Maria Streshinsky is the executive editor of features at WIRED. Before joining WIRED she was the editor-in-chief of Pacific Standard, a magazine she launched in 2012. In its first year Pacific Standard was nominated for a National Magazine Award for general excellence; in 2014 the publication won the National Magazine Award for public service for a story that Streshinsky edited. Streshinsky also served for many years as the managing editor of The Atlantic, where she won the Atlantic Media Company award for editing excellence. She has also worked for the Department of the Interior in Washington, DC, and a stint in New York as a freelance editor and writer.
In this episode, Lexie and Maria discuss all things feature. They discuss what makes a great feature and how it’s different from other types of stories, how to pitch features as both a freelancer and publicist, and what a coveted publication—such as WIRED—looks for when selecting their next feature topic. They also review Maria’s personal pitching preferences, the best title to pitch at WIRED if you’re hoping for coverage, and much more.
Here’s What You’ll Learn:
Listener Links:
Maria Streshinsky is the executive editor of features at WIRED. Before joining WIRED she was the editor-in-chief of Pacific Standard, a magazine she launched in 2012. In its first year Pacific Standard was nominated for a National Magazine Award for general excellence; in 2014 the publication won the National Magazine Award for public service for a story that Streshinsky edited. Streshinsky also served for many years as the managing editor of The Atlantic, where she won the Atlantic Media Company award for editing excellence. She has also worked for the Department of the Interior in Washington, DC, and a stint in New York as a freelance editor and writer.
In this episode, Lexie and Maria discuss all things feature. They discuss what makes a great feature and how it’s different from other types of stories, how to pitch features as both a freelancer and publicist, and what a coveted publication—such as WIRED—looks for when selecting their next feature topic. They also review Maria’s personal pitching preferences, the best title to pitch at WIRED if you’re hoping for coverage, and much more.
Here’s What You’ll Learn:
Listener Links:
Lexie Smith
Maria Streshinsky is the executive editor of features at WIRED. Before joining WIRED she was the editor-in-chief of Pacific Standard, a magazine she launched in 2012. In its first year Pacific Standard was nominated for a National Magazine Award for general excellence; in 2014 the publication won the National Magazine Award for public service for a story that Streshinsky edited. Streshinsky also served for many years as the managing editor of The Atlantic, where she won the Atlantic Media Company award for editing excellence. She has also worked for the Department of the Interior in Washington, DC, and a stint in New York as a freelance editor and writer.
Lexie Smith
Okay, Maria, I am so thrilled to have the opportunity to chat with you today. I admire the work that you do greatly at Wired. But before we get into work stuff, I always love to ask what is it that you like to do outside of work for fun?
Maria Streshinsky
Oh, boy. Well, thank you Lexie. It's really nice to be here. I appreciate it. You know, what I like to do is be outdoors skiing, hiking. canoeing, just get me out. Get me out away from the city. I love the city. I love San Francisco, but get me out into the wilderness. And I just feel like it's kind of the best place for ideas to come to.
Lexie Smith
Well, in your staring at a screen so much all day. Right? Which I get too, I imagine it's yes. Departure. San Francisco. Is that home base?
Maria Streshinsky
Yeah, San Francisco's home base, which is good. It gives me good access to close enough wilderness.
Lexie Smith
Yeah, you do. Northern California is beautiful. I'm in Southern California, originally from Oregon, so So you know, yeah, right in the middle. Amazing. Um, okay. So let's dive straight into career cliff notes. So there's no rules here. It's start, you know, start wherever you want to start and bring us up to today.
Maria Streshinsky
In terms of my career, journey, career journey, and how I got here, I'm going to admit something, which is, I suppose you'd call me a nepo baby, although not really both my parents were journalists. My mother was a magazine writer. My father was a photographer. My mother is a magazine writer, my father was a photographer. And when I got out of college, I just knew I wanted to do something in publishing. And I stumbled into this really funny little job at a AAA magazine that had a huge circulation because it went to every AAA member. And it was a travel magazine. And my job was to do the events column. So I got to know where the rock sales were what every city in California was known for Gilroy, garlic, of course, Petaluma was chickens and eggs, you know, that kind of thing. And then after being at that my, like, kind of climbed up really, very luckily at that magazine, with a wonderful boss. And then I just realized, like, no, I need to get out and do some stuff that's a little bit more core to you know, people's lives and what matters in people's lives. And then that took me in this kind of roundabout way through Mother Jones. And then I did a very short, but really, really amazing stint working in the government in Washington DC at the Department of Interior. And that led me to the Atlantic where I loved working there and ended up as their Managing Editor, which then led me to that Pacific Standard job that you mentioned, which was really a wild experience. And we joked about it being kind of the last print magazine, there was a woman who was based out here in California and wanted to fund magazine would have impact from the west and that was just so dear to my heart because I'm a Westerner at heart and so I got to come home and then ended up at Wired.
