Serving leftovers: How to warm up your cold story pitch and make that press release look appetizing again

Reporters live off breaking news. So if you’re pitching old news, you better find a way to make it new news again.

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How could so much change in just a few days?

It looked so appetizing yesterday. You couldn’t wait to sink your teeth into it.

But now, what was once so hot and tantalizing is now just cold and ready for the Trash Bin.

I could be talking about dinner leftovers.

But I’m really talking about how a journalist sees a story pitch from something that happened more than about a day ago.

For a reporter, a juicy story is kind of like a juicy meal: delicious when it’s hot and fresh, but pretty unappealing soon after.

So what to do with a leftover story idea that’s starting to get a little stale?

Don’t just re-serve it. Reimagine it – what we call in journalism “spinning it forward.”

Here are 10 questions you can ask yourself to help turn your old story pitch into the Triple-Decker Cranberry Turkey Club Sandwich of day-after story pitches:

1. Why will this story matter a month from now? A semester? A year?
2. Who does this story really matter to and why?
3. How will the people involved apply what happened in the past to change what happens in the future? 
4. How can I take a bigger story and make it about just one person? Who is the one person who personifies a larger success story?
5. How can I take what happened to just one person or one group, and use that to tell a bigger story about a trend, project or something else important?
6. Is there an interesting way to sum up past work that makes you think about it in a different way? (ex. If your district had 500 seniors graduate, and they each contributed 100 hours of volunteer service, that is equal to 50,000 hours … or the equivalent of one person volunteering 24/7 in your community for about 5.7 years straight without even taking a bathroom break).
7. What happens next to someone or something that happened previously?
8. How does what happened to one person/school/etc compare to what happened to others?
9. What would have happened if this thing had NOT happened or had happened a different way?
10. What is being done to repeat past successes or avoid past mistakes?

More from k12pr

• How to write a press release to make it the ultimate multitool
• 5 questions to ask a reporter to help improve your story pitching
• It’s not you, it’s me: Why reporters are rejecting your media pitch and how to move on from it
• 7 tips for recycling a story pitch that didn’t get picked up the first time (or maybe did)
• The No. 1 mental trick every job applicant must know for nailing their next job interview