I don’t pre-pitch my stories… and neither should you.

So what do you do when a PR wants a confirmed assignment?

If you’re a travel or food writer, there’s something you’ve been hearing a lot of lately. You’re offered a wonderful press trip but then you hear the catch… it’s dependent on you pre-pitching and securing an assignment before you go. This is tomfoolery, poppycock, and malarkey. As a freelancer, I never pre-pitch and nor should you.

To be fair, I do understand why tourism boards and PR firms want you to secure a story before they or their clients spend a lot of money to send you somewhere. It’s because… well, it’s a lot of money! And our field is much bigger now and writers, publications, and publicists often don’t know each other. It’s not an unreasonable ask. In fact, apparently it’s pretty much the standard operating procedure in some countries. I so understand that press trips carry an element of risk for the hosts. But they’re nothing compared to the risks they’re blissfully asking freelancers to undertake.

It is all but impossible for me to pitch a story about a place I haven’t been and an experience I haven’t been a part of. So right off the bat, I’d be sending in an inferior pitch, something lacking any depth or vision, risking my reputation with an editor. And I'd also be spending a lot of time researching things which may never pan out. Ah, the joys of unpaid labour! What happens when I reach my destination and things aren’t as I expected? What happens when they’re downright awful? What happens when weather, road closures, or other unforeseen circumstances prompt a last minute schedule change and things don’t unfold as expected?

I burn a bridge, that’s what. I pitched an editor and they took a leap of faith on me and now I have to go back to them and say “uh, sorry, it ain’t gonna happen. Sorry to have ruined your editorial calendar and made you look like an idiot in front of your boss.” That editor is never going to work with me again and that’s something that a salaried PR official rarely has to contemplate. Even if I could salvage another angle to the story, it’s not what I pitched and editors won’t be happy.

Pre-pitching also takes all the joy, spontaneity, and happenstance out of travel. Basically, it robs travel stories of the very things that make them STORIES. Some of my very very best stories have come from the least expected places, stories I would have missed if I was doggedly following the predicted path of a pre-pitched story. When I’m being asked to pre-pitch, I’m being ask to do less than my best work.

And this, frankly, is the best case scenario. Listen to what a friend of mine recently posted on LinkedIn.

I was invited on a nearly month-long individual press trip through some seriously remote parts of the world, and I was told the only way I could go is if I got secured coverage ahead of time. I expressed to the publicist that I have great hesitation about securing coverage because budgets and editors change in this unpredictable field, and that I'd also be concerned to pitch without confirmation that I'm definitely going… The publicist responded that as long as I can get secured coverage, I can definitely go on the trip. So, I went outside of my comfort zone and sent some pitches… Yesterday, I emailed the publicist that I secured coverage in one of their preferred outlets, and today, they responded that I am no longer welcome on the trip because "it's selling at a rapid rate."

That’s right. There was never REALLY a space on that trip for a journalist. There was only a maybe-space if the trip didn’t sell out. They deliberately misrepresented the situation, clinging to their deception even after the journalist explained precisely what’s at stake for them. I’ve even heard of people being dropped from press trips when another journalist got an assignment confirmation from a more desirable outlet.

Then there are PRs who indeed follow through with their invitations and you happily head out for the trip but you soon realize they’ve wildly misrepresented the itinerary and the story you pitched was never going to happen, not in a million years. This almost happened to me.