Lexie Smith
Okay, few things you probably have 5000 fun facts from the AAA days. The fact would you say, give the garlic Gilroy what's the funniest? Maybe you just shared them Do you have like a funny one that comes to mind when a city's new record?
Maria Streshinsky
Oh, man, I wish I had gone back and look, I used to have really funny ones I was like I said it was like, egg days in Petaluma. Gilroy garlic festival artichokes from Oh no, I'm not gonna remember the name and I have a former editor.
Lexie Smith
Totally put you on the spot.
Maria Streshinsky
No, no, I just there was artichokes. Strawberry was Watsonville Yeah, there was just in the list goes on and on.
Lexie Smith
Completely unrelated but my daughter has a word of the week we always teach her and last week it was artichokes. So it's funny. You say that so she's working on great artichoke artichoke now. Perfect. Yes. Very cute. Okay, and then also I feel like I need to hear a little bit more how you segue from publishing to DC. Real quick. Was it just like that felt like a I know it was a transition
Maria Streshinsky
Yeah, I, you know, weirdly Okay, so that first job, which was at a AAA magazine called via, ended up taking me are all around the West. And one of the things I wrote about at one point and was a bunch of different places in Arizona, and that took me to Indian country. And so then there was a job open is very small, but amazing world, in the Department of Interior under Indian Affairs, basically. And so I went to work, because I had a little bit of experience there, I went to work in public information on something called the it was the office of the Special Trustee for American Indians. And it was the most fascinating, like, wonderful people. Very small issue. That's very, not small issue, very big issue in Indian country, but one that a lot of people don't know about, because it's not talked about a lot in the news. And that took me to DC. It was time for me to go spend some time on the East Coast and, you know, broaden my landscape. And then the Atlantic job popped up on like journalism, jobs.com or Craigslist, I think, and I managed to get that job, which was incredible. So that was a big pivot.
Lexie Smith
Got it. Okay, and now, you're returning home. Where are you from? San Francisco?
Maria Streshinsky
I grew up in, in the Berkeley hills. Okay. And near Berkeley, yatta yatta.
Lexie Smith
Got it. Okay. So, now today, you're the executive editor of features at Wired. Big question, what is the day in the life of the executive editor of features at Wired look like?
Maria Streshinsky
Well, I would say, normally, it looks like really fun, and also super stressful. At times, I have this incredible team of feature editors, we get to do the big stories, the big, long, deep dives, we get to work with incredible writers and incredible subjects. And I'm not saying that just to sound fluffy. Today, what it looks like is there's a big story going up tomorrow about the about Reddit, the company and we had a reporter here work with another writer on just kind of like looking at the 20 years of Reddit’s history, because they're about to IPO. And so today looks like trying to get excuse me trying to get the social team coordinated, and get the piece ready and copilot, which is our content management system. Make sure all the pull quotes make sure the head and deck are correct. Make sure the copy editors have a chance to proofread it, it's 8000 words. And then, you know, like, hit the publish button so that it's scheduled to publish tomorrow morning. So that and then the other thing for me is that there's a July August issue looming over me. And I'm worried about having like a big good subject on the cover. So today, I'm worried about that. I'm trying to figure out that actually pivots us into something that we launched last year, which is called the the big interview, the wired big interview, in which we decided we wanted to have really deft, like thoughtful writers sit down with really interesting. Hopefully, big names are just super interesting people doing very big important things. These all sound like such silly words to be using. But I'm worried about making sure that the cover of the July August issue has like somebody that everybody wants to read about at that timeframe. So that's my day looks like today,
Lexie Smith
plus this podcast, thank you for
Maria Streshinsky
no, of course, of course.
Lexie Smith
So for before we go more specifically into WIRED, I do want to break down a little bit more the concept of a feature or trope right and what that entails. And really from the journalistic lens, how is a feature different from other types of stories?
