to this story. I was the first person to be interviewed by this
journalist (Michael Thomas @curious_founder). He approached me on Twitter to
ask questions about digital nomad and remote work life (as I founded Nomad
List and have been doing it for years).

I told him it'd be great to see more honest depictions as most articles are
heavily idealized making it sound all great, when it's not necessarily. It's
ups and downs (just like regular life really).

What happened next may surprise you. He wrote a hit piece on me changing my
entire story that I told him over Skype into a clickbait article of how
digital nomadism doesn't work and one of the main people doing it for awhile
(en public) even settled down and gave up altogether.

[http://qz.com/775751/digital-nomad-problems-nomadlist-and-
re...](http://qz.com/775751/digital-nomad-problems-nomadlist-and-remoteok-
founder-pieter-levels-explains-why-he-has-quit-the-nomadic-lifestyle/)

I didn't settle down. I spent the summer in Amsterdam. Cause you know, it's a
nice place! But he needed to say this to make a polarized hit piece with an
angle. And that piece became viral. Resulting in me having to tell people
daily that I didn't and getting lots of flack. You may understand it doesn't
help if your entire startup is about something and a journalist writes a viral
piece how you yourself don't even believe in that anymore. I contacted the
journalist and Quartz but they didn't change a thing.

It's great this meant his journalistic breakthrough but it hurt me in the
process.

I'd argue journalists like this are the whole problem we have these days. The
articles they write can't be balanced because they need to get pageviews.
Every potential to write something interesting quickly turns into clickbait.
It turned me off from being interviewed ever again. Doing my own PR by posting
comment sections of Hacker News or Reddit seems like a better idea (also see
how Elon Musk does exactly this, seems smarter).

So yes, I'd argue don't follow this guy's path, instead be nice, honest and
write interesting articles. It might take longer but you'll have more karma
and long-term more success. And maybe you can convince me to do interviews
again, some day :)

~~~
mike2477
So this isn't entirely true either.. Here's my take:

 __What I did wrong __\- I didn 't run the quotes by Pieter before publishing.
I was on a tight deadline, and I simply skipped this step. That was a mistake,
but not unethical. Journalists are not required to run quotes by their
sources. I only quoted from what Pieter told me. Those who want to verify can
hear the whole interview here --
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8k8VS_zkdqYVGx3U01JU0xaYXc...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8k8VS_zkdqYVGx3U01JU0xaYXc/view?usp=sharing)

\- I simplified Pieter's story to fit the narrative I thought I saw. I was
blinded by what I thought sounded like a good story. So when Pieter said he
had stopped traveling temporarily, I simplified that to "He stopped being a
nomad." While he had stopped traveling when I spoke with him (he was in
Holland when I interviewed him), he didn't intend to stop traveling forever.
When Pieter reached out (and called me lots of pretty harsh names), I emailed
the editor and we issued a revision. You can see this in the story.

 __What I didn 't do wrong __\- For the last couple months Pieter has tried to
tell everyone that will listen on Twitter what a shitty person I am. He 's
called me harsh names. He's questioned my ethics. And he himself has
simplified a story: that I'm a clickbait seeking journalist with no experience
and no morales. This has obviously been pretty hurtful. I've gone to sleep
shaking with anger and sadness (partly because I know I made mistakes in my
first-ever published story and I'm insecure about that, and partly because
reading Reddit threads where people call you a fucking idiot just hurts). I
don't believe I was unethical in any of this. As I mentioned, I used direct
quotes and told the story that I heard over Skype.

\- Pieter implied in this comment that I didn't write the truth and that I am
embody what is wrong with journalism today. He compared my story to "fake
news." I think this is a stretch. Again, I could have written a more
comprehensive story if I had more than 800 words and 48 hours. But I don't
think any of this can be compared to "fake news." My intent wasn't malicious,
and I sought to tell the right story. None of what I wrote was untrue. Pieter
just felt that it wasn't the entire story. This is common with profiles.

\- Pieter also mentioned that I did this for "clicks" but this story was
written at a time when I was taking time away from marketing and business. I
had no vested interest in the page views my story on Quartz got. I don't even
know how many it has. Again, I think this is an oversimplification of a
complex human being.

I've tried to reach out to Pieter before, but he blocked me on Twitter. So
because I know you are reading this here's my message: "Shoot me an email
(mthomas dot denver at gmail) if you want to chat. I feel bad about the
mistakes I made. But I don't want you always lurking over my shoulder ready to
tell the Internet what a shitty person I am. I made mistakes that anyone new
to a field could make. I had no malicious intent, and tried to correct the
story when you asked. Please stop writing mean things about me and making me
feel bad. I'm a human being with feelings and emotions."

Over and out.

