Welcome to Virtual PitchFest!
AHCJ’s popular Virtual PitchFest is back — giving independent journalists the chance to pitch directly to editors at leading health publications.
Jump to: How it works
Timeline
Here’s how it works
Strategies for success
Remember
Five Rules for PitchFest
1. Show up. If you fail to show up for any of your appointments, you will not be allowed to sign up in advance for a future PitchFest. Additionally, be aware that the booked editor will have your name, potentially harming your reputation with that publication for years to come.
2. Show up on time. We run on time and we run like clockwork. If you are late, you forfeit your pitch. We also hate to waste the editor’s time.
3. Prepare carefully. We’ll post blurbs from editors describing what they want, so read those to customize your pitch to what each editor needs for their publication. For example, news editors won’t want to hear a pitch for a feature. Study the publication to make certain your pitch is a good fit.
4. Respect the time limit. When you are given the one-minute warning, wrap it up. When time is called, please thank the editor and tell them that you will follow up with an email.
5. Understand the limits. Please recognize that attending PitchFest does not guarantee you a sale. It does guarantee you an opportunity to pitch one-on-one with editors who are extremely difficult to access, even by email.
PitchFest Editors
Tami Abdollah
Tami Abdollah is a senior editor at Noema Magazine. She was previously a national correspondent at USA TODAY focused on the inequities and disparities of the criminal justice system, among other subjects. A native Angeleno, Abdollah served as a senior reporter who helped launch a tech and business journalism startup called dot.LA, which was co-founded by Zillow founder Spencer Rascoff. Abdollah previously served as a national security/cybersecurity reporter for The Associated Press in its Washington, D.C., bureau. Prior to that, she was AP’s law enforcement reporter in its Los Angeles bureau. She has also worked for the Los Angeles Times and the L.A. NPR affiliate KPCC, and has written for the Wall Street Journal and The Daily Beast while living and traveling abroad.
Noema Magazine is looking for deeply reported narrative features with fresh ideas that tackle some of the 21st-century’s foundational issues. Please check out our website and top 10 pieces from the prior year, to get a sense of our stories.
Betsy Agnvall
Elizabeth “Betsy” Agnvall is the Health and Healthy Living Editor at aarp.org. She has worked as editor of Staying Sharp, AARP’s award-winning brain health platform and as a health editor at the AARP Bulletin. She wrote for the Washington Post Health section for six years has deep subject matter expertise in health and health journalism.
Claire Cameron
Scientific American | Pitch Guidelines
Claire Cameron is breaking news chief at Scientific American. Originally from Scotland, she moved to New York City in 2012 to pursue a masters in journalism at Columbia University. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Slate, Inc. Magazine, Nautilus, Semafor, and elsewhere.
Marisa Cohen
Marisa Cohen is an editor in the Hearst Lifestyle Group’s Health Newsroom, who has covered health, nutrition, parenting and culture for dozens of magazines and websites over the past two decades.
Sarah DiGiulio
Everyday Health | Pitch Guidelines
Sarah DiGiulio is an executive editor overseeing emotional and mental health, fitness, and sleep at Everyday Health. She is inspired every day by new health and science research that helps us lead healthier, happier lives.
DiGiulio previously worked as a reporter at HuffPost and as an editor at Oncology Times. She has also written about health, science, and wellness for NBC News, Prevention, Health Magazine, Real Simple, and Men’s Fitness, among other publications.
DiGiulio lives in New York City. Outside of her writing and editing work, she likes to run, bike, cook, and keep up with her book clubs’ reading lists.
Eric Fitzsimmons
Cancer Today | Pitch Guidelines
Eric Fitzsimmons is a senior editor at Cancer Today magazine where he oversees the magazine’s web content.
He has more than 10 years’ experience writing and editing stories about cancer for patients and caregivers, and he enjoys finding the threads that tie complex scientific findings to meaningful results for the people affected by this disease.
Eric has also written for Living Beyond Breast Cancer and Montgomery Media.
