*Excerpted from SPIN Works! The nuts & bolts of good PR: A media guidebook for public interest organizations. By Robert Bray. Copyright 1999 SPIN Project/Independent Media Institute, 77 Federal Street, San Francisco, CA 94107. 415.284-1427, info@spinproject.org.

A colleague once summed up the importance of pitching with a small sign he posted in the midst of a particularly demanding media campaign: "It's the follow-up call, stupid." In other words, no matter how brilliant your message or clever your frame, it can very well be irrelevant you do not follow through with the pitch call.

Pitching means "selling" your news story to a reporter or editor. It typically is done over the phone, although reporters can be pitched in person at briefings or while they are covering other events.

Making the pitch call is something like telemarketing. You are calling someone who is probably busy and distracted-in this case a reporter or editor-in an attempt to sell them something they probably do not sound very interested in your story. It can be nerve-wracking.

We have all been interrupted during dinner by a telemarketer from yet another credit card or long-distance phone company. And we have probably all attempted to hang up as quickly as possible. On occasion, we might have spoken with the person for a few minutes - even if we did not buy the product.

Think about why you may have gruffly hung up on one caller yet listened courteously to another. Most likely, the caller who got your attention sounded human: relaxed, articulate and genuine about the reason for the call. The callers most easy to hang up on, on the other hand, probably sounded like they were reading from a script, droning on despite your protestations about being in the middle of dinner.

Believe it or not, your experience answering the phone will help you when it is time to begin calling reporters. Often, you will have no more than a few minutes to convince the person you have news. Here are some tried and true rules to bear in mind while your fingers do the walking and your mouth does the pitching.

When to call reporters
Pitching a story is sometimes as much about timing as it is about framing and luck. Here are tips for when to call a reporter.

• Do not call reporters when you know they are on deadline. If you do get through to them they will be irritated and try to get you off the phone fast. A reporter working on the next morning's paper will be crashing on deadline any time after 3:30 p.m. the day before. Television reporters most likely will be out of reach up to an hour before they go on the air. So if your local evening news starts at 5 p.m., avoid calling reporters after 3 or 3:30. This of course does not apply is really big news is breaking. Then call! And sometimes radio reporters, if they can confirm the story (through wire service coverage, for example), might put it on immediately (that is one of the beauties of radio news - it often is the first on a fast-breaking story).
• Late morning, say, around 10:30, is a good time to call reporters. They have already had their morning coffee, their daily planning meetings probably have concluded, and it is before they get deeply involved in other stories. The earlier in the week the better.
• It is not advised to call on a weekend unless some big news is breaking or you have an event unfolding and you are checking to see if the media outlet is sending anyone (presuming you have already sent them the media advisory and pitched the event). Weekend shifts might mean reporters are working with whom you do not have regular contact and they may not know you or the issue. On the other hand, if your regular reporter contact is not around pitch anyone who is interested.