Valley PR Blog

Pitch Me: Rene Gutel, KJZZ-FM

By Charlotte Risch on April 30th, 2008 In ValleySource

I am really psyched to offer up this Pitch Me. I’ve been playing around with Twitter and did a search for producers and reporters to follow. Maybe they use Twitter to find stories or help?! Well, I came upon Rene Gutel and reached out to her for our blog. Come to find out, she reads VPRB! I enjoy the station and had always wondered how to pitch KJZZ effectively. Now I have some good info…I guess I will share with you too,

Name: Rene Gutel

Title: Reporter

Outlet: KJZZ, the Phoenix NPR affiliate. 91.5 FM

Phone: 480-774-8236

Email

You can also link to my website and the page at my station

1. What do you do as a public radio reporter?

I report on local, statewide and national issues for KJZZ, the Phoenix NPR affiliate. As a KJZZ-based reporter, I work with editors both at the station and throughout the public radio system to bring in-depth, sound rich feature stories to our listeners. I do not have a specific beat, rather I cover a bit of everything, from politics to digital culture, immigration to business, gastronomy to education.

2. What kinds of stories are you looking for?

Public radio stories should have substance and a sense of purpose. One of NPR’s founders once said the network aims to “celebrate the human experience” and I agree with that. Our listeners are bright and well-educated. They also expect us to not “speak down” to them.

Stories should appeal to listeners’ intellect and curiosity.

Most of all, I would like our listeners to come away from a feature story having learned something new. Although I cover all manners of stories, I am personally drawn to very quirky subjects. As an example, in the fall I learned about a pet-only funeral home in Scottsdale. It sounded interesting but I wasn’t interested in producing a story that would simply amount to free advertising for the company. I did some research and learned this business was part of a nationwide trend of pet funerals, and the feature I produced ended up airing on Morning Edition.

I also like stories with great sound. Pictures and video mean nothing to me, but sometimes I’ll cover something simply because of the sound opportunities. Once I went to the public try-outs to sing the national anthem at a Phoenix Suns home game and produced a story about all the regular Joes trying to sing the anthem. That was fun!

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

Email. But sometimes emails get lost. My work’s spam filter can be voracious. I never mind when a PR person follows up an e-mail with a brief phone call. I even freely give my cell phone number out on my voicemail to be as reachable as possible. I simply ask that as a PR person, you respect my privacy and boundaries. Please don’t call me before 9:00am, or after 6:00pm, unless it’s truly a matter of breaking news. And please don’t call me repeatedly about the same story. If I am not calling you back, it’s likely I am not interested in the story.

4. What recommendations do you have for PR professionals?

An issue, a person or a place must be truly exceptional and exciting for me to consider doing a report on it. When I do a feature story, I can spend up to a week reporting: interviewing multiple subjects, doing background research, writing, etc. The story needs real substance and should hold up to close scrutiny.

It’s actually very rare that I’ll do a story based on a press release.

I need time to pursue an idea, and fit it into the larger context. I believe that context is what many PR people often forget when pitching me a story about a particular client. An opening or an event or a speaker may in and of itself be interesting, but it’s not likely to strike my fancy unless I can link it to the Big Wide World around us.

Please pitch me serious ideas. Even the quirky, fanciful pitches should have some meat to them. In short, the story should be interesting to more people than simply the PR professional and the client.

5. What’s the strangest/weirdest pitch you’ve ever received?

A woman from a national Big Name clothing store called me up and asked if I was interested in doing a story about a summer promotion they were holding that involved giving away flip-flop sandals. That’s not a story, that’s an ad. But what is a story is a Phoenix-based rock band that plays covers of Nintendo songs. Or a fast-food restaurant that serves only cereal. Or a 60-year-old retired math teacher who is playing on a college tennis team alongside 18 and 19 year olds. I hope I’ve adequately explained the difference!

Thanks for reading this far and I look forward to your pitches.

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