Maria Streshinsky
That's such a good question. And one we actually talk about all the time. Like it's you would think that I would have it down but it's an ongoing conversation. I think the very simplest way we talk about it is a feature is a story with a beginning, a middle and an end and not a topic. We get pitched topics all the time. Like I want to write about the government's request for private data on iPhones. But that's a topic a story would be an In fact I'm kind of there's a pitch we got that's a very good pitch. That is a court case where there was a fire that happened and sadly people died and there was the government wanted to use iPhone data basically in the in the search for who did it. And that is a way that and then there's Three interesting characters who sort of surround this and this tragedy. And I don't want to say that we always need a tragedy, of course. But because there is a tragedy, it gives a real emotional weight to a story. And so in this case, this is a story that's going to have a beginning, middle and end, because there was an event, there are people involved. And there's a court case and a decision that's been, you know, a ruling. In another way, that might make a little more sense for your audience. And I might use this example a couple of times in stalking, but Lauren Goode, who's one of our terrific writers here on staff, she wrote a feature a couple of years ago. That was personal to her. Because, you know, we all know about photo memories, right? Like, memories pop up a year later on your phone, or in your Facebook, or wherever it is. And we all have heard about, and probably talked to people who that actually can be a hard moment, like, hard things happen in our lives, and people pass away or you have a breakup or something. And a year later, a photo pops up. And so Lauren had a breakup, an engagement breakup, and photos started popping up. And so she actually wanted to find out, she actually went to the source, we call this kind of a story zero. And she figured out who started the idea of photo memories in the tech companies, like who sold it to who, and then she chased that down. And she went in and talked to different companies that were using photo memories, or whatever their version of photo memories are, and how the developers were thinking about it as a product. And so she used her own personal story to figure out the origin of it, and then talk to them about how they thought about the effects that are both positive and, and hard sometimes. And it was I loved that example. Because it was one of the things we tried to do at WIRED is really talk about how technology and science affects us Humans, affectS us individuals. And so that comes back around to that's why we try to in the features department here, we tried to tell stories, not topics because stories can get at how does this thing really affect us as human beings?
Lexie Smith
I love that breakdown so much. I know obviously, we're oversimplifying how much work goes into this. But the story versus a topic now a story like let's talk about the Reddit one going out tomorrow, how long has the story been in the works for you? Yeah,
Maria Streshinsky
Percolating? yeah, probably six months, maybe eight months, because we knew well, so what happened here is we got a pitch from a freelancer because a year ago, July there was this, I don't know if you remember, there was a big protest by the moderators on Reddit. And it kind of shut down a lot of a lot of subreddits for a couple of weeks. And it was big media story and technology news. And you so that's like affecting people's lives, right. And he then pitched a story, you know, there's always daily stories about that kind of thing. And then we as feature thinkers, can sit back and think like, okay, all the daily stories have come and gone. Is there a bigger story to tell, and that one, pivoted nicely into the fact that Reddit was has been trying to get to where they could IPO, Or, I'm not sure they've been the right economic terminology here, but hold an initial public offering. And so we actually paired that writer who knew so much about the moderator community, with our inside reporter who knows so much so who who has been covering the company, and we paired them together to do a kind of back and forth story where we would go from the moderators point of view to inside to try to get as much information as we could about how the company has prepared. What has gone right, what has gone wrong for this initial public offering, because it's, we kind of feel like Reddit is in this, you'll see you could see this in the headlines, one of the last bastions of authenticity on the internet, where people really get to be themselves for good and bad. And so it's really a human story in that way, too. So we felt like this was a good thing to try to get our arms around and wired tries to do sort of like a big look at a company that is affecting so many people's lives and what's happening with that company. And the hardest part again, is to try to find a way to tell that story.
Lexie Smith
And six months No, I think it's thank you for sharing that and I want to highlight that again because I mean if on the PR side of things. A publicist had $1 for every time an entrepreneur company came in wants a feature and they want a feature next month because retainer starting now when that's just not so the way the cookie crumbles usually, I'm kind of on that note though, something that you know, just Real quick on me, I've I've played in a lot of different spaces. And one of the spaces my agency plays in is tech and telecom. And something some of my, my account managers sort of, were frustrated with me or like venting to me about semi recently, which I thought kind of was relevant to bring to this show, is that unless your name is Tesla, or Elon Musk, or your, you know, a Reddit, it's really hard to grab a headline. And so when we look at a, an outlet like wired, is there space? Is there a place for the quote unquote, little guy?
