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While we research a lot of media contacts on a regular basis, we want you to know how to do it too. There may be 1 or 2 media contacts you want to pitch, and rather than dive into Tin Shingle’s Member-Only Media Contact Library, you may want to take matters into your own hands and do your own research.
We’ve got the article on “How To Find The Right Media Contacts” right here, so take a read and get going on your buzz building!
You can get into any one of these magazines. Be your business a local shop, or if you’re an expert in your field, or if you’ve developed the perfect toy. Inside the pages of these magazines - and their digital versions - are a myriad of reasons why your business would fit into a story. The key is to unlocking that 1 reason that makes your business a must-write about.
Sunday's are for being unplugged and dreaming your dreams. That means answering to no one, and listening to the ideas that enter your mind. Being that you're running a business, the ideas #dontstopwontstop. They make you happy! That is why you can use today to discover one special pitch.
You want a feature in a magazine. Or a TV show. Sunday is the day you will pick up 1 magazine, or watch 1 TV show you want your business featured in. You will turn the pages. You will read the articles. You will discover "The Why" of why that writer might cover your business next time. You see how they covered one business, and an idea will click on why they might cover yours.
No. While Tin Shingle does give you instant access to over 100 editorial calendars (Yes, over 100 different publications and growing! Our researcher Yvonne has been busy!), it all comes down to the ideas. Planting the seed.
You can do this. You can plant that seed. You can send a writer an email about your business, just as an FYI, and walk away. You will want to be thinking of so many different story angles. Perfect ones for a particular writer at a particular brand (magazine, digital magazine, TV show). If you’re nervous or unsure about it, you can join Tin Shingle and talk to us in Tin Shingle’s Community using the Pitch Whisperer forum to get feedback.
In your Sunday Reading, here's how you're going to discover who is making the magic. In this video, Tin Shingle's owner and publisher Katie takes you through a little media monitoring of Sift Magazine, a publication that features bakers, bakeries, products, authors, recipes, and more. Another way to discover writers or publications you had no idea about is to tap into Tin Shingle’s Media Contact Library, also a perk of membership with Tin Shingle.
I love butter.
My Instagram friends know this. So imagine my delight when I found this book just about butter and “why butter is the reigning champion in our kitchens.” By Dorie Greenspan!
Found while researching King Arthur Flour’s Sift Magazine for our small businesses, artists and maker members at Tin Shingle.
There are features of bakers, authors and products in this magazine. In addition to the oodles of recipe from chef and writer Susan Reid. What a combo - to be a chef and a writer. King Arthur has an entire catalogue of products - which I did not realize - and those are featured in the magazine, as well as treasures from others.
Maybe this could be you. Researching writers now to include them in Tin Shingle’s Media Contact Library.
Reading for the night...in preparation for our hopeful new series...Sunday Reading. Does it count that I’m starting on Monday?
This magazine, Sift, is from King Arthur Flour. Yeah. That’s right. Because companies see magazines as good for business. And this Holiday 2018 issue employed a fair amount of people, most of whom are full time freelance or work for King Arthur Flour. Right now, the magazine comes out 3 times a year: Spring (March), Fall (August) and Holiday (October). Each new issue becomes available on the last Tuesday of the month it publishes in.
There are great product recommendations in the pages as well. And a holiday gift guide! Future updating into Tin Shingle’s Media Contact Library we go. To make sure you know about these foodies. All Access Members of Tin Shingle get instant access to that idea 💡center of goodness.
We first learned about CRWN Magazine through a feature that appeared in Alley’s newsletter, that featured one of its members of the co-work workspace. That member is Lindsey Day, co-founder of CRWN Magazine.
The magazine launched as a zine, and grew to a publication with 20 contributors and advertiser support, according to this 2016 article in Yahoo Beauty. At the time of that article, the magazine’s Instagram had 15K followers. Today it has 44.6K and growing.
Co-founder of CRWN, Nkrumah Farrar, pointed out in that article that there were not many publications catering to women who have chosen to live a natural-hair lifestyle. Farrar pointed out, that publications available like Sophisticates, Hype Hair and Black Hair tend to not be owned by or operated by black women, and lack a focus on beautiful imagery.
CRWN Magazine covers more than just hair, said Lindsey in that article. “We probably have more thought pieces and essays in the issue than we do things that are specifically pertaining to hair. We use natural hair as a pivot point to connect with an audience of African- American women who share similar psychographics that led them to eventually becoming natural.”
