A topic is what you know. An angle is why they should care.
Hi Reader,
Back in my General Motors days, I learned something I still use with every single client today: a car is never just one story.
Think about one new model launching.
The motoring journalists want to know what's under the hood, how it handles, and how it stacks up against its rivals.
The family magazine couldn't care less about horsepower. Its readers want safety ratings, boot space, and whether three car seats actually fit in the back.
The business pages want the market story: why this model, why now, and what it means for the region.
And the lifestyle and design press want the look, the interior, and the kind of person who'd drive it.
Same car. Same spec sheet. Four completely different stories, and not one of them is "we launched a new car."
Nobody on a launch team would dream of sending all media the same press release. And yet, when it comes to our own expertise as founders and experts, that's exactly what most of us do.
We hand the media our spec sheet (our services, our years of experience, our credentials) and then wonder why nobody runs with it.
This week's episode of Let's Make Waves walks through my full method for finding story angles the media actually wants (details at the end of this email).
Here, I want to slow down on the one idea everything else depends on.
A journalist can't publish a topic
When I ask an expert what she'd like to be featured for, she almost always gives me a topic. "I can talk about leadership." "I can talk about retirement planning." "I can talk about gut health."
All perfectly good topics. But a journalist can't publish a topic. A topic is a subject area. What a journalist needs is a story, something with a reason to exist on that page, or in that episode, this week.
So here's the simplest way I can put it:
A topic is what you know. An angle is the reason a specific audience, reached through a specific media outlet, should care about what you know, right now.
And this gap is costing experts more than they realise. Cision's 2026 State of the Media report surveyed close to 1,900 journalists across 19 markets. Two-thirds of them (66%) said they rely on content from PR, like pitches and press releases, for story ideas.
So the door is wide open. But 72% said fewer than a quarter of the pitches they receive are actually relevant to them. Most people are knocking on that open door with a topic, not a story.
One expert, one topic, three stories
Let me show you what I mean with an example I didn't have time for on the podcast. I'm making her up, so nobody is identifiable.
Say she's a leadership coach who works with women stepping into their first senior role. Her topic is leadership. Now watch what happens when she starts with the outlet instead of herself.
For the business section of a national newspaper, read by executives and business owners, who like trend stories with numbers behind them, her angle might come from a pattern she keeps seeing in her client work: why so many newly promoted women managers are already quietly looking for the exit in their first year, backed by what she's tracked across her own clients.
For a women's lifestyle magazine, which loves relatable first-person stories and practical advice, it might be: what to do in your first 90 days when the friends you used to have lunch with now report to you.
For a morning radio show in her city, short and tied to this week, it's late October, so it might be: three things to say in your year-end review if you want a raise next year.
Same woman. Same expertise. Three completely different story angles.
Why the angle has to start with them
I've sat on both sides of this desk, receiving pitches as a junior journalist (my first job while I was still in college) and sending them on behalf of brands, and the pattern was always the same. The pitches that went nowhere were the ones that were all about the sender.
The research backs this up. Muck Rack's 2026 State of Journalism report asked nearly 900 journalists what makes a pitch feel truly relevant, and 78% said it has to directly affect the community their outlet serves. Yet only 16% said the pitches they get usually show that awareness.
That's the whole shift. A journalist doesn't work for you. She answers to her editor, and her editor answers to the reader. When your angle helps her keep her promise to that reader, you're useful. When it doesn't, you're one more email to delete.
A small exercise for this week
Grab a notebook and try this before Friday.
- Write your topic at the top of the page. One or two words, like "leadership" or "family business HR."
- Pick three outlets you'd genuinely love to be in. Ideally one print or online publication, one podcast, and one local outlet (radio, TV or a city paper).
- For each one, answer two questions: who does this outlet serve, and what do they care about right now? Then, how does it tell stories? Trend pieces, opinion columns, practical tips, long conversations?
- Now write one sentence per outlet, an angle that starts with their audience.
Here's my one rule: if your sentence starts with "I," your job title or your years of experience, cross it out and start again. You'll be surprised how different the three sentences look once your expertise is in service of someone else's reader.
Now it's your turn: send me your questions
If the poll told me anything, it's that publicity is a hot topic for you right now, and I'm going to keep going deeper on it over the coming weeks.
So hit reply Reader and send me your media, publicity and PR questions.
Anything goes. How to approach a journalist you've never met. Whether your launch is actually newsworthy. What to say when a producer finally replies. I'll answer as many as I can in upcoming issues and episodes (without names, of course).
And if you're not following me on Instagram yet, come say hi. That's where I share a lot of what I'm working on between issues, and it's where I run these polls, so you get a real say in what I write and talk about next.
Have a great week. Keep making waves. You've got this.
PS: Did someone forward you this newsletter to you? You can Subscribe here.
NEW EPISODE ON LET'S MAKE WAVES PODCAST
This week's episode, Why Journalists Don't Care What You Know, and What They Care About Instead, is built entirely on your poll answers.
I go through the difference between a topic and an angle, what close to 2,800 journalists say about the pitches landing in their inbox, how to study the way an outlet tells its stories before you pitch it, the four traps I see smart experts fall into, and the three questions to answer before you write a single word.
Save it for your next pitch
Listen on Apple or Spotify.
