Valley PR Blog

Pitch Me: Nikki Buchanan

By Charlotte Shaff on July 27th, 2010 In Pitching

NAME: Nikki Buchanan
EMAIL: lucybuck@cox.net or tips@wildlavender.com
PHONE: 480-242-7426

1. What are your main daily duties? I write two Southeast Valley restaurant reviews per week for the Arizona Republic, one of about 700-800 words, the other anywhere from 500-750 words. I also create a “hotlist” of Southeast Valley restaurants offering great _______ (fill in the blank here): hot dogs, brunches, ice cream, Vietnamese food, salads . . . . You get the picture. Additionally, I write short news stories about Southeast Valley restaurants (openings, closings, chef changes, special events, new directions, the occasional interesting promotion, etc.) which may appear online or in print or both.

I also write lodging stories, featuring B&B’s and quaint hotels around the state, for Arizona Highways. Now and then, I write a feature for them as well. Last year, I wrote about the Bell Lexus Copperstate 1000 Road Rally. Soon, I will do a piece on an historic pecan grove in Southeastern Arizona. I love broadening my horizons and writing these sorts of stories. This year, I’m going to make it a point to pitch a few people profiles to Robert and Kelly, my editors at Highways.

I’ve been writing artist profiles and profiles of other prominent Sedona people for Sedona Magazine for about two years now, and I really enjoy it. I enjoy connecting with and writing about people, who are always so thrilled when you say nice things about them. It’s interesting, rewarding writing for me.

In the last few years, I’ve also written features on chiles, modern Mexican food and the locavore movement for Where Guestbook, which were all fun stories to write. In those cases, the editors came to me with an idea of what they wanted and asked me to write it. They were good story ideas and I was happy to oblige.

I’m the local editor for the Zagat Survey, a job that compels me to stay up-to-date on hot new restaurants, even if they don’t fall within my Everyday Dining parameters at the paper. And I’m occasionally called upon to create a Go List for Food & Wine or to add my two cents to some roundup at Bon Appetit.

I had a very long stint as Dining Editor at Phoenix Magazine, a title which meant I was a restaurant critic and restaurant features writer. While I was there, I was probably most open to pitches. I wrote travel pieces (some of them food-related, some not), stories about chefs, farmers and food trends, as well as an annual dining guide and best new restaurants of the year issue.

For many years, I had a TV gig on Good Morning Arizona on Channel 3 (KTVK), where I did a weekly restaurant review and wrote a short follow-up review for azfamily.com. That was a fast and loose little gig and I was very open to pitches concerning restaurants and sometimes even special events or promotions. The same was true when I was a talk show host at KTAR and later at KFYI. At KFYI, I had a two-hour show and plenty of time to fill with chefs, restaurants, food trends, cookbook authors, wine geeks, wine producers, etc.

At the moment, I have a darling little blog called Wild Lavender (thewildlavender.com), which I’ve left horribly neglected in recent months. But I intend to change that very soon, now that I’m getting more up-to-speed at the Republic. This might be a great place to pitch me. My interests continue to be great chefs, fun new restaurants, food trends, interesting ingredients, wines, cocktails and not-to-be-missed events.

2. What kinds of stories are you looking for? These days, it’s not so much the stories I’m looking for (those are pretty much set in stone at the paper) as the news. Has a great new place opened in my territory that I’d like to review? Has an older restaurant re-modeled and changed its menu? It’s the newsy stuff I most need right now.

3. What’s the best way to approach you with a pitch? I’m a girl with my own agenda, you might say, so I’m probably one of the least “pitchable” people you will ever meet. Stubborn, I guess. But I know a good idea when I hear one, so it’s not impossible to pitch me. The idea just needs to be pretty original. I’m never going to be the writer who copies a press release word for word.

4. What recommendations do you have for PR professionals? I would say this, however, as a general guideline. I’m always pleased when PR folks know exactly what it is I do and don’t do. I hate being pitched a story I can’t possibly write, and I’m surprised when the people pitching me haven’t done their due diligence and found that out. I’m not writing features these days but apparently, no one has noticed. They pitch me features. I’m not doing roundups, so don’t pitch me roundups. I think this is universally true for local and national writers. We expect you to do your homework. Pay attention to what kinds of stories the writer writes, see if you can discern a certain bent or interest and play to that. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to check out back issues to make sure the idea you’re pitching (or something remarkably like it) wasn’t written six months or a year ago.

Also, and this is big with me. If you get a writer interested in a story you’ve pitched and that writer asks you for more info about your client, which may not be at your fingertips? Drop everything and get the information back to the writer asap. Don’t get sloppy on the follow-through. We’re giving you the coverage you asked for; now help us by getting the information we ask of you as expeditiously as possible. Can’t reach the client? Call us back and let us know you haven’t gotten through but you’re working on it.

5. What’s the strangest/weirdest pitch you’ve ever received? I can’t think of a thing. Most pitches I get are pretty straightforward and to be honest, not all that original or exciting.

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