Read this amazing interview with Lindsey in Byrdie to learn how and why she and Nkrumah created the brand, how important it is to them to have African- American women in printed pages, how they thought of the name, and much more.
We’'ll sum up with the mission statement as stated on CRWN’s website:
CRWN Magazine exists to create a progressive dialogue around natural hair and the women who wear it. We're reaching beyond trendy clickbait and #BlackGirlMagic to address the whole Black woman; a woman who is more educated, well-traveled and sophisticated than ever before — largely because generations before her have fought to ensure her seat at the table.
Through beautiful content, thoughtful commentary, hair inspiration and resources; we’re telling the world the truth about Black women by showcasing a new standard of beauty — and documenting our story in tangible, print form.
Right now as we speak, the Media Contact Database at Tin Shingle is getting a total refresh and shakeup. With the media landscape changing so quickly as more magazines are abandoning traditional 12 month publication cycles for 10 months or no months at all, we are finding more and more valuable freelance writers and editors, as well as regular contributing writers at magazines and other forms of media, including podcasts, TV programs and even business websites that offer services but have invested in a content campaign.
Our focus on the individual person working in the media profession is strengthening, as we want to highlight the different Media Outlets that these people work in. Therefore, we putting all of the Media Outlets onto the person’s page that they work for, write for, produce for, or host.
For example: From Tin Shingle’s Media Contact Database, let’s look at Mandi Woodruff. Mandi works in the personal finance world. She is the executive editor at LendingTree.com, and the host and founder of the podcast, Brown Ambition, a show about money, career and business. She’s a gold nugget, and most likely, a pretty good person to pitch about money, business, and careers.
We tag each Media Contact with a unique identifier we call “Area of Interest.” When you’re searching through our lists, you can search by “Area of Interest.” Mandi has been tagged with: Finance, Personal Finance, Black Media, Black Voices.
As a recommended Media Contact in Tin Shingle’s members-only database, you’ll find Mandi’s bio (as she wrote it from her Brown Ambition About Us page), as well as both of her job roles: one at LendingTree.com, the other at Brown Ambition. If she has different social media handles or email addresses that she may have recommended you use (or if she doesn’t recommend an email address, then we usually guide you to the writer’s Contact Us page on their website - those pages really are pretty effective).
Here’s Mandi’s bio:
Mandi Woodruff has been reporting on finance and business for more than seven years. She joined personal finance startup MagnifyMoney in June 2016 as Executive Editor of their personal finance content. Less than a year later, the company was acquired by LendingTree.com. In her newly expanded role as executive editor, she leads a team of 20+ freelance writers, two full-time reporters and two editors to create stellar personal finance content for half a dozen LendingTree.com-owned websites. Mandi was previously the personal finance editor at Business Insider and a personal finance reporter for Yahoo Finance, where she hosted the weekly web series “Money Minute” and “The Payoff”. She’s an alumna of the Grady College of Journalism at the University of Georgia (go Dawgs!) and an active member of the National Association of Black Journalists, the New York chapter of NABJ, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and the Journalism & Women Symposium.
The update to the Media Contacts is underway now, but you can still access them and dig around for your research. Thank you for your patience, and you encounter anything amiss, please Contact Us about it! If you’re not a member yet of Tin Shingle, join today for instant access to our media research lists! See what others have to say about their membership.
Photo Credit: Screenshot of article in The New York Times.
In January 2018, the stepping aside of Glamour’s longtime editor in chief, Cindi Leive, became official, and, Samantha Barry, a digitally based journalist with extensive background in the digital television space at CNN Worldwide as an executive producer for social and emerging media, stepped in. Cindi had also been the editor in chief of Self, another print magazine that ceased printing monthly issues.
Upon her arrival, Samantha reduced the numbers of monthly publications from 12 to 11, gave the print magazine a makeover, completely changing the type treatment of the logo, and on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, announced that the monthly print magazine version of Glamour would cease.
As first reported by The New York Times, and then The Hollywood Reporter, Samantha stated that she sees no need for a monthly print schedule for the brand anymore. In fact, that Glamour is not just a magazine, that it is a brand. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Samantha stated that Glamour will continue to produce printed editions of its tentpole issues like its “Women of the Year” issue.
In her interview on Cheddar, Samantha is putting Glamour's eggs into the video and event baskets, saying that portions of the Glamour audience are spending more than a minute, sometimes up to half hours on their video content. Being that Samantha comes from the TV world, she is comfortable in this vehicle for storytelling and ad delivery. However, she came from a large cable network - CNN - where their base is TV. In magazines, the base is the book, and the social and the video are the spinoff. Looks like Samantha is bucking this model.