Maria Streshinsky
Yeah. So it's, I mean, we have a big newsroom. We do many stories. Every week, we have a business channel with terrific editors and writers there, we often follow stuff that we cover, as feature editors, we will follow stuff that the news desks are covering. And a bunch of the writers on the news desks will then like take iterative reporting into being a feature, or use their iterative, iterative reporting in a feature down the road, right? As far as the small guys, I know, it's tough, right? It's, it's really hard. And we, I'm going to be really honest, like, we're very wary of like one app, or, like single app stories, or, you know, single ideas or something's packaged up. There's a, I can't quite remember what it was, but something that had been around San Francisco for years that was then, you know, being kind of packaged up as like a tech story now. And what we're really looking for is something that is new and impactful to a wide audience. So the single app stories are really tough, right? Because those are really legitimate businesses. And a lot of them like, look at TikTok, that is a single app. Yeah. But it is TikTok, or, you know, a new social media app or some the new I don't know what, you know,
Lexie Smith
A start up a start Ain. And yeah, right now in the tech space and some
Maria Streshinsky
Right. And so what I would say is, is in the beginning, focus on daily news coverage, in terms of it don't try to go for a feature until you have a story that is that can prove that there's like really widespread impact. Yeah.There's also a lot of we don't do a lot of these, but there are really compelling stories about founders. And I have noticed in a good way that a lot of people are starting to pitch their products with with the story of the person behind it. I mean, and I think that's a very, I think that's a very effective way to do it. I think it's still going to be tough for a feature. Because again, features want all these layers, and they want people writing and they want emotion and they want to entertain and educate the readers. And yeah, but and this is maybe a terrible bias of media. The other thing that does happen is places get attention when the the owners and the startup people are kind of already themselves famous. Yeah. Just, you know, it's so and so's new thing, which I think is fair, sometimes and not fair.
Lexie Smith
Yeah, you can both sides of the coin, because at the end of the day, these outlets to they need views, they need clicks to write to still keep employing the writers and the editors and consumers. We keep clicking that because we know who they are. We want to know what Elon is doing now or insert. So it's completely uninsured.
Maria Streshinsky
Oh boy, we could have a long talk about the trials and tribulations of that that business side of the media.
Lexie Smith
Yes. And that is a topic I've gone into on the show. Before we get get to that let me let me bring us here because our, we had some exchange in coming to this meeting today. And word was brought up or a topic was brought up that I was like, huh, out of you know, the 100 plus some episodes I've done that's never been talked about on the show. And basically guys to kind of catch you up to speed. We were going to do this interview and then what happened was, you had quote, a closing, let me rephrase this. This is not quote on our initially selected recording date. It turned out you were quote closing the magazine. Yeah. So can you share what that means?
Maria Streshinsky
Yes. It's so funny. It's like, it's like living in the 90s when we were a real thing, when actual print magazines is what I mean. And you know, what it means is we have we have this actual deadline that the printer is waiting for all the files to be uploaded to the printer and it goes through this like really fun, crazy process that's going to seem so archaic to I don't know to most right, but the process is we have a very clear editing process where we put writers through a lot. We have a very detailed fact checking process. We have a very detailed copy editing, proofreading process. And in there, we have incredible designers here at the magazine. And WIRED has this wonderful design reputation too. And so we we work closely with the designers to design layouts, like old school print layouts, and we had to be on press by Friday or Monday. And the Reddit story that I was telling you about, like it was a very, very heavy fact checking process, it was eight or 9000 words, we needed to talk to Reddit for comment, we needed to make sure every line that we had written was supportable, you know, we want to be very fair, we want to be accurate. So we had it was just that, like Wednesday, I should have been done by Wednesday morning when we were scheduled and it just wasn't done. Because, right. So Right. Exactly. And so I had to, I felt like my attention would have been very frayed.
Lexie Smith
Yeah, I okay. So and from the, this is another reason why I want to bring this up. This can happen even on a hyper local scale. Guys, if you end up developing a relationship with let's say, like a, a local magazine that you know, gets published every Friday, being mindful of deadlines and the fact that there are human beings behind the scenes rushing, and like taking that as a cue for your own timing. And when in when you reach out, I think it's something I learned early on to be really mindful of, but it's worth worth highlighting. And I love that you're highlighting this, this human component of it, because it segues into this ongoing conversation that continue to bring bring to the show because it's changing. And I really want to hear your opinion on it, especially considering that you're in WIRED. You know, I've I've asked this question of a lot of different journalists, but no one's been so closely connected to to the tech beat. Yeah. So I'm just curious, this is a big question. And you can take it wherever you want. Your overall opinion on how AI is impacting the media industry.
