How to Pitch Your Story to St. Louis Local Media
Revised November 4, 2026
How do I pitch a story to a local newspaper?
Send one short email to a named reporter who covers your subject. Put the news in the first two sentences, say why it matters now, and add three plain facts, a date, a place and a phone number. Offer photos. Then wait a few days and follow up once.
Keep reading ↓The folding table was still out on the sidewalk in Wright City at nine at night, hours after the block party had packed itself up. Somebody had left a spiral notebook on top of it. Two columns of names and numbers, and a third column added in pen partway through the afternoon, in different handwriting, with the word RIDES at the top. That third column is the reason the street now has a group text that finds somebody a car by Tuesday morning.
The woman who started the notebook knows that’s a story. She said it out loud in the car on the way home. What she has no idea about is the next part: who you send that to, what you say, and whether anybody at a newsroom is going to care about a spiral notebook on a card table.
This is the part nobody explains. Plenty of people around the St. Louis metro are sitting on something genuinely worth covering — a fundraiser that outgrew the garage it started in, a family shop hitting forty years, a neighbor rebuilding something everyone else wrote off — and they either never send anything, or they send the wrong thing to the wrong address and hear nothing back. Here’s how the other version goes.
How do I pitch a story to a local newspaper?
Send one short email to a named reporter who covers your subject. Put the news in the first two sentences, say why it matters now, and add three plain facts, a date, a place and a phone number. Offer photos. Then wait a few days and follow up once.
That’s the whole shape of it. Notice what isn’t in there. No letterhead. No press release. No paragraph about how honored and excited your group is. A press release is a document written for nobody in particular, and it reads that way, which is why so many of them get deleted on sight. A pitch is a note written to one human being who has a job to do today.
The difference shows up in the first line. A release opens with your name. A pitch opens with what happened. Reporters are reading email between a meeting, a phone call and a deadline, often on a phone, usually with a hundred other unread messages stacked behind yours. You have about one screen. Use it on the news, not on the introduction.
What makes a story newsworthy instead of just nice?
Something has to have changed. That’s the test, and it’s a hard one. Nice is a fundraiser happening. News is the fundraiser outgrowing the parking lot, or the person running it doing it for the fortieth straight year, or the thing it raised money for opening its doors next month.
Try this before you write a word. Finish the sentence: last month this wasn’t true, and now it is. If you can’t finish it, you don’t have a pitch yet. You might have a nice thing, and nice things deserve the world, but a newsroom is choosing between yours and eleven others on a Tuesday.
The angles that reliably work are boring to list and powerful to use. A first. A last. A milestone with an actual date attached. A number that moved in a direction nobody expected. One person who did something unreasonable on purpose. Conflict, meaning two sides who both care. And the quiet one that carries most neighborhood coverage: a small thing that turns out to be happening everywhere, which is really what people mean when they talk about why local matters in the first place.
One more filter. Ask who else this affects besides the people already in the room. A church rummage sale affects the church. A church rummage sale that became the only place in Venice where somebody can get a winter coat on a Saturday affects a lot more than that. Same event. Completely different pitch.
Who should you actually send it to?
A person, with a name, who has already written about something close to your subject. Not a general tips inbox. Not a contact form. Not the main newsroom line. Those exist, they get read eventually, and they are where pitches go to sit for three weeks.
Finding the right name takes maybe twenty minutes. Go to the outlet’s site and read five or six recent stories in the section where yours would live. Neighborhoods, small business, schools, nonprofits, whatever fits. The same two or three bylines keep showing up. That’s your list. Most reporters publish their email at the bottom of a story or on a staff page, and most newsrooms use one predictable email format across the building, so if you have one address you effectively have all of them.
The metro daily, a neighborhood weekly, a public radio newsroom, a TV assignment desk and a volunteer-run newsletter all want different things, and they all want to be approached differently. If you’re not sure which outlets serve your corner of the map or who reads them, our rundown of St. Louis local newspapers and magazines lays out the landscape before you start emailing.
Television runs on a different clock. TV stations use an assignment desk, a shared inbox and phone line staffed early, and the desk decides what gets a crew that day. Pitch the desk, not an anchor. And pitch them something with motion in it, because a story that can’t be photographed is a story they physically cannot air.
What belongs in the first two sentences?
Everything that matters. A reporter decides whether to keep reading before the scroll bar moves, so the top of your email carries the entire weight. Say what happened, where, and why anyone outside your circle should look up. Then stop and let the details sit underneath.
The subject line
Write it like a headline, not like a greeting. Eight words, maybe ten. Something concrete: a block party in Wright City turned into a ride network for neighbors who can’t drive. That’s a subject line a person opens. Story idea, Press release, and For your consideration are three ways of saying nothing, and they all get skipped.
