When doing research for a story pitch, Lois Parshley, an independent freelance journalist, says she has one cardinal rule: Never buy a plane ticket until it’s an official assignment. “All it took was doing that once and having it not work,” to learn that lesson, she says. It was an expensive mistake.
But setting boundaries around pre-reporting—or developing a story before it’s been accepted for publication—presents “a complicated calculation” for any journalist, Parshley says. Some reporters spend weeks visiting relevant locations and calling potential sources, whereas others may be willing or able to spend no more than an hour or so poking around online.
Among freelancers in particular, pre-reporting is the subject of some controversy. Many say rates for their work haven’t changed in decades, and the number of assignments they need to sustain themselves depends heavily on the time it takes to complete each one. On the flip side, though, editors say they often need details only pre-reporting can provide to feel comfortable making an assignment.
“You shouldn’t spend all the time on [pre-reporting] because you need to be able to pay the bills and do other things,” says Daisy Yuhas, a freelance science journalist and editor. “But it is actually really well worth your time and well worth your editor’s time to have a vision for this as a story and not a topic.”
To reap the full benefits of pre-reporting, a reporter needs to determine the point at which that upfront investment exceeds the potential gains later on when you are selling or writing the story. But finding that tipping point can depend on many factors—including the slope of your own learning curve, how immersed you are in that beat, your relationship with any prospective editors, the kind of story you want to write, and your possible deadlines.
Whatever form pre-reporting takes, when done effectively, it supplies the most important questions a journalist needs answered to nail a pitch, the confidence to delve deeper into a topic, and ultimately the perspective to write a better story.
How To Approach Pre-Reporting
So how much pre-reporting is good practice, and how much is overkill? Just like regular reporting, journalists say, it depends. But there are several considerations that can help you craft an efficient pre-reporting plan.
One major factor is what length and form the story will take. Pre-reporting for a story about a single study with a relatively low word count is straightforward, says Eli Ramos, a reporter at the Tahoe Daily Tribune: “Get down the basics of: Why is this important? What is this going to show?” To develop feature pitches, though, pre-reporting should go beyond confirming basic details and investigate why the story should be told now and who is the best person or people to tell it, says Adithi Ramakrishnan, a science reporter for the Associated Press. “That sometimes requires talking to a few more people to figure out where is the right angle or place to center a story.”
Another important factor in the efficiency calculation is the reporter’s own background. General assignment or breaking news science reporters often need to learn about a complex topic fast, without necessarily having much background—and as a result, they may need to do more pre-reporting. “I define [pre-reporting] as kind of doing your homework,” Ramakrishnan says. Building knowledge before interviewing key sources, she adds, helps you “know exactly what you need by the time you talk to the researcher.”
But even seasoned beat reporters with deep knowledge of a field say they often need to investigate a potential story to collect enough material to convince an editor to champion it. “I’ve had close relationships with editors,” says Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, a reporter and researcher for The New York Times based in Mexico City. “I’ve just never been able to say one or two sentences and get my pitch approved.”
Sometimes the most important consideration when it comes to pre-reporting isn’t even about the story itself, but rather what publication to pitch it to, Yuhas says. When looking into publications that she wants to try pitching, she reads what they publish to determine who their audience is, what’s interesting to them, and what the typical story construction looks like. “The story part often, though not always, is some version of, ‘we used to think [x], and now we think y, and that matters because z.’ So you know your pre-reporting is done, or getting there, when you really can answer those questions.”
It can also be useful to get an editor’s input to help you focus your pre-reporting more tightly—essentially pre-reporting the pre-reporting. Ramakrishnan says she asks, “Am I at the point where I can pitch this yet?” And her editor might respond with something like, “That sounds really cool. Maybe do you want to talk to people and [then] talk to me?” That guidance has helped Ramakrishnan talk to the right number of sources ahead of a pitch to quickly assess a story’s breadth.
