How to Fact-Check a Media Contact Before You Pitch
A practical guide to verifying email addresses, social profiles and job titles before you pitch, so your...
Spring is the shortest season in a features desk's diary. By the time the daffodils are up, most monthly titles have signed off their May and June issues, and the Sunday supplements are already commissioning summer. Pitch an Easter egg feature in Holy Week and you are not early. You are a year late.
What follows is a working calendar for February through May, with the lead times that decide whether an idea lands or gets a polite "keep us in mind". It assumes a British spring: bank holidays that move, a tax year that turns over on 6 April, and weather that refuses to commit.
Get this wrong and nothing else matters. A workable rule of thumb for UK titles:
Always ask the desk when its planning meeting is. Seasonal ideas are usually commissioned in batches, and being on the editor's mind a week before that meeting is worth more than a brilliant pitch sent two days after.
February is a quiet news month, which makes it good for planned features. Half-term falls at different times across the four nations — Scotland's usually lands earlier than England's — so check rather than assume. Working-parent logistics, cheap days out and "the last stretch of winter" pieces all work here.
This is also the month for money. The tax year ends on 5 April, so ISA deadlines, pension contributions and side-hustle bookkeeping are live. Monthlies needed those pitches in January; dailies and digital desks will take them right up to the deadline.
Any tax or investment angle needs care: source your facts from the primary authority rather than a second-hand summary, and include a line telling readers to take regulated advice.
St David's Day opens the month; St Patrick's Day lands on 17 March. Mothering Sunday falls three weeks before Easter, so it can sit in early March or early April depending on the year — check, because it catches out at least one commissioning editor annually.
The clocks go forward on the last Sunday in March. Angles that reliably work: sleep disruption, the first evening walks, gardening, cycling to work, and the fact that British Summer Time is a genuine news peg for anything about daylight, mood or energy bills.
Then 6 April: a new financial year. Government departments, councils, charities, schools and businesses all reset their budgets and reporting, which gives you a reason to ask almost any organisation what changes for them this month. It is also a useful hook for workplace pieces — pay, probation, parental leave — provided you stick to published guidance.
Ramadan and Eid shift roughly eleven days earlier each year, so they move through the spring. Food, retail, community and workplace-flexibility angles all work; check a current calendar rather than relying on last year's notes.
Easter Sunday can fall anywhere from late March to late April, and school holidays differ across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. If your piece depends on term dates, verify each nation separately.
The month is crowded: Vaisakhi, St George's Day on 23 April, the Grand National, the London Marathon, and the first proper outdoor weekend for gardeners and allotment holders. Asparagus season starts late April and gives food writers an easy, genuinely seasonal peg.
April is also when household bills shift — energy tariffs, water rates and council tax changes tend to land at the start of the month — so consumer pieces have a natural news hook. Treat money claims as you would any other: primary sources, clear labelling, and a sensible pointer to professional advice.
Three bank holidays in quick succession, if you count the early May and spring bank holidays and the half-term break that follows. Practical angles: travel without a car, budget days out, the "second May bank holiday" problem for anyone who booked the first one, and how small businesses cope with two short weeks.
Exams dominate from mid-May. GCSE, A-level and university finals bring a steady demand for revision, sleep, stress and parent-facing pieces. Handle wellbeing content carefully and avoid clinical claims.
Chelsea Flower Show arrives in late May, which carries gardening, design, hospitality and retail stories with it. And May is when you should already be pitching summer: school holidays, festivals, holiday money and heat.
Some ideas do not need a fixed date, which makes them easier to place:
Notice that most of these are service pieces. They suit digital desks, regionals and radio, and they can be turned around in a fortnight if you have the case studies ready.
Keep one page, not a spreadsheet full of good intentions. Three columns will do: the date or event, the lead time for each market, and the named person you will pitch. Add a fourth for the year's movable feasts — Easter, Mothering Sunday, Ramadan, half-terms — and update it every January, because none of them stay put.
Then work backwards. If you want a monthly magazine for June, your pitch goes out in February. If you want a Sunday supplement for Easter, it goes out in early March. If you want a regional paper for the May bank holiday, a fortnight is plenty.
Finally, pitch the same idea more than once, reframed for each market: the trade version, the consumer version and the local version are three different articles, not one. Spring is short, but the pitching window in front of it is long — and the people who fill their spring pages are the ones who started sending ideas while it was still dark at four o'clock.
Photo: Katie Goertzen / Pexels
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