Alexander Lee is a journalist covering gaming, esports, and the convergence of the physical and the virtual. His journey has taken him from creative writing in college, to freelance esports journalism, to his current full-time role with Digiday.

We connected with Alex on his background, his take on the industry, and the key components of a great PR pitch from a journalist’s perspective.

1. How did you get into journalism? 

I was an English major in college, but I never intended to be a journalist at the time. I wanted to be a creative writer. When I graduated from college, I was reading journalistic coverage of esports and honestly thought I could do a better job. I also needed to make some money on the side.

I started pitching esports websites as a freelancer and became somewhat established as an esports writer over the years. Four years later, I got hired by Digiday. This is my first full-time role as a reporter with them. 

2. What do you think makes for a good story?

I’ll speak from my role as a Digiday reporter specifically, because I think what makes a good story varies significantly from publication to publication. For me personally, I like to write stories that pick up on some sort of trend or narrative that smaller, granular news fits into.

If someone comes to me with a pitch about a brand activation inside Roblox, for example, I’m probably not going to be that interested in just writing a news article about the activation because many other publications are going to be writing the same article.

If the technology being pitched is of interest to me, I like to ask: What is new about this? Is it the first time this sort of technology has been implemented? Is this technology being approached in a different way than other brands or companies have done in the past? There needs to be something specifically different that works as a news hook. The news needs to fit into an interesting trend that I see happening and can write about. 

3. What is the biggest piece of advice you would give to young PR professionals who are pitching you? 

You have to personalize your pitches so much. It has to be really, really obvious from the subject line and from the very first sentence that you are reaching out to a journalist because you read their work and feel the story is a good fit for them. I get so many PR pitches that are obviously being blasted out by some kind of mail merge and they have the wrong reporter’s name or outlet in the subject line. 

When that happens, I’ll just ignore the pitch completely. I’m much more likely to respond to an email when the PR contact not only explains the story, but also explains why they believe the story would be a good fit for me and a good fit for my outlet. 

4. What are some other essential components a good pitch should have?

First of all, I think a good pitch gets to the crux of the story in the first two sentences. I’ve had pitches start off in “fun” ways that just didn’t really work for me. I remember this one time I received a pitch about Christmas and it started out something like “Oh no, this pitch is going to have the C word in it.”

It got me to click, but I definitely felt misled. They bait and switched me and I just ended up looking away from the pitch entirely. I don’t even know what the rest of the picture was about once it became obvious that the c word was Christmas.

With that being said, I think it is good to include some sense of the personality of the sources that you’re trying to put forward. Include quotes that you don’t see elsewhere from those people that communicate their personality in some way. While I want the pitch itself to be “boring” and straight to the point, including even one bullet point that grabs my attention makes a huge difference.

I also want to know why there’s value in interviewing this specific person about this topic. I get a lot of pitches about news stories that recently happened and I have the PR contact asking me if I want their client to comment on it.  They give me their client’s professional background and sometimes that is what I’m looking for.

A large majority of the time though, those emails don’t have the second part that I look for. There are lots of experts. Why should I interview this expert specifically? It’s because they have an interesting personality. They’ve done this one specific thing differently that was more successful.

I’d like to generally see more of the source’s personality and their little quirks in pitches. I feel like PR people tend to try to hide those things, but that’s exactly what makes me want to speak with someone.

5. What are some of the trends in the media that you’ve witnessed and how do you anticipate the industry will change moving forward? 

I would say the biggest trend that I’ve seen more and more of is either journalists or people who perhaps would’ve gone on to become journalists, instead become influencers or streamers. They are very much in the vein of the gaming and esports influencers and streamers that I cover. 

There are some notable examples. I’m not going to name anyone specifically, but a lot of the typical gaming and esports audience does not read editorial content. It spends most of its time watching video or streamed content, so I’ve seen more reporters pivot to being YouTubers or streamers who maybe instead of approaching things in the sort of measured deep dive kind of way that I like to approach it as a journalist, they will instead race to be the first person to create a YouTube video about a specific flare up of drama or industry news. I don’t really think this is a good trend. It’s becoming increasingly less enticing to be an actual reporter or writer in this industry. Our audience could possibly grow in the future, but it’s pretty small right now.