How to Pitch a Story to a Community Newspaper

I used to be a community newspaper editor. Like many of us, my publisher said I could not take freelance articles, but there were always exceptions for great stories. These are the five steps to sending a story idea to a community newspaper. I also have articles on how to find the types of stories I talk about in this guide.

1. Read your community newspaper for a couple of weeks. Most community newspapers are proudly provincial, focusing on one town or suburb, and they have a specific style. The community newspaper may have a lot of short stories or a couple of in-depth features every day or every week. The paper may also focus heavily on schools and sports news, or may really be interested in business stories. Make sure you understand the location, scope and style of the newspaper. This sounds obvious, but when I was a newspaper editor, we received regular pitches for stories far out of our area.

2. Find out who to contact about freelance story ideas. It is not always obvious from the masthead (the staff list often found on the opinion page), so you should call and ask the receptionist or whoever answers the phone. It may a managing editor or even a reporter, rather than the top editor, who is typically very busy and may not have time to read blind query e-mails.

3. Find a story idea. Most newspapers are looking for human interest stories, trends and business profiles, among other items. As I said, even if an editor says she doesn't work with freelancers, she might make an exception for a great trend story or an exceptional feature about somebody she knows her reporters may not be able to interview.

4. Send a short e-mail to the newspaper editor with a thorough one-paragraph explanation of your story ideas (send only one or two per e-mail to avoid overwhelming them) and a couple of samples of your writing. It's best to send these samples in the body of an e-mail or in one easy link. Most people are wary of attachments, so avoid them. As for the explanation, briefly explain why the story has broad community interest, tell them who you plan to interview and why you are particularly well-suited to cover the story.

5. If you haven't heard anything, follow up with the editor after about a week. If you don't hear back from them after this second contact, it probably wasn't meant to be, but you should try to reach them a second time in case they got busy or in case the original email didn't get through.

And a couple of words of warning:
• Check the spelling and grammar of your e-mail. This, again, seems obvious, but bad grammar will kill a great idea.
• Don't try to write about your own business, school or organization. You can offer a guest column representing your group, but a news article should be an unbiased explanation of something you understand but with which you do not have direct involvement.