Jeremy Druker's advice about pitching your ideas.

Jeremy Druker, founder and editor-in-chief of Transitions Online, (TOL) an English publication about Eastern Europe spoke to EJI 2010, this afternoon. He discussed how TOL's shift from print onto a virtual on-line plane was relatively new and expirimental back in 1999. He mentions how 80% of their staff are local journalists who compile stories with deep analyses about post communist countries.

TOL also provides training programs for independent journalists and focuses on discussing aspects of the free media. For further information about TOL and their training programs please visit http://www.tol.org/client/

Druker's do's and don't s when it comes to pitching your stories successfully : a freelancer's guide

1. Do not consume most of your time and energy on pitching to big newspapers but try local smaller publications .
2. Do not export your pitch in bulk to the same media. It will not reflect well on you, when 2-3 editors, call back all wanting to run your stories and they find out you have already contacted their competitors.
3. Try pitching to specialized print publications.
4. Do provide a synopsis of your pitch and avoid being wordy and refrain from e-mailing the publications your entire story.
5. Give enough background clips, provide your blog's URL or recent publications you have freelanced with, this looks extremely professional to potential editors.
6. Try employing a more counter intuitive approach in your stories, a unique pitch is definitely a story that might have been repeated but diversifying the story's angle is what editors tend to notice.

Druker also explains that one of today's greatest journalistic challenges is " trying to explain what we think is important to an international audience."

An interesting point brought up today during the discussion

Even though citizen journalism today might offset our conventional ways of thinking when it comes to credible journalism. One should resort to this new flood of information as a complement to our journalistic work rather than a morbid substitute. Druker mentions how he finds you-tube media a fascinating interface that can be both filtered and useful to the masses. One can use this on-line interface to post messages to everyone asking for a 5 minute commentary on a particular situation rather than considering it a reliable source of the information.

By Sara Al Mojaddidi