The Art of Pitching: How I Got Published in The Atlantic

So is writing 4,000 word articles that ideally help other entrepreneurs. That's a pretty important caveat to include. But hey, I'm biased :)

How exactly?

...didn't see that coming.

Slightly surprised that you weren't willing to include the criticism (and your side) in a 'How I Got Published In The Atlantic' article. Instead you chose to tell the heroic story of someone who hunkered down for a couple of months and cracked the code.

The mistakes you made may seem trivial - but they aren't dissimilar to the ones that brought down the careers of Jonah Lehrer and Johann Hari.

Only mentioning it now when challenged damages the credibility of your OP (which is a shame, as it's well written.)

As someone who talks too much though isn't as successful as you, thank you for responding to that in a public forum. It is good to see both sides, hope you guys work something out.

That being said, if he's unhappy with the way you framed the story and you understand that, isn't it inappropriate to continue using the digital nomad story in ongoing pitches (this one included)? It's not obvious you aren't echoing the same message that he disagrees with. Just to reiterate, this is straight from the article:

"Did you hear that Levels is settling down in Amsterdam? Apparently the father of digital nomadism is no longer a nomad."

You are still benefiting off of his story. Isn't it more productive to not use that example anymore? Here he is saying "I didn't settle down", and without any context (this forum) a reading of your article today gives the impression he has. It's inclusion in the story is not dishonest or obvious wrong, but it doesn't seem right either.

As a trained writer but not a journalist, I feel there are two noteworthy points to consider in this rebuttal.

The first is what set me off so terribly at Avi Selk, formerly of the Dallas Morning News, and now at the Washington Post, based on his framing of the Ahmed Mohamed "Clock Boy" story at first [1]. Here's the admission:

>I simplified Pieter's story to fit the narrative I thought I saw. I was blinded by what I thought sounded like a good story.

...which is an admission I think is about on par with Stephen Glass-level of integrity, and should be a footer on any resume sent out to potential editors in the future, enjoined with the second:

>Pieter implied in this comment that I didn't write the truth and that I am embody what is wrong with journalism today. He compared my story to "fake news." I think this is a stretch.

...which basically shows there is an integral lack of self-critical thinking, because the first quote is essentially an admission that the second quote can't bear to live with.

Again, I look at these situations as an outsider; I am grateful to not be involved in the business of "reporting" or "journalism" because in modern times I think they have very little inherent credibility prima face. Major news trends and outlets are running with emotionally charged, "I feel this is the story" which isn't journalism. I know when I'm writing an emotionally based hypothesis and try to frame it as such - unfounded speculation, idle musings...

This back and forth is unfortunate but enlightening in how there are a whole lot more details to a story than what one person believes is "the right story" by way of writing. I suppose that's why "marketing" and "journalism" are kind of sort of screwing each other without second thought.

[1] https://artplusmarketing.com/the-clock-boy-critical-thinking...

Just finished listening to that interview. Drama aside, that was a great story.

> I simplified Pieter's story to fit the narrative I thought I saw. I was blinded by what I thought sounded like a good story. So when Pieter said he had stopped traveling temporarily, I simplified that to "He stopped being a nomad."

These are the key three sentences which betray the whole ballgame.

He bloody said temporarily. You damn near libeled the subject by changing that to your narrative. One is a temporary decision and the other is a complete lifestyle change which, oh, by the way, he has built his entire life and brand around. His alleged lifestyle change was the whole basis of your story. I'm amazed Quartz didn't retract you. This seems open-and-shut retract and rereport to me, but then again, I'm not editing Quartz and I don't have all the information.

Why are you able to feel that you missed something now? Why did you miss this during your reporting? Did you not ask the right questions? Did you pull a Erdely and write TO a desired narrative with the thinnest of support? Every answer arrives at you and is troubling, especially that you're so willing to engage the subject in public to the extent that he blocked you. You're arguing with a subject and trying to skirt his blocks in a public forum. Step back for a second and think about that; your value as a journalist is solely what information you can develop from your sources, and why would anybody source for you after this?

The tone of your self-promotion itself already gave me pause that you are pursuing journalism for the wrong reason. You have a worrying penchant for muddying marketing and journalism, and that your first hero piece was taken as a hit by the subject only reinforces that.

