These tips may apply to other job applications/pitch requests, too!
By Bettina Chang
Summer 2019 Reporting Fellow Camille Powell interviews doula Tayo Mbande. (Photo: Caroline Olsen)
You might have heard that City Bureau is a kindergartener now—it’s been over five years since we launched our community newsroom & civic journalism lab. In that time, we’ve organized 13 cycles of our Civic Reporting Fellowship and fielded hundreds of applications.
We’re incredibly proud of the fellows we’ve trained through the years and the amazing work they’ve produced. But to get that outcome, we need to select the right fellows. We look for a balance of journalism experience, community/civic engagement experience and mentorship experience. We also prioritize applicants who have lived experience or community connections in Chicago’s South and West Sides, the communities in which we work.
One place where we often see successful applicants shine is in the story pitches. Story pitches are a staple of journalism—you might write them in your newsroom, for job applications and for freelance assignments. For the City Bureau fellowship, good story pitches show us that the applicant is fluent in news topics affecting our community; understands what makes a story newsworthy; and can write about it in a compelling way.
Below are some tips for writing strong pitches on the City Bureau fellowship application. I did my best to highlight tips that are useful in other situations, too—but if you’re applying somewhere else, take these tips with a grain of salt.
Pitch a story, not a topic. The most common mistake is being too general. OK, so you want to write about mental health clinics in North Lawndale. Tell me more! Who would you interview and why? Is there something new happening? What’s so exciting about mental health in North Lawndale versus Chicago Lawn or East Side? Because we want more details, we encourage folks to submit pitches that are at least three sentences long.
Pitch an answer, not a question. Would I like to see a story about, “How can we end segregation in Chicago?” Sure. But that’s a pretty complicated question, and the answer is a decades-long research project or a docuseries, not a story. Tell me about one promising solution to segregation, or one example of segregation that exposes a truth underlying the city’s segregation problem. That way I know you’ve done your research. Speaking of…
Do your research. We are all news nerds here. If you are writing your pitches based on incomplete information, or taking a guess at something that’s already known, we can tell! Make sure you search for recent news articles related to the story you’re pitching to make sure you’re not recreating someone else’s reporting. Bonus: Include your research in the pitch to explain why your story idea is great. And if the story already exists...
Choose a unique angle. Just because a story already exists, doesn’t mean it can’t be done in a different way to reach a new audience or to spark a different conversation. Are you going to tell the story with a different format? Did you think of a new thread of reporting that might lead to new information? Did the original story mention a detail in passing that you think is actually more interesting? Those are all good ways to develop a story idea.
Do your research (on us). City Bureau is pretty clear about our mission, vision and values. We take a racial equity lens on current events, and we prioritize the people who are most directly affected by the issue. In another publication, you might see a story about Target closing stores on the South Side, and the focus is on the corporation’s stock price and CEO—but what about the local residents who need to travel many more miles to access groceries? The latter is a City Bureau angle.
Still looking for some inspiration? Here’s an example from City Bureau’s Senior Reporter & Special Projects Manager Sarah Conway, who started with City Bureau as a reporting fellow herself:
The oldest xylophone factory in the United States is still operating, functional and located in East Garfield Park. Inside the sawdust-filled space with its 150-year-old machines, furniture designer Brian Keith Ellison of BKE Designs trains young adults recently released from prison in the art of woodworking in hopes that they find jobs. For the past five years, Ellison has been filling the neighborhood with wood signs engraved with inspirational quotes from Black Chicagoans. This profile would look at how one Black artist is trying to inspire his community and reintegrate people formerly in prison into the neighborhood while they gain job skills in woodworking.
Happy pitching!
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