The type of piece I decided to pitch was of the journalistic variety, even though in the beginning I didn't know it was going to be, so

Wait, see? Already, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Well, the easiest place for me to start turned out to be what was on the tip of my brain at that very moment: I was going through an obsession with the White Stripes, a garage rock band from Detroit, Michigan. They were coming into New York to play four sold-out shows at the Bowery Ballroom, and I didn't have tickets, because I had been crazy sick with the flu and I swear those shows sold out in like 20 minutes which is just ridiculous. So I was complaining to a friend of mine, and she said, "Well, I know their publicist. Why don't you tell her you want to do an interview with the band?"

"An interview for what, though?" I asked.

"Um, how about NPR?" she suggested.

I laughed, and then realized I really really wanted to try that.

So I got in touch with the publicist. She wrote back saying that NPR was something Jack and Meg would "love" to do. And then she asked an important question: "What show?" I had no idea. Whoops.

But in any case, what you choose, especially for your first interview or narrative piece, should be something that you are passionate about, knowledgeable about, and comfortable with. The White Stripes made sense for me because I was a huge fan of their music, and had a pretty wide base of facts from which to draw for topics. Which leads me to my next subcategory:

Ticket for the White Stripes at the Bowery Ballroom

HOW DO I FIGURE OUT WHAT I WANT TO SAY ABOUT MY SUBJECT?

And, more importantly: should I know exactly what the piece is that I want to put together, and go around with a laminated list of questions, but risk missing something spontaneous? Or should I just show up totally unprepared, but ready to jump on anything that might come out of my subject's mouth?

I had done a bunch of research on the web to find out what themes were repeated in other interviews with the band, I had thought about the current climate in the music industry and where the White Stripes fit into that, and I had drawn on a lot of those questions any rabid fan wants to ask and tried to turn them into "journalism." I didn't know a lot about journalism at all, frankly. I just had a bunch of questions.

If you're working independently, without an editor, I would expect you've got a lot more leeway here. Mostly because the shape of your piece doesn't need to be dictated by a predetermined "hook" or "peg" or someone else's idea, and you can do a lot more detective work of your own to poke around and find the story that YOU want to tell.

PITCHING or HOW TO B.S. IN AN ARTICULATE FASHION

As much as I'd like to pretend I would have done a radio piece just for the kicks of doing a radio piece, let's face it, there's something nice about having someplace for the piece to go. Increases the urgency, if you will. Gets the juices flowing.

I think this is key: find yourself a bunch of editors at a bunch of different places, and pitch to them all, adjusting the angle to fit their show. Do you need to have "contacts" to get in the door? No. Sure, it helps, but the most important thing is persistence. Don't be discouraged by your status as a "nobody". Everyone else started there, too.

Plus, you can look at it like this: there are 24 hours of radio time to fill, every day, everywhere. You are providing them with content. THEY NEED YOU.

So after talking to the publicist, I pitched my White Stripes piece to a billion people. I talked to Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, Studio 360 (a local show here in NYC), I even tried Marketplace. I came up with a lot of nothing, and started getting nervous. And then, if I recall correctly, the fabulous Jay Allison came up with the idea of pitching to the Cultural Desk - just a big, wide open catch-all for culture.

My eventual email to Sharon Ball, an editor at the Cultural Desk, went like this:

Sharon--

My name is Whitney Pastorek, and I'm a writer here in New York. I'm working on some radio pieces with the help of Jay Allison over at Transom.org, and I'm wondering if Morning Edition would be interested in one (or more) of them.

I have the chance to interview the White Stripes, an independent garage-rock band from Detroit, when they come in town in April. I'm hoping to talk to them about their stance against "selling out" and their dedication to staying true to their roots (for example, they turned down a 7-figure deal with The Gap last fall-- why?). With bands like The Strokes pulling down major TV exposure and national radio play, I'm curious why the White Stripes seem so casual about not having-- or wanting-- any of that.

Is this something you'd be up for? If you've got questions, please let me know. I'm currently half-delirious with flu, so I might not be as articulate as I could be, but I'd love to give this a shot.

thanks,
whitney pastorek

Note the blatant name-drop. That's key. If you've got one - use it. No shame in that. Note the abundance of information in the body paragraph - good to give some background on what you're talking about. Note the somewhat insightful question already included - shows you've done your homework. Note the reference to the flu. I was, like, on my deathbed. Anyway.

Sharon emailed me right back. She said she was interested, and I should call her, which I did, and that's when it began: I talked as fast as I could for as long as I could, trying to get in as much information about the White Stripes as possible.

I also had to talk my way around the fact that I had no experience at all whatsoever, which was very, very challenging and, ultimately, unconvincing.

But for some reason, she took the story. I think she liked the band, actually. She accepted it on "spec", which means I would have to turn in a project and have it picked up by a show in order to get paid, but I wasn't doing this for the money.

Holy crap: SHE TOOK THE STORY! I AM GOING TO INTERVIEW THE WHITE STRIPES!!

PART 2 >> Preparing For & Conducting an Interview...