I don't know if I'd compare you to Glass yet, but my Erdely bells are ringing while reading all sides. There's nothing wrong with being a marketer, which seems to be your skill set and that's fine. Be very, very, very cautious translating that to journalism, though, especially since you're a few bylines in, ostensibly without training, and explaining journalism in the comments here. And blaming deadlines for grievous journalistic missteps. And claiming this sort of reaction from a subject is common for profiles. All of this greatly concerns me.

> Please stop writing mean things about me and making me feel bad.

The irony.

Also, if one subject of one story got under your skin as far as you have claimed, abort journalism as a vocation immediately. You are going to destroy yourself when the stories get bigger and controversial. Your first death threat is waiting for you in the future, so either steel yourself to the opinion of others or accept that you're not cut out for it. Imagine if you had recently "gone pro" and were assigned to the Trump campaign.

(Former short-lived investigative journalist. I was sent a link to this comment section by a metro editor with some unkind commentary added, by the way, so your self-promotion might be slightly backfiring.)

I read your how-to article, and enjoyed your writing. And I came away with the impression that Pieter (who I had never heard of before) had chosen to settle down in Amsterdam, as in buying a house or somesuch. I wasn't interested enough in digital nomadism to go and read the article about him, but I thought I might read it over the weekend.

then I come here and discover that Pieter was just spending a few months in Amsterdam (and as he said, why wouldn't you if you had the opportunity), followed by your side of the story, which by now is taking on a life of its own, perhaps to the be the subject of its own article one day.

Look Mike, you may have made a rookie mistake (or several of them) on your first story, but by the time you wrote this how-to guide you were aware of both the errors and the fact that the errors seriously pissed off the subject of the article and his fans. And yet here you are, still telling the story about about how you got your ass in gear, pitched a story about a digital nomad who settled down, and mention that in the process of writing it you learned additional detail. I would never have guessed form this that you put your foot in it and it resulted in some negative publicity for both your subject and your publisher.

That's not cool. While most of the facts in the story are true, your idea that they can be subordinated to support the narrative that inspired you is bullshit, in the technical sense of a disregard for the factual rather than a deliberate untruth. If you feel the facts should fict the narrative then don't call yourself a journalist. Write fiction whether wholly invented or dramatized versions of real events, or advertorials, or whatever. In journalism facts have to be subordinate to narrative even if that means your story hook breaks.

Now, I feel an literary theory argument coming back towards saying that all journalism is inherently subjective and contains narratives, but you're not writing for an audience of ironically detached English majors who want a nice think piece with some amusing stylistic flourishes, you're writing for a general audience whose primary interest in your article is the actual subject matter. Your job as a writer here is to adapt everything to the truth of your subject. 'Globetrotter takes a breather' isn't quite as compelling a hook as 'nomad settles down' but it's up to you to mine those more prosaic facts for whatever gems of human interest gleam therein.

And please don't use the 'tight deadline' excuse. It was your first story, yes? So you either leave yourself some wiggle room or be extra extra careful to represent your subject accurately. While your feelings and emotions have been hurt by Pieter haunting you on the net, how much worse do you think he felt to see an inaccurate portrayal of himself in a prestigious nationally read magazine, which readers default to taking at face value? I'm going to give it to you straight: he's haunting you because you fucked up, you're compounding your fuckup by glossing over it in your personal marketing, and you're compounding it again by relitigating the issue in public. Everyone makes mistakes, but how you handle them is what makes you a professional as opposed to a hack.

When you fuck up at work, especially if you're freelance, you need to take the same approach you would with a family member or spouse: own it, apologize, and then shut up. It's possible that nobody has told you this, and you're also surrounded by cultural signifiers of people who built whole careers (and possibly now administrations) on peddling bullshit, but I'm pretty sure that you didn't agonize for years over your desire to be a writer so that you could peddle a slightly different flavor of bullshit, did you? Now that you've figured out how everyone else sells stories, you need to find a different and better way to do that. There are lots of techniques that work in terms of getting readers' attention, but ultimately end up shortchanging them - bathos, hyperbole, burying the lede, and so on. It's true, you need a hook and you need to bait it with something so readers will bite and you can get paid. But the day taht the fish start to think your bait always smells a bit off, it's over.

> That was a mistake, but not unethical.

No one cares. If you fail to demonstrate professional ethics, it doesn't matter whether it's because you are unprofessional or unethical.

How would you feel if someone wrote a story about you saying that you were done with writing, because it's not all it's cracked up to be? And then every time you made a pitch, the editor replied back saying "I thought you had stopped writing?" Or maybe they didn't write back at all because they found this article and suspected you were someone wrestling with chronic burnout?