Maria Streshinsky
Yeah, it's funny, it's so much easier to talk about how AI could be affecting science and health and all of these places where you could see it really having a great impact. Right? Yep. Hard not to talk about it in media as being scary. Yep. Hard. I, also from my viewpoint, and where I get to sit in a way I think that I might be, again, like super lucky, because one of the things that is proven by the data, for us, is a story that is really well written, clear to a reader, beautiful prose, pulls you in emotionally, they do better. They just do better. Do I think that an AI can get there eventually? Maybe I'm not sure. I mean, there's probably evidence of it already. I mean, we've had some writers who have done some work elsewhere in here about like, sort of tracking how a chat GPT will will help them write. I think. I think it's scary. I think it's scary. I feel like I want to be very much in support of where something like generative AI or AI in general can be very, very good for society, and I am but when it comes to like replacing. I'm sure there's economists who would talk about efficiency being a good thing. And I think that's probably true. And I think AI will help supplement other kinds of jobs. But as somebody who is coming from a place of just loving the spoken word or the written word. I just feel like it's kind of a sad, it's a sad and scary thing to have those jobs be taken over. And today, I'm not I'm not un- There may be a pathway in which there does grow like an industry grows out of this that is supplemental like that is using AI in a way generative AI in a way that is very supplemental to a creative industry that I am all for and if it's in writing great press releases or if it's in writing great stories, and it becomes supplemental, and supportive and helpful. Like I'm not I don't want to like come out of the gate and say, I don't want to see that. But you know at the moment I'm just apprehensive of it in terms of actual usage in media.
Lexie Smith
No scary, I think scary is literally an exact word I've used on this show and wanting to, you know, we have a giant pro and con list. No, I advocate for some pros I can advocate. So yeah, cons. But thank you for sharing your perspective. I just, and I feel like frontlines.
Maria Streshinsky
So well. And I, I have to say I don't feel like it's a very unique perspective, right. Like, I wish I had something very unique to say, which is, again, I do have a lot of hope for it. And in the sciences and in health and in. You know, other things, I just You just see. I think I see technologies over and over again. And WIRED's founding is kind of a very great reflection of this as an optimistic and hopeful thing that will help democratize and then is always left out the sort of the hard and difficult parts of human nature that will use it for bad. Yeah. And that tension is it's just not going to go away with generative AI. Right?
Lexie Smith
Well, I do think there's an interesting in different point that you highlighted, and maybe it's not different to you, but different to what I'm hearing is really the the separation of type of story, too, in to your point, the human component involved in the curation of a feature story, at least today, and in my opinion, for whatever that's worth cannot be replicated by a robot, where we're going to be five years from now. Whoa, can't even I don't even know. But today, and I'm very pro-journalists, I went to journalism school, I'm on that lens. And so one thing I like to do on this show, too, is take a moment to speak to, to who you are as an individual, meaning we're gonna go into something that I call rapid fire, and there's there's no right or wrong answers. It's just your opinion, you, as you know, you as So first, I want to clarify, actually, before we enter rapid fire, do you receive pitches ever?
Maria Streshinsky
Hm from communications professionals or writers?
Lexie Smith
That's a great question. Both.
Maria Streshinsky
Yes. Let's just say yes, more so on writers. Okay.
Lexie Smith
Okay. More so from writers, more so than writers. So let's look at this from I think, actually, maybe this is interesting. No one's ever brought that up before as an editor. So I'm curious as I go through these questions, if there's a different answer, for the comm side, let me know. Okay. It'll be an interesting experiment. Okay. So prefer day of the week to be pitched?
Maria Streshinsky
Oh, Monday or Tuesday,
Lexie Smith
Monday or Tuesday, time of day?
Maria Streshinsky
It doesn't really matter, but earlier in the day is better.
Lexie Smith
Okay. Yeah. Pleasantries. So should they take a moment or two up top to kind of acknowledge you as a human? Or do you want to get straight to the point?
