Valley PR Blog

Pitch Me: Alison Stanton

By Charlotte Risch on August 19th, 2008 In ValleySource

Name: Alison Stanton
Title: Freelance Writer
Outlet: Arizona Republic, plus various other clients
Phone: 480-706-1268
Email

1. What do you do?
I have been a freelance writer for almost 10 years now. I started writing when I was looking for a way to stay home with my first son, who is now 10 years old. Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to have gotten busier and busier and I now am very happy writing for several clients, including The Arizona Republic and others. I especially love writing feature stories on people, or what I call “stories about cool people doing cool things.”

2. What kinds of stories are you looking for? Feature stories, human interest stories, business-related stories, event-related stories–pretty much anything you want to send my way and I can hopefully try pitching it for you.

3. What’s the best way to approach you with a pitch? Email is best.

4. What recommendations do you have for PR professionals? I will preface this by saying that I love working with PR people and I can count on one hand how many I have not enjoyed working with over the years. Ninety nine percent of PR people are fantastic and I count many of them among my good friends. But the 2 things I would love to pass along is that our editors don’t always tell us when stories will run so it can be hard to get you a run date (although I am personally more than happy to tell you, as long as someone tells me!) and also that since I work from home, I don’t have access to the free copies of the paper so sadly, it doesn’t really work for me to send out copies to PR folks when the story runs.

5. What’s the strangest/weirdest pitch you’ve ever received? You know, I’m having trouble thinking of a wacky example here! Someone once called me with a pitch about how a local office building had just upgraded their computers–I had to gently explain that this wasn’t so newsworthy.

Comments

I have to say, Alison is one of the greatest! I have worked with her on several stories and she’s always been terrific. If you have a worthwhile story, she’ll always be the one to go to bat for you to find a place for it… and she works with so many local outlets, she’s bound to figure something out. It’s great to have a reporter friend who appreciates that we’re here to provide good content, too.

Thanks for all of your hard work, Alison! You’re tops on my list (but I’ve told you that before)!

We have had the honor and pleasure of working with Alison Stanton on several civic and charitably minded articles related to our organization whose mission is to promote “Service before Self” and bring awareness of neurological diseases.

Alison is a great listener and talented writer who has an innate ability to capture the essence of a story in such a manner that the reader and public become willing to participate and serve.

For anyone looking to involve more of the public in your mission or cause, Alison Stanton is certainly an important part of that strategy.

Frank C. Schmuck
President and Chairman
VOICES TAKE FLIGHT
http://www.VTF.org

Alison is one of my favorite freelancers! She is so easy to work with and writes a heck of a story. Pitch her a quality story and she will usually find a place for it. I’ve also worked with her for custom publications and she’s been fantastic! Thanks Alison!

I have to agree with Deb — Alison is one of my favorite people to work with in the Valley.

I love bringing ideas her way; she really works hard to find a way TO DO the story, not the other way around. She also offers great feedback on ways a pitch can be “tweaked” to be more relevant for her; something I really appreciate!

Simply put, if Alison isn’t on your contact list, she should be!

I have worked with Alison for several years, both as a photographer for The Arizona Republic, and then as a Photo Editor for the Republic. When as a photographer, I saw Alison’s name on a assignment, I knew when I arrived at the assignment that the information would be correct, the contact would know that I was coming and that all the leg work would have been taken care of before the assignment was put into the system. As a Photo Editor I usually heard from Alison first in a email, telling me, what her idea for a story was, with several suggestions for photos, all which were well thought out. If I had a good idea she was quick to embrace my suggestion and helped to get it set up. Alison is a very bright ,hard working, organized reporter who finds and writes interesting stories, that require very little work.She is a joy to work with, in any capacity.

I agree with everyone’s comments. Alison was and has been wonderful to work with. I’m looking forward to another opportunity to work with her again real soon!

Jeff Golner
JFG Consulting, LLC
jeff@jfgconsult.com

I have to agree with everyone here. Alison is such a pleasure to work with. She’s very organized and she’s an amazing writer. She understands the value of a great story and works hard to get it done. She’s one of my favorite freelancers! Thanks Alison.

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