Freelancers can also benefit from conversations with editors before they pitch, Yuhas says, adding that you can ask an editor if they’re amenable to an open conversation about pitching them, and if they are, it doesn’t hurt to share some ideas and see how they respond.
And if a pitch is rejected, Parshley says, she uses any feedback given by an editor to dive back in and make tweaks. “If you have developed at least enough of a relationship with an editor for them to tell you why they’re saying no beyond the standard rejection,” she says, “you can incorporate that into your pitch before you send it out again.”
Putting Pre-Reporting into Practice
Conversations with potential sources as part of pre-reporting don’t always look much different from other interviews. “Any initial interview [is] just providing information, helping sources understand who I am and where I’m coming from,” Parshley says. Whether that comes before or after an editor’s greenlight isn’t as important, but it is important to manage sources’ expectations during pre-reporting, she says. Parshley is careful to tell potential sources upfront if a story is still in the pre-pitching phase.
One core benefit of talking with sources early on is that it can help you decide if a story is even worth pitching in the first place—which ultimately saves time. “I see pre-reporting as the part of the process where you start understanding the story that you have in your hands,” says Rodríguez Mega.
When Ramakrishnan calls a source before a pitch is accepted, she says she’s primarily looking to get an expert’s take on the newsworthiness of her potential subject. Rodríguez Mega says it can be useful to look for data that supports a story’s significance early in the process, “because if you have a cool story, but it’s not supported by data … then maybe it’s not the story that you thought it would be.”
One recent pre-reporting conversation Rodríguez Mega had with a potential source over coffee shifted his entire perspective on the story. Further reporting helped him humanize the scientists and clarify the impact of their work on the community, he says. “It really helped me understand what the story was about … [and] what was the story that I wanted to tell.”
Such informal conversations—in which you aren’t necessarily looking to nab a money quote for a story—can help you think through ideas, says Rodríguez Mega. In that sense, pre-reporting conversations “feel a little less like an interview and more like a regular chat,” he says. “Like, you’re just curious about learning about people’s work and what they do, and you ask all these genuine questions.”
Before she writes a pitch, KC Cheng, a freelance photojournalist based in Nairobi, Kenya, says she tries to plan out reporting logistics and even possible times to interview sources. “If I have all of this figured out, I feel like I’ve gotten to the point where I know I can sell a story,” she says. Some stories call for hard-to-reach sources, and showing an editor she already has a contact who will go on the record can be an important element to make a pitch stand out.
“Anything to do with healthcare, it’s so hard to get a hold of people,” Ramos says. “When I was pitching [a healthcare] story, I actually called up people beforehand to ask: ‘If I was going to write an article about it, would you be able to provide outside comment for me?’”
Even though pre-reporting calls or visits may be framed as laying the groundwork for a story, sources need to know that an on-the-record conversation might be used later on, Ramakrishnan says. “I feel like that way, just right [off] the bat … [they know that] if it doesn’t work out, it might not be a story, but if it does, just so you know, you might be quoted.”
Reaping the Benefits of Pre-Reporting
Once a writer has decided a story is worth pursuing, pre-reporting can help supply background that makes a pitch stand out. To pre-report on a new scientific paper, for instance, “I not only read that paper, but I try to look at [the researchers’] past work and I try to look at what other people have written about the topic,” Parshley says. “Sometimes I go through and see who they’re citing. And then I read those people’s work.”
That context can lead to a more newsworthy angle and boost a pitch from “intriguing” to “unmissable” for an editor, Ramos says. “Don’t just say, ‘This looks like it’s a big study,’ or ‘This looks like it’s kind of a weird or unusual thing.’ Know that it’s actually newsworthy within its field. … You only get to know that through pre-reporting.”
Understanding the bigger picture around a story doesn’t just improve its value to an editor, it also means anticipating any potential challenges along the way, Yuhas says. If, for example, a reporter gets a pitch assigned but realizes midway through reporting that the subject is controversial or needs sensitivity consulting, “it can go sideways fast,” Yuhas says. “Often these things are surmountable, but in fairness to your editors, in fairness to other people in the process, in fairness to your sources, you want to have a sense of the lay of the land early so that you can navigate that.”