Maria Streshinsky
I would say take a quick moment to acknowledge you as a human. It does. I'm going to admit it does catch my attention. And I actually feel like this is me very personally. But I feel more beholden to somebody who is going to say, Hi, Maria, I hope you're having a good day. Or just like, I know you're busy or just like a personal, like, I will feel more beholden because somebody has now connected to me, personally, right? Yeah, this point. And for somebody like me, who doesn't, you know, I don't like to disappoint people. It. It's harder to ignore it.
Lexie Smith
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. follow ups, are follow ups okay?
Maria Streshinsky
Yeah, follow ups are Okay. Okay. Now, I'm going to split this between the right okay. Yes, great. Um, it's interesting, because I've been getting a lot of comms pitches lately that folks are following up. Which, you know, it's their job. It's hard. Like, that is a hard job to have. And so I will, I will, no, I hate to admit that sometimes I just, you know, can't I don't answer every comms pitch. But I'm answering more of them that follow up. Okay.
Lexie Smith
You're so nice. You are totally fine. The fact that you even like care, thank you to us all their jobs.
Maria Streshinsky
It’s their job, I mean, it's people and it's a super important job for our industry. So writers, if you're a writer, definitely follow up because I try to make sure every writer who was pitching us I either will give it to another editor or I will try to answer myself. If we don't it means that it slipped, it slipped out of our inbox or it slipped off of our we didn't check it as a you know, item to do later. So follow up.
Lexie Smith
Okay, fantastic. Social media DMS Are you pro getting pitch to on like LinkedIn or On Instagram or keep it to inbox.
Maria Streshinsky
For me personally, keep it to inbox because I have pulled I mean, I've never been, I'm going to admit my sort of cranky age here. I've never been a big social media, I've always had dreams of the earlier on, I had dreams of becoming like a much bigger social media user. I think probably like many people, we've really pulled back. You know, when Twitter slash x has gone through its transformation, let's just call it that. I just use Instagram for cute animals now, for like, animals. And I won't look at DMS as much in social media. So stick to the inbox.
Lexie Smith
Okay. This is an interesting one too, for features, I think, assets upfront in the pitch. So especially considering a feature is a full story, how much of that story do you want painted in that first pitch. And maybe this also is a separation of church and state, I don't know, between, really,
Maria Streshinsky
It's separation of church and state for sure. Um, when you say assets, let me talk like break that down to what it means to me, who in a pitch, I would say from comms, if the, if there's a human being behind the thing you are pitching, try to tell their real story, try to be honest about them. Like, I know that can get hard, and you have to be really careful, because there's a lot of horrible people out there. There's a lot of media that just has to do quick turn, you know, and God bless them. It's their it's their jobs to but try to really tell something very human about the person behind it, or the effect that the product, you know, where the product sits and like the the human effect for WIRED for us. If you're a writer, yeah, I want to see your really elegant writing, I want to see that you've thought about a person as a character. And that means to me like think about have you Is this somebody you want to spend time with, and therefore with the reader want to spend time with them. And so trying to show that on the page for writers you also want scene, you want to know that there's a beginning, beginning, middle and end to a story. And so in a short way show that you know, you know, or you're willing to go chase, what those would be. Another thing we get a lot that we rarely we kind of have this other saying. And this is more for writers, I would say people sometimes pitch questions, and what we say is you should pitch answers, not questions. Now, that's a little tricky. But a writer might pitch. I want to find out about the person behind this product or this phenomenon. But actually, you need to do a little bit of legwork and find out why I care about the person behind that phenomenon or that product or that story. I hope that makes sense.
Lexie Smith
Yeah, that makes sense. I think yeah, I think it does. Totally. Yeah. Okay, so last question for this is, if someone is going after a feature, do you prefer they pitch you as the editor? Or do you think maybe it's more a suggestion? They go to one of your writers who then obviously has to take it to you? So basically, who is the preferred gatekeeper for you at WIRED?
Maria Streshinsky
That is a great question. Um, for comms professionals?
Lexie Smith
Let's do comms. Yeah,
Maria Streshinsky
I think it is probably a better move to go to a writer who writes about that topic, or that area, that's probably the better move, you know, and we've got a roster full of them. Because if I know, my writers have vetted, you know, and looked at this and thought this is this does rise up in the inbox, then, um, you know, as features, we're going to take it much more seriously. Yeah. In fact, I get a lot of comms pitches that I say, you know, this is probably a pitch for our business desk, or this is probably a pitch for our science desk or something like that. I'm pivoting to writers what I would say in this case, it's very different answer is we have had a pitch WIRED guide on for writers on our website. And we have a list of editors and I would actually pitch those editors just because they're going to be like, I'm focused on all of it, managing, you know, production staff, future plans, but the writers, the editors, feature editors job is like find pitches, bring pitches. Yeah, stories. So you're gonna get a little more attention from them than you would for me.
