Should I pitch to one journalist at a time?

A guide to whether you should offer an exclusive - or send your pitch out widely

Whether you are a PR professional or a freelance journalist, we all have the same dilemma every time we come up with a decent news story: how many people are we going to pitch this to?

You can pitch your story as an exclusive to just one journalist/editor at a time, only offering it to another publication if they say no. Or you can send it out more widely to multiple publications at once - a strategy which was always known in my newsroom days as sending it “all round”.

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There are pros and cons to both of these pitching strategies - and which one works best often depends on the nature of the story.

So for this week’s edition of Get Featured, here’s a guide to which pitching strategy to use, based on how I choose and what has worked for me: