Pitches That Worked: Time Out New York
St. John Frizell’s success story:
I was in James Sturz’s “Intro to Travel Writing” class at the time, and this pitch was a class assignment: Pitch a travel-style article to a local magazine or newspaper. For some time, I had been doing my own research on New York’s German restaurants, and I had just discovered Zum Schneider and Hallo Berlin. October was six weeks away, and an Oktoberfest roundup seemed like a no-brainer. Jean Tang, a fellow student, liked the pitch and told me I should send it to her friend Maile Carpenter, then food editor at Time Out New York. It seemed like a perfect fit for Time Out, where easily digestible food/entertainment roundups are king.
I made sure to include Jean’s name in the letter, and I wrote it as much in “Time Out-style” as possible. It was sent via email, but I don’t remember the subject line. I also said that I was a Bon Appetit staffer, which was true — though I was a copywriter at the time, not an editor. I was never asked to clarify.
The editor bit on the pitch right away, because it was perfectly pegged — I sent the pitch in mid-August, just when they were finalizing their content for late September and early October.
More on what he did right–and the pitch itself–here.
Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our 
