My all-time fave Fence piece might be MONKEY TENNIS, in which journalists told us the worst pitches they ever pitched.
As you can read below, it was a massive success, so I'm delighted to say WE'RE DOING IT AGAIN.
So. JOURNALISTS. What's your worst ever pitch?
www.the-fence.com/monkey-tennis/
...to death. As a joke, I said would they be interested in a piece entitled Are Articles Like This One Asking If Satire Is Dead, Dead? I SWEAR, a three-second silence, then "could you get something to us by close of business tomorrow"?
There was a time - 2012? 2013? - when every three weeks or so I'd be contacted by a journalist to ask if I fancied writing a piece on the subject of Is Satire Dead? Everyone was obsessed. Then one day someone called from the Guardian review section. I said I wouldn't as the question had been asked..
There’s a whole ‘nother list of “things film or publishing execs have pitched writers that were so radioactively stupid it took all our effort to keep a straight face for the rest of the meeting,” but unfortunately those are conversations only had in bars
“Pitch: who are the hot singles in your area? Who makes those?”
If it’s about who makes those spams, I might be down for that.
Related: I’d read an exposé about the horrible people who created Taboola.
Related Related: I once complained on Twitter about Taboola, and someone high up in the company responded angrily that their ads “brought value” and were not spam.
When Terence Conran’s collection went on sale at Bonhams, I proposed a nostalgic personal piece about the forgotten pleasures of ashtrays. Happy memories of nicking them from restaurants, design classics through the decades, that sort of thing. No takers, unbelievably.
