For years, I've told people the biggest mistake in media pitching is ‘spray and pray’. Blasting a generic pitch to hundreds of reporters and hoping something sticks. They have a name for that. It's called spam. It didn’t work 20 years ago. And it certainly doesn’t work today.

But something has shifted that’s making targeted pitching more important. More and more, we’re seeing that the journalist isn't just a person who works at a media outlet anymore. Increasingly, they are the outlet.