Mattie Jordan-Woods, executive director of Northside Association for Community Development in Kalamazoo, asked a question during the meet the press panel at Tell Your Stories-Lansing today.

A pitch usually starts when we decide on our own or as an organization that we want media coverage. But there’s a problem with that from the get-go, according to our panel of Lansing, Mich.-area journalists today.

The problem is, journalists do not really care what we want. “Our problem and our responsibility is to serve our audiences,” as Rick Pluta of Michigan Public Radio Network said at the panel, part of Tell Your Stories mini-conference co-organized by Michigan Nonprofit Association and us with support from C.S. Mott Foundation yesterday. ”Everything that we get approached with is going to be assessed with, ‘how well do I serve my audience?’”

So the right first question to ask yourself, before you pitch a reporter, is not what you want, nor what the journalist you will pitch wants, either. The right first question, is, what will delight, or anyway satisfy, the person who will read, see, or hear the eventual story?

In a funny sort of way, social media should make this that much easier for us as we all become more like journalists by thinking through what our own audiences want to read, see, or hear from us. Anyway, just one thought: next time you pitch a story, imagine you were the reporter—how would you frame the story to get an audience to check it out? If you can answer that question for a reporter when you pitch her—you are way ahead of the game.

Can’t resist including two more tips from today’s panel:

• Jam Sardar from local station Newscenter 6 shared an Asian-American Journalists Association resource on how to get in the media.
• Another thought—not to over-generalize from the group who came out today, but based on what they said about how they Facebook – to monitor others’ traffic for possible story ideas, ask friends for specific source ideas, and other useful stuff.

What’s been your experience with pitching reporters? What questions do they ask and how do you know when you’ve been successful (before a story appears)?