How to Pitch Walter Thompson

1) What’s the best way to pitch you?

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2) What’s the best time to pitch you? Anytime is fine, but given the high number of pitches I receive, it will probably take me a few days to respond.

3) What tips would you give someone pitching you?

For my podcast, the interviews are very focused on the early-stage experience, so I'm really looking for actionable takeaways that listeners can adopt or adapt.

4) What are some of the biggest mistakes that people make when pitching you?

I receive many pitches in which people center their company's services/products as a solution to a problem, but that's overly promotional, so I always reject them.

5) What kind of stories interest you?

The most interesting stories tend to get into the weeds on any given topic — they're narrowly focused and contain a lot of actionable data, tactics or strategies that people can actually deploy. The best metaphor I can think of at the moment is a well-written cookbook. Recipes are valuable, but the pages in between that explain the basics of food science, preparation techniques, and other fundamentals contain practical information that has made me a much better cook.

6) What will you never cover?

I’m not personally interested in online gambling or blockchain-related products and services.

7) What’s the best pitch you ever got?

Many people try to come up with an attention-grabbing pitch, but I'd prefer it if they just shared a brief summary of the story they’d like to share.

8) Do you prefer to receive news in a press release or a different format? I’m open to reviewing press releases.

9) How do you feel about embargoes?

They’re fine: now that I have a podcast and newsletter, I’ve never needed to embargo a story.

10) What’s the latest book or show that you would recommend?

I’m enjoying “Resident Alien” on SyFy. Alan Tudyk does a great job of portraying a cranky extraterrestrial whose mission goes awry after he becomes emotionally entangled with earthlings. The show also subverts a lot of science-fiction cliches, which is highly entertaining.