The Difference Between a Company Announcement and a Story
Why editors often reject ideas that feel important to the sender
One of the most common problems I see in pitches has nothing to do with writing quality. Sometimes, the pitch is clear, the formatting is fine, and the sender has done their research. The problem is that the pitch is built around a company announcement rather than a story.
The distinction sounds simple. In practice, it causes enormous confusion.
Every week, editors receive pitches about:
new hires
funding rounds
product launches
partnerships
expansions
acquisitions
executive appointments
company milestones
The sender often views these developments as inherently newsworthy, and they are — in their world. After all, they matter deeply to the organization involved. The problem is that editors are not evaluating the event’s importance to the company; we’re evaluating the importance of the event to our audience.
Those are very different calculations. A company announcement answers the question:
“What happened inside the organization?”
A story answers the question:
“Why should anyone outside the organization care?”
Many pitches never make that transition. For example, consider a hypothetical company that opens three new locations across the Midwest. From the company’s perspective, that’s significant. It represents growth, investment, hiring, and momentum. From an editor’s perspective, it may simply be a company doing what successful companies are expected to do.
The expansion itself is not automatically the story. However, the story might be: