The First Pitch

Despite his best efforts, Lt. John Herb was unable to save his plane from crashing into German territory at the height of World War II. Sadly, his remains were never recovered…until now, thanks to his Riverside academy class ring and the childhood memories of an elderly villager that saw his plan go down.

As a new intern at Hodges, I never imagined I would get the opportunity to pitch a story to the national news media, much less have them actually respond to me. And an opportunity to pitch a story like Herb’s was well beyond anything I could have hoped for.

Josh Dare, co-founder of The Hodges Partnership, suggested targeting local newspapers surrounding Arlington, with a primary focus on getting the attention of the Washington Post. Other than that, it was up to me to figure it out. And it turns out locating reporters takes a lot more research than I initially thought.

I quickly learned the importance of targeting reporters who specialize in a certain field- in this case those who covered Military News, Defense & National Security and Investigative News- and who had previously written stories that were similar in content.  

After locating reporters, and using the infamous Cision to check their contact information, I focused on writing the perfect pitch. What I soon learned was there is no such thing. I found that one of the most difficult parts of media relations is developing a pitch that successfully captures the essence of the story, but that is also short enough to hold the reporter’s interest. With a very long and detailed story on your screen, this is not an easy task. With the extensive help of my peers at Hodges, and a few rounds of edits, I put together a pitch that included the most essential facts needed to tell the story.

Two days before Lt. Herb was set to be buried to at Arlington Cemetery we decided to stop targeting local outlets and began pitching at the national level. Go big or go home right? Being in a time crunch I didn’t even have time to stop and realize the magnitude of the outlets that I was pitching to- Reuters, AP, NY Times, and ABC among many others.

After two days of very persistent pitching, the story caught the interest of ABC News and The Washington Post. Both outlets ultimately ran the story: Washington Post, ABCNews.

When I first came to Hodges I had very little actual experience in Public Relations and was unsure whether or not I was cut out for this field. So far, I have learned more than I could ever learn sitting in a classroom and, thanks to Hodges, I can mark my first real pitch as a success.