In her goodbye-to-print email to the editorial staff obtained and quoted by The Hollywood Reporter:
"We’re doubling down on digital — investing in the storytelling, service and fantastic photo shoots we’ve always been known for, bringing it to the platforms our readers frequent most. We’ll be expanding video and social storytelling, with new and ambitious series and projects.”
Glamour is committing now to the crowded space of digital with its many mediums, abandoning its loyalty vehicle - the printed book - the magazine. What digital-only producers, editors, and storytellers might not realize is how the printed page carries weight in the hands of their audience. While the people reading the magazine may frequent online spaces more, the printed book helps to define the brand.
According to The New York Times: “Although the number of Glamour’s paid subscribers has remained stable over the last three years, at around 2.2 million, Ms. Barry said it was time for the publication to break away from the printed page.”
The advantage that magazines have over media outlets with no print extension is that they are able to design a deeper experience on the page in the layout of a book. The advantage that digital mediums like blogs have over traditional print is that they understand the online space better and can spread the word farther.
It is the opinion of this writer that the combination of the two - the digital and the print - is an enrichment technique. I say this as a blogger. I am a digitally based producer of content who sees the emotional reactions of people to the printed page, vs the online experience. While the online experience may have more exposure with a larger footprint, the emotional imprint is still there for the printed page. Thereby making the digital version of print even more valuable.
Glamour magazine is in the Condé Nast family. It was founded by the Condé Nast father himself as a vehicle for storytelling of Hollywood Glamour. The magazine’s direction has changed since then, as Glamour has taken on more of an empowerment and educational role for women. Add this move to its evolution.
Vogue’s famed editor in chief, Anna Wintour, is the artistic director for Condé Nast. According to The New York Times article, she enthusiastically supports the release of Glamour magazine’s printed edition, as she did for the ceasing of the printed editions of Self and Teen Vogue. Would Anna encourage the stopping of monthly printing for Vogue magazine? Could you imagine such a thing?
In the Cheddar interview, Samantha acknowledges that there are advertising dollars for print ads, and less so for banner ads on the internet. Branded content can make up for that, as it’s storytelling vs static visual. However, the desire for brands to place print ads still exists, and they are still effective in the impression they leave behind. Therefore, what does it mean to other magazines when a heavy hitter in the industry like Glamour leaves? One answer could be that print ads in existing magazines get more valuable, as there are fewer print outlets. Hence, a possible enthusiastic support by one editor in chief for the decision to abandon print by another editor in chief.
What does this mean for business owners, artists and makers trying to get featured in Glamour? It means a few things:
Pitching Glamour just got more fractured.
You will be pitching tiny corners of Glamour, and by corners I mean video segments, contributing writers and social media handlers. See Tin Shingle’s Training TuneUp here with a contributing writer at GQ and others about how she approaches writing assignments. There may be assignment editors who see everything at the very top line, but they are seeing the overall message delivery for several media mediums. Pitching can be more frequent, different and specialized as you reach more media creators for Glamour. How a feature on your business will get produced has increased in variety.
Crossover for visual storytellers in video and TV just got better.
Opportunities increased for video segments. While writers may still be there to help write the script - if there is one - video editors and producers may be more involved here.
On-Air experts and TV personalities may also have an increased role to play.
The host of a segment will usually be delivering and guiding the segment. Tin Shingle’s Media Contact Lists include a search filter for On-Air Experts, making it easy for you to focus on pitching these types of media creators.
Figuring out Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is hard.
Alex de Vries is paving the way in reporting about Bitcoin and discovering important things to know about it, as we discovered in a recent article in Wired about the actual environmental impact of Bitcoin, despite Bitcoin’s digital state of not being physical. Turns out, Bitcoin has a pretty large polluting footprint!
After digging into one of the experts quoted in the Wired article, Alex de Vries, we are recommending his blog, Digiconomist, as a great one if you have something to discuss as it relates to cryptocurrency.
Alex even keeps an Obituaries of Ethereum, documenting the number of times it has died.
Tin Shingle Members will now find Alex and Digiconomist, in Tin Shingle’s list of Media Contacts, which is organized by area of interest. If you were looking for writers or bloggers who specialize in cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, accounting, and a few other topics, you will find Digiconomist in our database.