Jessica Goodheart
Capital & Main | Pitch Guidelines
Jessica Goodheart is a senior editor focused on inequality at Capital & Main, a Los Angeles-based publication that also covers climate change. As reporter for Capital & Main, she has covered low-wage work, the housing crisis, business and politics, earning recognition from organizations like the California Journalism Awards, the LA Press Club and the SABEW. Before returning to journalism in 2017, she served as research director for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a nonprofit advocacy organization in LA. Goodheart holds a BA in history from Columbia College and an MA in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dan Gorenstein
Dan is the Founder and Executive Editor of Tradeoffs, setting the vision for the organization’s journalism and strategy. Before Tradeoffs, he was the senior health care reporter at Marketplace and spent 11 years at New Hampshire Public Radio. He got his start in journalism at the Chicago Reporter, an investigative journal that examines race and class disparities in the Chicago area. Dan’s work has earned numerous national awards, including the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi investigative reporting award. He is based in Philadelphia. Tradeoffs is interested in developing a pipeline of reporters/producers/editors who are knowledgeable in health policy and experienced in human-focused, narrative storytelling. People who are comfortable with both print and audio format is a plus, but not mandatory.
Brian Kahn
Brian Kahn is WIRED’s senior science editor, where he oversees coverage ranging from space and climate to health and physics. He previously worked at Bloomberg, where he edited award-winning stories and ran the flagship Green Daily newsletter. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, the Wall Street Journal, and the Guardian.
Betsy Ladyzhets
The Sick Times | Pitch Guidelines
Betsy Ladyzhets is the co-founder and managing editor of The Sick Times, a nonprofit news site chronicling the Long COVID crisis. Prior to The Sick Times, she ran the COVID-19 Data Dispatch, a newsletter and blog that provided news, resources, and original reporting on COVID-19 data. She was recently a journalism fellow at MuckRock, where she contributed to award-winning and impactful COVID-19 investigations.
Lindsay Lazarski
Lindsay Lazarski is Senior Editor and Producer of The Pulse, WHYY’s health and science podcast and radio show, and manages the Climate Desk. From pitch to final production, Lindsay works closely with the host, producers, reporters, engineers and freelancers to bring the show to life each week.
Before joining the health and science team Lindsay created and co-produced WHYY’s Cosby Unraveled podcast. For several years, she reported on Pennsylvania’s distressed cities, often traversing the state — from former steel towns to coal country — giving voice to people living and working in overlooked communities for the Keystone Crossroads project.
Lindsay has a master’s degree from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at The City University of New York and is a former South Bronx public school teacher.
Brendan Maher
Brendan Maher has been editing news and features stories at Nature for more than 15 years. With a degree in writing and biology he has specialized in long-form, deep-dives into biomedical science, policy and the intersection between science and society. He is currently filling in as deputy news editor for the Americas, covering fast-breaking news.
Catherine Matacic
Science News | Pitch Guidelines
Catherine Matacic is the Features Editor at Science News. Previously, she was an editor at Science magazine and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Tangled Bank Studios. She has degrees in journalism and Chinese, and she has reported on economics, energy, linguistics, AI, and COVID-19; run a science journalism funding program; and worked as a researcher for a Beijing-based documentary film studio and a fixer for the Shanghai bureau of The Washington Post.
Rachel Nania
Rachel Nania is a senior writer and editor at AARP, where she oversees online health coverage for a wide range of critical topics affecting older adults, including health conditions and treatments, and drugs and supplements.
Prior to AARP, Rachel worked as an on-air and online reporter at Washington, D.C.’s all-news radio station, WTOP, where she won several journalism awards, including a Gracie and a regional Edward R. Murrow award. She holds a master’s degree in health communication from Emerson College and is currently pursuing a second master’s in creative writing.
Hayat Norimine
KFF Health News | Pitch Guidelines
Hayat Norimine is a regional editor based in Boise, Idaho, and joined KFF Health News after 10 years in local news. Most recently, she was the accountability editor at the Idaho Statesman, where she oversaw national award-winning projects and collaborations with ProPublica as part of its Local Reporting Network.
As a former reporter, she covered state politics in Idaho and city halls for The Dallas Morning News, Seattle Met and The Daily News in southwest Washington. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington and a master’s in journalism from Northwestern.
Megan Thielking
Megan Thielking is the news editor on the Well desk of the New York Times, where she edits stories on health, medicine and wellbeing. She was previously an editor and a reporter at STAT.
Joel Warner
Joel Warner is the managing editor of The Lever, a nonpartisan, reader-supported investigative news outlet that holds accountable the people and corporations manipulating the levers of power. Joel’s reporting has appeared in Esquire, Wired, Men’s Journal, Men’s Health, Popular Science, Bloomberg Businessweek, Slate, and Grantland, among others, and he’s published two nonfiction books: “The Humor Code” and “The Curse of the Marquis de Sade.”
