Bringing your old ideas back to life
How to reuse your material to create successful new pitches
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One of the secret rules of the newsroom is: “There’s no such thing as old news.”
That may sound counter-intuitive. Especially because it is also true that news editors chuck out stories every day because they feel like they’ve “seen it somewhere before”.
But you can get multiple hits out of the same fundamental story. The trick is making sure it seems fresh every time you pitch it.
Below, I’m sharing lots of examples of my own experiences of repitching old ideas, to show you what I mean - and how you can do this too.
First things first: If you've had an idea which didn’t get the coverage you were hoping for, don’t ditch it. Often, stories don’t run simply because it was a bad time, or there were other clashing stories on that day, or the editor on that shift had a personal issue with the topic… Yes, you should sense-check to make sure it’s good enough to be a national story (you can use this guide to help) but don’t give up on a good story just because it had a bad day.
With a bit of time, patience and ingenuity, good ideas can almost always be brought back to life.
As a freelance journalist who both receives pitches from PR professionals and successfully pitches stories to national news outlets, here are some of the ways I revive and reuse existing ideas:
Wait and resend
Sometimes, a story doesn’t work because it was sent out at a bad time. Maybe a big political story broke or a celebrity died that day. Perhaps another major story was put out in that specific niche and editors chose to run that instead.
If you’ve pitched a story or put out a release which didn’t get any coverage, you can try simply waiting a few days or weeks (at least until everyone’s forgotten about that first email you sent) and sending it out again on a quieter day as if it’s a brand new story.
When I worked on a national news desk, this was a technique I saw news agencies use regularly. Stories which hadn’t cut through in the busy week were sent out again on a quiet Sunday to see if they would get picked up then. And sometimes it worked.
But… It is also worth looking at your pitch and asking why your story wasn’t picked the first time. If there was another clashing story which editors chose instead, what was it about that story which made it a stronger choice than yours? And what can you do to yours to make it the one which gets chosen next time?
Which takes us on to:
Switch the angle around
Increasingly, I am seeing editors opting for pitches which lead with a strong first-person angle, over those which focus on a broader issue. The underlying point of the article may be the same (e.g. a story highlighting that a health condition is increasing in prevalence), but the focus of the pitch can make the difference between a “yes” and a “no”.
Take this story about families using AI monitors to help care for their elderly parents, which I wrote for The Independent last year. The “new” news angle was a report which found AI social care tech could save the NHS £1.2 billion a year. But pitching this angle - with a case study attached - had not worked.
So when the story ended up on my desk, I flipped it around and made the case study the headline instead. My pitch was: “I track my mum, 86, with an AI monitor so she doesn’t have to move into care”. It worked because that human perspective brought the story to life and demonstrated the real-world impact of the issue in a way which resonated with readers.
If you’re pitching a data-based story with a case study attached and finding it’s not working, try flipping it and making it a case study-led story with some data attached instead.
Find a fresh take on the figures
When I say “there’s no such thing as old news”, what I really mean is that there is no news story which can’t be rejuvenated with some fresh figures and/or a new angle.
If the underlying story is interesting enough to make the national news pages, then it is usually interesting enough to feature again in an updated form.
If you’re not convinced this is true, just take a look at political coverage which essentially rehashes the same ‘who is going to take power from who’ story over and over again, with a slightly different angle each day…
So it is always possible to go back to an issue which has been covered before and find a way to update it again with some fresh figures. Here are some examples I’ve done recently:
The story of the infant formula recall had already been covered widely, but I found a new angle for The Sun by looking at how prices had gone up at the same time.
I’d previously written for the Daily Mail about how children’s multivitamin gummies contained too much sugar. As part of researching that story, I’d spoken to an expert who said these products might also contain too few vitamins. So I revisited this idea, checked out the vitamin content specifically and came up with this story for The Sunday Times.
Jump on a new hook
Sadly it is often “evergreen” stories (which are not dependent on being published at a specific time to make sense or be interesting to readers) which are the most likely to be dropped before publication - usually to make way for something time-dependent or trending which needs to run urgently.
But even the most evergreen of stories will become timely if you wait long enough. Eventually, an issue will “trend” or something will happen which makes it urgent.
For example, early last year I was pitched a story by author Catherine (who was promoting her book), about her experience of her toddler catching measles. She really wanted the story out there but hadn’t had much interest from editors as it wasn’t a “hot topic” at the time. Some new data was due out later that year, so we agreed to wait for that as a news hook and I would pitch it then.
But sooner than expected, a sad news story broke about a child dying from measles in the UK. Using this as a hook, I pitched the story and it was commissioned immediately.
Tell it from a different perspective
Sometimes the same story can be told over and over again, as long as you are sharing a new perspective or experience each time. From experience, I’ve found the key to this is to make sure you have plenty of case studies who can share their unique stories.
Different publications have different audiences and are likely to be interested in different angles. E.g. in the example above about children’s vitamins, the Daily Mail was interested in how they compared to Haribo sweets, whereas The Sunday Times was much more interested in whether parents were being misled over their nutritional value.
This means that you can take one key story and turn it into multiple pieces of coverage by altering the perspective for each publication.
In recent months, for example, I’ve been covering the issue of severe delays on the NHS for breast removal and reconstruction surgeries. This is basically one story, but I have retold it multiple times using different patient experiences. This includes highlighting the stories of:
Women with the breast cancer gene who had to wait years for surgery, for The I Paper.
Women who had mastectomies in lockdown and are still awaiting reconstruction, for The Guardian and BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour.
A woman who is unable to start a family because she is waiting for surgery, for The Telegraph.
Your checklist for reviving old ideas
Try:
Sending again on a quieter day.
Flipping the pitch around to make it case-study led (or vice versa).
Finding a new angle on the figures.
Waiting for the perfect hook.
Retelling the story from different perspectives.
Remember: if you have a strong story, there will always be a new way to tell it.
Feeling inspired to revisit some old pitches? Freshen up your ideas with these Get Featured guides:
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