The first sentence
What happened, plus when and where. No wind-up. Compare these two. My name is Dana and I volunteer with a group that, well, we started something. Versus: a summer block party in Wright City left behind a phone list that now gets a dozen neighbors to medical appointments every week. The second one is doing work. The first one is clearing its throat.
The second sentence
Why now, and who else this reaches. Timing is the hinge. Is there a date coming, an anniversary, a closing, an opening, a season, a decision somebody has to make? If the answer is honestly no, say what’s at stake instead. Then under those two sentences, put three short lines of facts and your phone number. That’s the email. Under two hundred words total, nothing attached.
When do you send it, and how much lead time do reporters need?
Earlier than feels natural, and in the morning. The single most common mistake people make is sending a pitch about Saturday’s event on Friday afternoon. By then the weekend is assigned, the crew is booked, and there’s no room left even if somebody loves it.
Lead times run roughly like this, and the ranges are general rather than promises. A daily newsroom wants a few days of warning at minimum, more if you want a real story instead of a listing. A weekly publishes on one fixed day, so find that day and work backward a week or two. Monthly magazines are planning seasons ahead, which means a holiday story needs to land in somebody’s inbox while it’s still warm outside. A TV assignment desk can move same-day, but only for something happening, visible, and reachable before the evening shows.
Time of day matters more than people think. Mid-morning, Tuesday through Thursday, is the sweet spot at most outlets. Monday is triage. Friday afternoon is a void. Avoid sending on a day when something enormous is already consuming the region, because your email is competing with weather, an election or a fire, and it will lose.
And if the thing already happened? You need a new reason. An event that wrapped three weeks ago isn’t news anymore, but the result of it might be. The block party is old. The ride network is current. Pitch the part that’s still moving.
Off topic: booking a birthday clown in St. Louis works differently.
What should you do with photos?
Offer them, don’t attach them. A pitch with four twelve-megabyte files stapled to it can get stuck in a spam filter or simply annoy the person opening it on a phone. Write one line at the bottom: photos available, happy to send whatever’s useful. They’ll ask if they want them.
When they do ask, send the originals off the camera or the phone, not a version that’s been through a text message twice. Horizontal frames get used more often than vertical ones in print and on a web page. Photos of people doing the thing beat photos of people standing in a row, and a shot of somebody handing over an oversized check is the one image every editor in America has already run.
Caption them plainly. Who is in the frame, left to right, spelled correctly, plus where and when it was taken. That saves a reporter a phone call and makes your photo the easy one to use. Get permission from the people in it, and be especially careful with anybody’s kids — a newsroom will ask, and if you can already answer yes, you’ve removed the last obstacle.
Television doesn’t want your photos at all. It wants access. Tell an assignment desk what a camera can point at, exactly when, and where to park. Something happening at ten on Saturday in a church lot, with people moving and talking, is a story they can staff. A finished thing sitting still is not.
What happens after you hit send?
Usually nothing, for a while, and that silence is normal. Reporters rarely reply to say no. They just move on, because the alternative is spending an hour a day writing rejection notes. Don’t read the quiet as an insult. Read it as a scheduling problem.
Follow up once. One time. For a daily, give it about three business days. For a weekly or a monthly, give it a week. Reply to your own original email so the whole thread is right there, and keep it to two sentences: checking whether this is useful, here’s the date it’s tied to, happy to send more. If that gets nothing, let it go and try a different outlet or a different angle. A third email turns you into a problem.
If somebody bites, move fast. They’ll want a phone call, correct spellings, a time and a place, and probably one more person to talk to. Answer the same day. Have a name and a number ready for whoever else should be interviewed, and warn that person first, because nothing stalls a story like a source who had no idea this was coming.
A no is worth something too. If a reporter says it’s not for them, ask one polite question: is there someone there who covers this? That single line has redirected more stories into print than any clever subject line ever has.
Why do most pitches die?
Because the news was buried, or there wasn’t any. Those two account for most of it. The rest is logistics: wrong person, wrong week, no date, no phone number, nothing to photograph, or an email so long that the actual story showed up in paragraph five where nobody found it.
Here’s the pattern we see again and again in the way people write these. They start with the organization. Founded in such a year, with a mission to serve. Three paragraphs of background. Then, finally, the thing that happened. Flip it. The background belongs at the bottom, or in a link, or in the phone call. What happened goes on top.
The other killer is tone. A pitch that reads like an advertisement gets treated like one. Words like proud, thrilled, premier and unique do nothing for a reporter and quietly signal that you’re selling rather than telling. Plain, specific, slightly underwritten language works far better. Say the shop has been on the same corner since the owner’s father ran it, and let that land on its own.
Sometimes it’s none of your doing. The day blew up. The reporter got pulled onto breaking news. Your email arrived ninety seconds before something on fire. Send it somewhere else in a week with a fresh subject line, and don’t take it personally. Really. Don’t.
What about newsletters and the smaller outlets?
Start there, honestly. A neighborhood newsletter, a school bulletin, a library mailing list or a block association email is the easiest yes you will ever get, and it’s frequently where bigger outlets find things in the first place. Reporters read local newsletters. That’s not a rumor, it’s how the pipeline works.
These are usually run by one volunteer with a day job. Which changes your approach completely. Write the item for them, in their voice, ready to paste in: a short headline, three or four sentences, a date, a contact, one photo. You just saved that person forty minutes, and your item goes in the next send. Ask what day they publish and what their cutoff is, and then respect it.
A small newsletter also gives you something to point at later. When you pitch a weekly or the metro daily a month on, you’re no longer describing an idea. You’re describing a thing that already got written up, that people responded to, that grew. That’s a much stronger email.
The same logic runs the other direction in a place like Marine, where the newsletter and the bulletin board outside the post office may reach more households than anything with a masthead. Coverage isn’t a ladder you have to climb in order. Sometimes the small room is the right room, and staying in it is the correct call.
Once an editor answers, the next thing they ask for is the written version — here is how to write a press release in St. Louis.
Sitting on something worth covering? Browse community voices across St. Louis on St Louis Near Me Directory, then read how other neighbors framed their own stories before you write the first two sentences of yours. Not sure which outlet fits your story? Start with St. Louis local newspapers and magazines.
If you run the business or organization behind the story, this part is about your next customers. If you run the organization behind the story, list your organization.
Frequently asked questions
How do I suggest a story to local news?
Email one reporter who already covers that subject, and put the story in the first two sentences. Say what happened, where, and why it matters this week. Add three short facts, a date, a location and your phone number, then offer photos rather than attaching them. Keep the whole thing under two hundred words. Skip the general tips inbox if you can find a byline instead, because a named person answers and a shared inbox often doesn’t.
How do I get a news channel to cover my story?
Give them something a camera can see, and tell the assignment desk exactly when and where. Television runs on pictures and access, so a scheduled event with people moving beats a finished project sitting still. Email the desk early in the morning, include a precise start time, an address and parking notes, and name one person who will be there and is willing to talk on camera. If nothing is physically happening, build the event first, then pitch it.
How do I contact a local newspaper with a story?
Read five or six recent stories in the section where yours belongs and write down the bylines that repeat. Those reporters usually list an email at the end of a story or on a staff page, and most newsrooms use one email format across the building. Send one short note to one of them, mid-morning, Tuesday through Thursday. Calling the main line works less well, because whoever answers the phone almost never assigns stories.
How do I get my story in the newspaper?
Have actual news, then make it effortless to say yes. News means something changed: a first, a last, a milestone with a date, a number that moved, or one person doing something unreasonable. Send it early enough to be scheduled, name the right reporter, keep the email short, and have photos, spellings and a second source ready the moment somebody asks. Most pitches fail on timing and on burying the point, not on the story itself.
Should you send the same pitch to several outlets at once?
You can, with one rule: never send it as one email with everybody on the line. Write each outlet separately and change the top two sentences to fit what that newsroom covers. A weekly cares about the neighborhood angle, a TV desk cares about what happens at ten on Saturday. If a reporter asks for an exclusive, that usually means they’re serious, and giving them a few days of room is generally worth more than three lukewarm mentions.
What if a reporter gets a detail wrong?
Email the reporter directly, politely, with the correct detail and nothing else attached to it. Factual errors like a misspelled name, a wrong date or a wrong address usually get fixed quickly online. Framing you simply dislike is a different matter, and arguing about it rarely changes anything except your odds of being covered again. Pick the errors that actually mislead a reader, let the rest go, and keep the relationship.
What are some ideas for a community newsletter?
Anything a neighbor would tell another neighbor at the mailbox. A calendar of what’s happening in the next two weeks. One short profile of a person most people recognize but nobody knows. Construction, road closures and anything changing on a familiar corner. A before-and-after photo. Lost pets. A thank-you list after a cleanup. Short items about a business hitting a milestone. Keep pieces brief, name real people, and run at least one photo every single issue.
What makes a really good newsletter?
Showing up on the same day, every time, with specifics instead of announcements. The good ones are short, name actual people, and answer the question a reader already has rather than the one the organizers want to talk about. One clear subject line, a scannable layout, a photo, and a plain way to reply or contribute. Consistency beats polish by a wide margin. A plain newsletter that always arrives on Thursday outperforms a beautiful one that arrives whenever.
Written by a dedicated team of St. Louis locals who live, work, and play right here in the St. Louis metro. Founder Lane Forman and team are committed to building the region’s most trusted directory by verifying listings and connecting local businesses with loyal customers across Missouri and Illinois.