From the Digiconomist website:
Digiconomist is a platform that provides in-depth analysis, opinions and discussions with regard to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, run on a voluntary, best effort basis. The goal of Digiconomist is to cover any relevant financial, economic or regulatory cryptocurrency-related topic. The reason for this is that Digiconomist believes that anyone involved with cryptocurrencies should have some basic financial/economic knowledge, in order to understand and mitigate the risks that could otherwise result in serious losses. Digiconomist is built to assist with acquiring this knowledge. This is intended to contribute to raising the overall quality of the cryptocurrency environment.
Digiconomist was created at the start of 2014 by Alex de Vries (born 1989) as a hobby project. With a background in financial economics, many years of experience in data and risk analysis at some of the leading institutions in banking and accounting, and a special interest for emerging technologies, the idea was to explore new perspectives in the cryptocurrency ecosystem and beyond. To date this remains at the heart of what Digiconomist stands for.
Photo Credit: Screenshot of The WHAT website.
Just added to Tin Shingle’s Media Contacts Database, The WHAT. This e-newsletter has been on my radar for a while, as I’ve subscribed to it since 2016, according to my Gmail filter, and then it disappeared! I always enjoyed the emails, as they had deeply sincere recommendations. As you’ll see after you subscribe, there is no pay for play in their editorial. Thank gosh they reappeared again in my email.
Proof of The WHAT from inside my inbox…Get a feel for their content.
Described as “A clever list for curious people. Lovingly created by two BFFs on a mission to spark intellect and whet appetites.” You can read all about what The WHAT is on their official About Us page. But don’t let their cozy BFF lingo fool you - these two are powerhouses!
The co-founders - Gina Pell and Amy Parker - are entrepreneurs. And they love the Internet 1.0, which is when people connected, and newsletters were heavy (they still are…it’s just not talked about in digital marketing as much at moment…but I predict a shift back to newsletters…which I think is already underway). Remember DailyCandy? You probably had - or have - other favorite newsletters that you live by. The WHAT is like that. And they have a Summit.
Having been involved in several ventures, one of them their own successful website, Splendora, was a huge success and was purchased by Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, a former Google president and former Polyvore CEO. According to this article at SF Gate: Splendora was an online style and culture website that provided women with high style purchasing recommendations, as well as produced city guides, blogged, had its own social network, and even developed an iPhone app early on. But that was then…
Back to The WHAT, because that’s what matters now. We’re talking very special, personal, recommendations. This will be quite a pitch you make. Subscribe to their newsletter for sure, and read the emails you’ll receive. Get to know their style. What makes them happy? What makes them feel useful to their readers? What books do they value?
Their editorial style is very buddy buddy BFF. It will be easy to feel like you are their BFF, and spill your guts to them. So be sure that you are very clear in what you are telling them about. Make no assumptions that they will click on anything to learn more, and they don’t need to hear your life story. They need to know why your thing is a must-know-about and should be in their list of 5 special things they recommend on Wednesdays. Their recommendations are only about 2 sentances long. Be punchy, up beat, authentic, and go for it!
I know. I do this too. How do you control yourself from writing too much in your email pitch? Don’t worry - Tin Shingle has a forum for that called The Pitch Whisperer. Yeah that’s right - we have a forum, and it’s so Internet 1.0. It’s a place where you can go to connect with other like-minded Tin Shingle Members and copy/paste your email pitch, and we’ll give you feedback. It’s group-editing. We do have a private FB group, but this is for people who 1. prefer to not be at FB all the time, 2. need longer form writing and 3. can easily find what they conversed about last year. The Pitch Whisperer forum is part of our Community package of membership, so it’s real entry level.
You can get their contact information and recommended way to contact here, but you can also get it from within Tin Shingle’s Media Contact Database if you are a All Access Member of Tin Shingle, where you can get other ideas like this one when searching for the best, most perfect fits of media outlets who may want to tell their readers about how you are making the world a better place. Like, what if you didn’t know about The WHAT in the first place? If you were searching in our database for “Women’s Interest” or “Books” or “Wellness” or a few other areas of interest, you’d discover it.
Meet the Media Contact Research Team, Nerd Division. We just had our first training session. These artisans are game! Was not expecting two people from my crafting/handmade art world to be such Excel nerds, but I am so happy to discover this through their applications!
Now we are going to knit the Internet.........and do our best to keep up with the exciting world of the changing media in all of its forms. Tin Shingle’s Media Contacts Database is created for regular people like you and me who want to get the word out about their business, and realize that they can if they pitch the right idea to the right person at the right time.
Searching through a database like this is like cozying up with a lightening bolt of ideas you didn’t realize people specialized in. Really helpful to someone doing research for buzz building outreach.
Excited!
