How To Pitch Music Editors (Journalism 101)

Written by Noisey Music Editor Dan Ozzi

I am a music editor. [holds for applause] And as a music editor, a large part of my job entails working with freelance writers. I get to publish people’s written words about music and pay them to do it. With no disrespect to cancer research scientists or pornstars, that is the coolest fucking responsibility in the world.

But it’s hard to find good writers. Once every month or so, I send a tweet out into the world, reminding writers of my email address and that I am open to pitches. I’ll usually get a couple dozen responses. Of those, maybe one is pursuable. The rest vary from lukewarm garbage to steaming hot garbage. That’s not a knock at the skill of those writers. I have no idea how good their writing is, and I’ll never know, for this reason: Their pitch was so shitty. Pitching is as essential to being a writer as the actual writing itself. You’ve got to know how to pitch just as well as you like, know how to make all them good words and stuff.

I want to accept more pitches and publish more stories, though. I want to publish so much good music writing that we are bathing in a digital ocean of perfect word choices and beautifully crafted metaphors about songs. So in my small effort to combat this bad pitching epidemic, here are a few tips that might help you not blow it with editors.

[Zight]

I just want to say one word, thank you. Just spent the whole night watching through your videos, skipping the lives (pretty boring in fact) or anything like that. Gosh it has been so tough for starters to get into the industry, way harder than my previous startup. Glad to have people like James who insisted to post tutorials endlessly for 2 years. That's some superhuman persistence. A massive respect.