alt Hacker NewsI have a story with Benji.
Last year I went viral, and Benji was the first person to interview me. It was a really cool experience, we chatted via Twitter dms, and he wrote a piece about my work - overall did a decent job.
Then, 6 months later a separate project I was adjacent to was starting to pick up steam. I reached out to him asking if he wanted to cover us. No response.
Then, tech crunch wrote an article on our project.
I reached to Benji again saying "Hey would you like to chat again, now we have some coverage?" And he finally responded, but said he couldn't report on me because he had a directive that he could only report on things that didn't have any prior or pre-existing coverage (?)
I thought that was rather strange, especially since we already had built up a relationship.
I don't really have a moral or lesson to this story, other than that journalism can be rather opaque sometimes.
Oh one other tip for anyone reading this - if you do ever get reached out to by journalists, communicate in writing, not a phone call so you can be VERY precise in your wordings.
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I'm a journalist. As a general rule, if someone approaches me with a pitch for a feature or investigation (not news piece) that was already published elsewhere, I'll turn it down. To be fair, I turn down all PR pitches, but there are journalists who don't but still want an exclusive.
It sometimes happens that you spend weeks or months working on a story, only to be scooped by another publication. It sucks, especially if you think your story is the better one, but unless you can pivot or add a substantial amount of new insight, it won't come out.
Sometimes people get busy and overwhelmed, but they don't know how to say no.
This is an experience I've had with reporters multiple times. They don't like to write about the same thing twice.
My hunch is Ars will copy/reword/repost articles from real news sources (basically free for Ars) or do its own reporting for exclusive stories (costs reporters some time). No reason for Ars to spend reporter time on something they can copy.
> Then, 6 months later a separate project I was adjacent to was starting to pick up steam. I reached out to him asking if he wanted to cover us. No response. [...]
> I reached to Benji again saying "Hey would you like to chat again, now we have some coverage?" And he finally responded, but said he couldn't report on me because he had a directive that he could only report on things that didn't have any prior or pre-existing coverage (?)
> I thought that was rather strange, especially since we already had built up a relationship.
The US mentality might be different, but at least having grown up and living in Germany, such an annoying hustler who wants to use some journalist as a marketing influencer for his private project is a huge no-no. In other words: it is a very reasonable decision (perhaps even the only right one) for any journalist to fob off such a hustler.