I would feel more sympathetic if you would show that you understand and appreciate how your actions affected him.

You should look at the definition of "nomad". Stopping somewhere temporarily is pretty fundamental.

>I didn't run the quotes by Pieter before publishing. I was on a tight deadline, and I simply skipped this step. That was a mistake, but not unethical. Journalists are not required to run quotes by their sources. I only quoted from what Pieter told me.

Isn't that called quoting out of context?

Your attempt at defending yourself actually makes you look much worse. Time to put your foot in your mouth and do some self reflection.

Thanks for posting. You have confirmed Pieter's version of events: you were more interested in a provocative angle than you were in representing facts accurately.

I too enjoyed your blog post and came back feeling happy for you. I appreciated what you went through and shared. Then seeing Pieter's comment totally turned everything upside down for me. I feel sorry for Pieter and for you. (A different kind of sorry, though).

> I had no vested interest in the page views my story on Quartz got.

I think that's a bit disingenuous. As a writer, if your story is successful and generate lots of views, this is definitely a strong factor in your favour. You're much more likely to benefit from a popular story. If you truly didn't care, then you can post on your own blog (even then I'd argue you care how successful it is).

They write what they want to write, you're just a source. So yeah don't think they'll write your story for your benefit. You need to hire an expensive P/R agency if you want to do that. But on the other hand if you know their interests and your interests align with their, in that you can produce a click-baity idea for them then they might bite. But yeah be weary of the media. They have their own problems to solve. They don't care about you or yours.

I'm extremely suspicious of your first anecdote^, given how vital the care and feeding of sources is for someone who makes it to the WSJ, and given that you're probably not being interviewed by Woodward and Bernstein about a story of grave national importance. I suspect miscommunication is at play here, probably in both cases, and I'm confident in that assessment given the drive-by characterization that follows. Can you back up either anecdote with emails from the journalists in question? Your claims, at face value, would lead to the end of more than one career if publicly demonstrated (since you specifically named two mastheads that would care about such behavior, unlike others).

Burden of proof is on you here.

Journalists do lean on sources, but the stakes have to be pretty damned high. I'm willing to be wrong here, but there's an underlying narrative to this comment that I think is really driving it.

^ Honestly, it sounds like your clever spin on a common uncooperative source tactic: "if you don't answer my questions I won't have the context to accurately report the story and will have to write what I have," which is just a reporter being honest and giving you an opportunity. I can see that tactic being interpreted as a threat, to be fair, but it isn't.

Any journalist worth their salt will let you record the interview as well as any communication. You could also save/forward any of theire-mails. If this happens to you make it public/talk to their editors. I'm also skeptical as WSJ and NYT are top-tier publications, and honestly most journalists are highly ethical.

> I had a WSJ journalist threaten me if I don't participate he'll write whatever he wants.

You don't abandon a story if the people you are writing about refuse to participate. There's nothing wrong with this.

Was just going to edit my own comment but since you've shown up with a reply; maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I couldn't find your name anywhere on the page. Not as a byline or at the footer. Might be worth adding it as not everyone will come through your front page. It'd also be helpful to see links to your published stories :)

Very good article. Just after the MacGregor joke, Andrew Stanton says "storytelling is joke telling, it's knowing your punchline". This is illuminating. It's something we probably do instinctively but it helps a lot thinking about it voluntarily.

Zinsser's "On Writing Well" is fantastic, esp. parts 1 & 2 and "The Travel Article" which is a story by itself... I so much love this book!

What's maybe missing from your article is who do you pitch to? How do you find emails of editors and how do you get them to open your message when you're starting out and nobody knows your name?

Sadly it isn't. People who don't use spreadsheets see spreadsheets as some bean-counter tool, i.e. working purely with numbers and calculations. They don't see the immense value of structuring your notes, at least compared to just dumping them free form into a Word document.

> (that gets opened everytime)

If I were an editor, I would simply blackhole all personal mails which include tracking pixels.

do you publicly tweet them or send a direct private twitter message?

Ha! 45 days is on the good side these days.

Have you taken a look at his main site? He's selling a course on growth marketing.

I'm pretty sure being a freelancer journalist is not his main gig. Rather, this article was supposed to demonstrate one of the ways he was able to 'growth hack' his way into publications.