Valley PR Blog

Pitch Me: Dawson Fearnow

By Len Gutman on June 22nd, 2010 In Pitching

Name: Dawson Fearnow
Title: Editor-in-Chief
Outlet: Desert Living Today/Scoop Factory
Phone: 480-286-1128
eMail: dawson@scoopfactory.com

1. What are your primary duties and responsibilities?
I’m the new (old) editor at sister publications, Desert Living Today and Scoop Factory. (I also steered the magazine through the CITY AZ/Desert Living transition before leaving in 2004 to serve as the Editor-in-Chief of Arizona Foothills.) I spend my days writing, editing and overseeing our staff, as well as sifting through news feeds, websites, blogs and freelance and PR pitches. As the slogan says, ‘We Read It All, So You Don’t Have To.’ So, I really do read it all.

2. What kinds of stories are you looking for?
Scoop Factory is a subscriber-only daily e-mail publication with a monthly readership of 325,000. We publish a single AZ-centric editorial feature five days a week, highlighting new trends, insider info and timely tips across six categories (Dining, Travel, Culture, Style, Shelter and People). Each e-blast is supplemented by up to three additional, quickie Extra Scoops. Desert Living Today is the new online home for Desert Living Magazine (RIP), where we publish up to 15 features daily, covering a similar mix of food, fashion, design, real estate and lifestyle. Furthermore, we also cover local news, newsmakers, society and the media industry, including keeping tabs on our former competitors in the (sadly dying) print publication world.

3. What is the best way to approach you with a pitch?
Two words, or is it one: e-mail. We are all digital, all the time at SF/DLT. That, or faxes. Preferably multi-page and with lots and lots of ink-burning black space.

4. What other recommendations do you have for PR professionals?
Subscribe to Scoop Factory, read Desert Living Today. (Tell everyone you know to do the same.) That’s the best way to get a handle on our very specific tone/format. DLT is more flexible, but it has to have a local angle. National news, local spin. Internet publishing is also a content-consuming beast, so, if you have something that fits, pitch away.

5. What is the weirdest/strangest pitch you have ever received?
Too many to list, but we did get our first pitch from the Church of Scientology. If only it had a local angle.

Share This

Hide Sites

Want Your Picture Icon? Go to gravatar.com and set a picture up to your email address for free. It also works on thousands of other websites, too!