Pre-reporting can also prepare you to conduct better interviews and write an article more confidently once it’s assigned. You don’t expect to know everything before you start—but lacking confidence or clarity when you sit down to interview a source or outline a story can be a tell-tale sign that you haven’t done enough background research. Rodríguez Mega describes it as “a feeling that I will not be able to defend my story if I get bombarded with questions” from an editor.
When auroras were in the news throughout the summer and fall of 2024, Ramakrishnan was tasked with writing several stories about the science involved. Pre-reporting helped her figure out the basics before she reached out to experts, she says, so that she didn’t have to lead the conversation with “OK, what the heck are auroras?” Doing that work upfront meant that she was able to tap sources and develop stories faster as the summer went on.
Playing the Long Game
Some reporters blur the line between pre-reporting for an individual story and building out a beat, developing longer-term expertise that can pay off for multiple stories, as Ramakrishnan did. Instead of taking a purely transactional view—pre-reporting on one story at a time—Ramakrishnan says she tries to immerse herself in the fields she wants to explore by subscribing to email updates from relevant journals. Building a direct relationship with your interests or beat helps hasten the process, Yuhas says, making freelance pitching more efficient.
One benefit of this approach is that you can develop expertise in an area that no one else is covering or knows as intimately. In 2017, for example, Cheng received a fellowship to live with Sámi reindeer herders in the Arctic. “I was just observing, taking notes, asking a lot of questions, and taking photographs,” she says, and she shaped that material into a string of stories that started her career.
As a freelancer, Cheng says she dumps all her initial effort into these kinds of pre-reporting trips and plans to sell several stories from whatever she discovers. “Ideally, I’d be pitching the story and get a commission—a few commissions—before I go. That’s not always the case,” she says. Once she has several sources and some logistics lined up, she expects she “can sell a story or a few stories if I go myself and hopefully get people to pay for all the expenses retroactively.”
Moving to a new place in the hopes of building a unique beat comes with risks and isn’t an option for everyone. But an immersive focus—even without traveling—can help build contacts.
A critical resource Cheng cultivates through her pre-reporting method is a network of potential sources available before she needs them. She taps her “Rolodex of contacts” about preliminary story ideas so they can recommend other potential sources or at least point her in the right direction to expand her network. It’s “part of your job, building these connections,” she says.
In some cases, personal experience can also expedite your pre-reporting efforts. For example, Ramos says that they feel comfortable when tapping their background as a scientist or writing about subjects where they have personal experience, such as trans healthcare. When they reported on trans masculine menstruation, they used their pre-pitch research time to connect briefly with scientists and dive deeper on the study. “The personal background knowledge that I had on the topic made it easier for me to cut out what I think would typically be pre-reporting stuff, like, why is this important?” they say.
Being intentional about pre-reporting is a significant factor in making it part of your regular workflow and maximizing the potential benefits. Every writer and every story is different, so it’s OK for your pre-reporting style to be yours alone—so long as you approach it thoughtfully, do your homework, and try a few strategies to see what works for you.
That can also help change your perception of the process. Pre-reporting can feel like a lot of extra unpaid time if you don’t enjoy it, Yuhas says—which is why she recommends leaning into the topics you’re already excited about. “That’s a good overlap that falls in that happy space of, like, you would have been reading about this anyway.”
Emma Gometz (they/she) is a journalist, illustrator, and performance artist based in New York City. When they’re not writing or thinking about writing, they’re probably waiting in a rush line for a Broadway show, doing yoga, or trying to learn about space by reading books meant for children. Emma is currently a digital producer for WNYC’s Science Friday, but you can also find their words in Teen Vogue, The Open Notebook (where they’re an early-career fellow supported by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund), and The Columbia Spectator. Find Emma on Bluesky @emmalgometz.bsky.social.