Lexie Smith
The nuances of all the titles and the the newsrooms and I know I my what I always tell people who are pitching on the writer side, because sometimes you even have right maybe like a founder who wants to become a contributor or an expert, so maybe they aren't a full time journalist. I always read the directions. If they're telling you how they want to be pitched on that side, have they read them? Yes. Do that. Yes. Yes. So it's the one time where it's a little more clear cut, then
Maria Streshinsky
yeah. And in fact, there's really good language at the top of our pitch guide. That would be valuable to anybody. And it has to do with like, this line that we like about, amaze us, like we know a lot about technology and science, but amaze us. Show something, No pressure. No pressure,
Lexie Smith
No pressure here. Um, so my last question for you on this is is a signature one for this show. We've talked a lot about pitching but we have not asked the key question of what we can find you sipping. So what is your favorite beverage? They can know what are your non alcoholic?
Maria Streshinsky
Okay,I'm gonna go with like a since it's still noon, and I'm not into I'm actually just not a big drinker. Because early on in this is a strange fact about me. And at the end of college, I became kind of allergic to alcohols.
Lexie Smith
So I actually I have a couple of friends where in the last five years, that's kind of been listening to them.
Maria Streshinsky
Yeah, it was some enzymes, some doctors that I just don't have some enzyme or whatever, but it I do like a good glass of white wine in the evenings at time to time, but lately I've been into this very strange thing, which is for my morning like really hot milk with a little bit of chocolate so a hot chocolate that's super light on the chocolate. That's like my latest like the last couple months this is my thing. It's weird
Lexie Smith
Yummy. It's not weird. I don't think that's weird at all. It sounds like a little bit of sweet.
Maria Streshinsky
Not too sweet. Just like I want that warm like you know wintry even though we're hopefully starting to pull out of wintry but it's been so wintry here for California and rainy that that's been my thing.
Lexie Smith
It has been meanwhile, too. I laugh when I'm on a zoom call with someone back east and its negative 15. At least down here in SoCal, I know you're a little colder. I'm like, I'm so cold. its like fifty nine, right?
Maria Streshinsky
Hey, wait, but to be fair, what is your drink? What is your sipping
Lexie Smith
So many firsts today? Um, the reality is I drink far too much coffee, oat milk, and I'm like, I love wine on the weekends, but it can make me drag drag my feet. I mean to some, like hard kombuchas lately. That's yeah, there's a local one where I live called Flying Embers. Shout out if you're in Southern California. I've no idea how widespread they are. But flying embers hard kombucha I really like you know,
Maria Streshinsky
We we both sound like such west coasters and Californians right now. But I agree. I would say like the heart kombucha lately has been a good like, soft way to have a drink.
Lexie Smith
Yeah,yeah. Well, there we go. We are and I just went to London two weeks ago, and I was looking for their seltzers and realize like, wow, this this is very niche, even to the US at this point in time. To some extent. I digress. Okay, so if someone were wanting to connect with you guys, this is not me telling you to go spam her inbox. But if someone wanted to connect with you, in some capacity, what would be the best place to send them?
Maria Streshinsky
I would think my email Maria underscore Streshinsky. And I'm gonna say go figure out how to spell it @wired.com
Lexie Smith
Shownotes. Guys, we got show notes.
Maria Streshinsky
Shownotes, But I would encourage you to look at people to look at the writers who cover the areas that you're for comms folks. cover that area, your area. For writers look at the editors that we have on our pitch guides. And if it doesn't feel right, like you could pitch me and you can say, you know, be happy to work with one of your editors. Just because, again, for me, it's it's like, my favorite part of my job that I get to do the least right is work directly with writers.
Lexie Smith
That's how I feel about being a business owner and like the actual the actual PR part of it is accounting and I am this and this so I got it. This has been such a wonderful, wonderful episode. Thank you for your insights. Thank you for your honesty and thank you for for your time and good luck with your article this it'll be live guys by the time this airs. So go and read it. Go get it.
Maria Streshinsky
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. All right,
Lexie Smith
Cheers!
Maria Streshinsky
Bye!