~~~
anigbrowl
I read your how-to article, and enjoyed your writing. And I came away with the
impression that Pieter (who I had never heard of before) had chosen to settle
down in Amsterdam, as in buying a house or somesuch. I wasn't interested
enough in digital nomadism to go and read the article about him, but I thought
I might read it over the weekend.

then I come here and discover that Pieter was just spending a few months in
Amsterdam (and as he said, why wouldn't you if you had the opportunity),
followed by your side of the story, which by now is taking on a life of its
own, perhaps to the be the subject of its own article one day.

Look Mike, you may have made a rookie mistake (or several of them) on your
first story, but by the time you wrote this how-to guide you were aware of
both the errors and the fact that the errors seriously pissed off the subject
of the article and his fans. And yet here you are, still telling the story
about about how you got your ass in gear, pitched a story about a digital
nomad who settled down, and mention that in the process of writing it you
learned additional detail. I would never have guessed form this that you put
your foot in it and it resulted in some negative publicity for both your
subject and your publisher.

That's not cool. While most of the facts in the story are true, your idea that
they can be subordinated to support the narrative that inspired you is
bullshit, in the technical sense of a disregard for the factual rather than a
deliberate untruth. If you feel the facts should fict the narrative then _don
't call yourself a journalist_. Write fiction whether wholly invented or
dramatized versions of real events, or advertorials, or whatever. In
journalism facts have to be subordinate to narrative even if that means your
story hook breaks.

Now, I feel an literary theory argument coming back towards saying that all
journalism is inherently subjective and contains narratives, but you're not
writing for an audience of ironically detached English majors who want a nice
think piece with some amusing stylistic flourishes, you're writing for a
general audience whose primary interest in your article is the actual _subject
matter_. Your job as a writer here is to adapt everything to the truth of your
subject. 'Globetrotter takes a breather' isn't quite as compelling a hook as
'nomad settles down' but it's up to you to mine those more prosaic facts for
whatever gems of human interest gleam therein.

And please don't use the 'tight deadline' excuse. It was your first story,
yes? So you either leave yourself some wiggle room or be extra extra careful
to represent your subject accurately. While your feelings and emotions have
been hurt by Pieter haunting you on the net, how much worse do you think he
felt to see an inaccurate portrayal of himself in a prestigious nationally
read magazine, which readers default to taking at face value? I'm going to
give it to you straight: he's haunting you because you fucked up, you're
compounding your fuckup by glossing over it in your personal marketing, and
you're compounding it again by relitigating the issue in public. Everyone
makes mistakes, but how you handle them is what makes you a professional as
opposed to a hack.

When you fuck up at work, especially if you're freelance, you need to take the
same approach you would with a family member or spouse: own it, apologize, and
then shut up. It's possible that nobody has told you this, and you're also
surrounded by cultural signifiers of people who built whole careers (and
possibly now administrations) on peddling bullshit, but I'm pretty sure that
you didn't agonize for years over your desire to be a writer so that you could
peddle a slightly different flavor of bullshit, did you? Now that you've
figured out how everyone else sells stories, you need to find a different and
better way to do that. There are lots of techniques that work in terms of
getting readers' attention, but ultimately end up shortchanging them - bathos,
hyperbole, burying the lede, and so on. It's true, you need a hook and you
need to bait it with something so readers will bite and you can get paid. But
the day taht the fish start to think your bait always smells a bit off, it's
over.

~~~
danso
> _And please don 't use the 'tight deadline' excuse. It was your first story,
> yes? So you either leave yourself some wiggle room or be extra extra careful
> to represent your subject accurately. While your feelings and emotions have
> been hurt by Pieter haunting you on the net, how much worse do you think he
> felt to see an inaccurate portrayal of himself in a prestigious nationally
> read magazine, which readers default to taking at face value?_

Great point, among many. If I'm reading both the rebuttal and rebuttal-
rebuttal correctly, there didn't seem to be a need to skew the narrative in
the way that Pieter alleges. It was an interesting story already, and Pieter
himself says he was open to talking about the complexities of his own life and
career. It was already compelling that he could admit that there were
struggles and tradeoffs; knowing that he quit doesn't add much, nevermind that
it appears to not be the truth.

------
6stringmerc
This is a great article if somebody has unlimited resources to pay rent, buy
food, and focus on obtaining a basically temporal literary achievement;
however, it offers no practical utility with respect to actually getting paid
to write and earn a living by way of the craft, so...uhh...if you need a
textbook fluff piece, here ya go.

~~~
missn
Agree. The article had good points with the part about pitching especially
helpful. I do get too that the focus of this piece is more on how to get into
these publications. I do wish though that the author spoke a bit more on how
he survived as a freelance writer.

