WashPost editor: smart PR pros keep making this mistake

A senior Washington Post editor recently let me record her as she critiqued pitches from my Inner Circle.

Midway through, I noticed she’d been voicing the same question almost every time she opened a trend pitch.

The pitches were otherwise solid – good intro and clear relevance to her coverage areas across the lifestyle beats. For instance:

• Luxury condos adding built-in designer cold plunges
• A new breed of travel consultants with event-planning DNA
• How climate risk is reshaping home construction
• Shifting consumer-spending habits

Yet after each hook and bullet set, she paused, frowned, and asked, “Who’s sending this?”

The writers had followed the classic rule – lead with the story, not the company – so faithfully that they never said who they were. That tiny gap stole her focus and stalled the pitch.

To you and me it might seem obvious that you work for the luxury condo developer and that’s why you’re offering their design team to talk about it. But to an editor skimming dozens of pitches an hour, it’s not obvious.

I suggested adding a single, direct line, no later than the third paragraph for pitches like this. She nodded before I finished:

“I represent ______, a luxury-condo developer. If you’re covering this trend, I can connect you with ______, who’s watching it unfold across our projects and the broader market.”

One sentence lets you:

1. Name the source.
2. State your relationship.
3. Start framing your ask.

That allows her to focus on evaluating the trend, not worry about the motivations behind pitching it.

Her verdict: “Be explicit. Be clear. Don’t think someone who is reading this already has some kind of bias.”

Whether you’re pitching trends, research, or newsjacking, remove that moment of doubt after you’ve made your initial point. Confusion kills momentum – even in an otherwise great pitch.

Inner Circle members watched her unfiltered reactions to 13 pitches – including the one that made her say, “I’d take this right now.” Want access to that replay (plus sessions with editors from Bloomberg, Reuters, and more)? Join the Wait List so you’re first in line when doors reopen.