We pitch a story idea to a reporter. He says he might be interested and requests to further discuss the idea about a week later on the phone.
On the phone, we discuss the story idea in detail. The reporter indicates he will call our client the following week to learn more.
The reporter does not call the client. We follow up. The reporter explains he is buried in work but is still interested.
A month passes and we don’t hear from the reporter. We follow up and receive an automatic reply. The email states the reporter left the media outlet and took a job as an editor out-of-state.
We contact a different reporter at the same media outlet. He forwards our idea to another reporter, who tells us to call him. During the phone call, the reporter requests we email him a summary of the several angles we discussed for the story idea.
The reporter doesn’t contact us back. We follow up about a week later. The reporter says he didn’t read the summaries we emailed. He tells us he’ll review our information and discuss it with other reporters to decide who might be best to cover the story.
We don’t hear back from any of the reporters. We prepare to follow up again. However, during a Google search, we read a story the media outlet posts from a college journalist. The story is on the same story idea we first pitched 92 days earlier.