If you're a good enough writer with good ideas and you keep pitching
persistently, you'll get traction soon enough. It's whether or not you're able
to survive the unstable early goings that's the issue.

From my experience, if you're jumping into freelance writing without any
savings (and starting from scratch with no connections with editors, no
previous published pieces, etc.), it's hard to survive. Pitches take time
(some editors might take months to reply). Writing/research takes time (you're
essentially unpaid until your piece gets published). Even harder is the
invoicing. You have to hound some publications to pay you (some take 45+ days
to pay after your piece gets published). You really have to plan your pipeline
well. When I tried doing it full-time for a bit, I planned ahead in terms of
income (i.e. income from this month came from all the work I did in November).
The moment you slow down or you stop pitching though, you know it's going to
affect you in two months time.

Getting through the gates is tough but the hardest part is trying to find
sustainable work that can pay your bills month to month. If you can develop
relationships with editors (who consistently greenlight your pieces or give
you regular assignments), that helps a lot. But, if you're starting out
without any of that, the constant grind to find something regularly is
stressful.

I still do it because I love it but I don't do it full-time anymore because I
need to pay my bills.

~~~
Ayraa
Have you taken a look at his main site? He's selling a course on growth
marketing.

I'm pretty sure being a freelancer journalist is not his main gig. Rather,
this article was supposed to demonstrate one of the ways he was able to
'growth hack' his way into publications.

~~~
missn
Nope, I didn't see the rest of his site until after I commented. Make sense
under that lens, getting published in those places do help a lot reputation-
wise.

------
danso
This is all excellent advice. I especially love that the OP uses a spreadsheet
to systematically track his pitches and their status. I think using a
spreadsheet for such structured list keeping is the best way to get
comfortable with spreadsheets (if you're "just" a writer) while being the
optimal way to improve your own work and note-taking. I do it for public
records requests and searching for Craigslist apartments.

~~~
mike2477
Hey, thanks so much for saying this. It means a lot :)

I agree that spreadsheets are an awesome way to organize life. I've become
obsessed with Google Sheets. This year I learned the power of all the plugins.
For example, I built a stock tracker that pulls live data from Google Finance
(with no programming background). I also built a custom dashboard for my
business to track revenue. It worked better than anything else up to $30k / mo
in revenue.

Some great resources on this Zapier post -- [https://zapier.com/learn/google-
sheets/best-google-sheets-ad...](https://zapier.com/learn/google-sheets/best-
google-sheets-addons/)

~~~
bambax
Very good article. Just after the MacGregor joke, Andrew Stanton says
"storytelling is joke telling, it's knowing your punchline". This is
illuminating. It's something we probably do instinctively but it helps a lot
thinking about it voluntarily.

Zinsser's "On Writing Well" is fantastic, esp. parts 1 & 2 and "The Travel
Article" which is a story by itself... I so much love this book!

What's maybe missing from your article is who do you pitch to? How do you find
emails of editors and how do you get them to open your message when you're
starting out and nobody knows your name?

~~~
danso
It's so fascinating to me when people ask how to find editors. Journalists are
notoriously addicted to Twitter. Not only are they very discoverable by doing
a search for their name/job title with "\+ Twitter", many of them are also
unable to _not_ reflexively reply to someone who follows them on Twitter. Or
even if you don't follow them -- just read Glenn Greenwald's feed and look at
how many randoms manage to get his attention.

That said, it's hard to do a _pitch_ via Twitter. I'm just saying use Twitter
as a way of getting acquainted. And honestly, reading someone's Twitter feed
helps you understand a bit about their personality and where they are coming
from, which again, is helpful knowledge in any cold call situation.

------
sfashset
Great article, but I'm wondering if it isn't missing the most important piece
of information - how did you track down the editors, and their email
addresses? Or is this information that can be gleaned from twitter?

~~~
mike2477
Thanks :)

You're totally right. I forgot one of the most essential parts of the process
which is tracking down the right editor.

The short version is this: find the most relevant publication, then search for
the most relevant section (politics, business, etc). Then look on their
masthead (you can google {publication} masthead) to find this for every
magazine. There you'll find the editor of the section you want to write for.
Then you can do a quick google search on them to find their Twitter or email.

In terms of process I usually tweet them first and ask what the best way to
send a pitch is. They'll usually include their email. Then I send an email
with subject line "re: twitter" (that gets opened everytime). In that email I
include my pitch.

More in-depth story on this to come. Appreciate the idea!

~~~
chinathrow
> (that gets opened everytime)

If I were an editor, I would simply blackhole all personal mails which include
tracking pixels.

~~~
hawkice
I've thrown people in the spam filter for a lot less. "re: twitter" as a
subject line is even more objectionable to my personal tastes -- but I dislike
journalists who are intentionally trying to mislead their audience, even in an
email subject.

~~~
nthnclrk
Confused as to why there is any objection to this. He stated that it'll
typically get a reply that includes their email, and he is simply creating
context within the subject line – this advantageous for the receiver.

If it were me (and I had indeed shared my email to the person reaching out on
Twitter) I'd appreciate the reminder of how/why they are reaching out on
email.

------
Nomentatus
Like the article. Hey, an informative article, whoa...

Re the controversy over article one, it is astonishing what shitty reporters
we humans are, almost to a person. Just astonishing. I don't exclude myself.
Everyone thinks they're a great, accurate reporter so they think reporting
well must be pretty easy. Wrong on both counts.

------
bbctol
Hey, I remember reading that Atlantic article and being curious to see other
things you'd written! Pity you don't have an easy-to-Google name...

A question regarding the spreadsheet: have you found it better to just list
every pitch you do in order, even if it's the same story? What I do is have
publications as columns and stories as rows, so I can easily keep track of
where I have or haven't submitted something, but I'm curious if you see an
advantage to the straight list.

~~~
mike2477
That makes my day to hear that! And you're telling me -- I'll never be #1 on
Google.. :(

In a thread above I listed the story I wrote for Quartz. I used to write on
these blogs too:

[http://www.michaelthomasblog.com/](http://www.michaelthomasblog.com/) \-- my
angsty young person writing, and fiction

[http://www.getsimpledata.com/blog/](http://www.getsimpledata.com/blog/) \--
my last company

[http://www.insatiablefox.com/](http://www.insatiablefox.com/) \-- more
journalist writing

I'm working on publishing in one place going forward for obvious reasons haha
:)

To answer your question, I found that helpful in organizing pitches by day.
But I agree it can be helpful to organize by publication. I guess a perfect
tracker would be easily sortable and have numbering to tell how many times
you've pitched a publication.

Appreciate the kind words and question!

------
AndrewKemendo
Storytelling is so critically important for everything in business and life.
If you have new ideas or want to create something new you need to be able to
captivate the audience with a good story.

You could equally apply this framework to pitching investors, job prospects,
customers etc...

~~~
mike2477
That's a great point! I'm really glad you mentioned it. My hope was that this
could be as useful to someone pitching their company is it is to aspiring
writers.

------
mrwinterje
Great advice for a new marketing director who hasn't had to deal with PR
before!

~~~
mike2477
Hey thanks friend!

------
criddell
At the bottom there's an email link to get access to all the pitches. Why not
remove the friction and just post some links?

------
andrewfromx
how were you getting the email address to write into? just going through the
normal contact us general inbox of the publication or finding one person there
and always pitching a specific person?

~~~
mike2477
Hey! This is a great question and one raised by others. I plan to write more
on this (totally spaced it on this article somehow).

If you CTRL + F search "The short version" you'll see the short version of my
answer to this question. More to come!

------
shubhamjain
This is a brilliant article. It concerns with Magazine publishing but I can
guess that the principles apply everywhere. I read the author's pitches with a
mind of an editor constantly thinking how would I ever possibly pass it?

The surprising thing about pitching / selling is how oversold is the "magical"
knack — of the business guy who knows how to woo. But it's only a matter of
understanding that people are willing to listen to you as long as you aren't
wasting their time. Editors are more than eager to publish an excellent story,
but a pitch like "I want to write about AI" won't cut it.

I have a small blog[1] on which I occasionally write stuff. My process has
always been to write a small post, publish, post on HN and disappear with
disappointment when they don't catch attention. I think I understand it better
now that it's not only a matter of writing novel ideas, but also catching the
attention from the first headline, and the first paragraph. In our minds we
think of our writing / pitch as a whole, but, for the reader, it's a
progressively building story.

[1]: [https://shubhamjain.co/](https://shubhamjain.co/)

~~~
aaron-lebo
_But it 's only a matter of understanding that people are willing to listen to
you as long as you aren't wasting their time._

No, no: people are willing to listen to you as long as they _think_ you aren't
wasting their time. Whether you are actually wasting their time doesn't
matter. What this means is there are two ways to catch people's attention:
bullshit and say what they want to hear, or actually say something meaningful.
The first is exceptionally easy, the latter not as much.

Remember, the person who's job is to sell something is probably selling you
something. There's a pretty good chance that what they are selling you is not
as valuable as they say it is. This guy is doing an exceptional job selling,
yes, but whether he's wasting your time...? Based on the first post in this
thread, who knows. That's why these narratives are often misleading and self-
serving, intentionally or not.

He's selling right now. You bought it. What's the real value?

