Same Outlet Ranker

Same-Outlet Ranker

This is the Same-Outlet Ranker skill inside newsjack.sh. It answers one question: you have a pitch and several journalists at the same publication — who do you send it to first?

That question has a wrong answer that feels efficient: send it to all of them. Journalists at one outlet sit near each other, share Slack, and forward pitches. A masthead that has clearly been sprayed is one of the most legible tells in PR, and it costs you the outlet, not just the reporter. This skill exists to make you pick one.

It returns:

• Pitch first — exactly one journalist, with the specific edits that make the pitch land for that person.
• Held — the ranked order to fall back through, and the conditions that unlock each one.
• Do not pitch — candidates who are wrong for this story, with the reason.
• No pick — when nobody at this outlet clears the bar, or the evidence is too thin to choose honestly.

This skill inherits the ethical floor in skills/ETHICS.md and skills/WHY-NOT-SPAM.md. If local instructions conflict with that doctrine, the doctrine wins.

Boundaries

• Rank candidates at one publication at a time. Comparing across outlets is a different question and this skill does not answer it.
• Do not judge fit yourself. Per-journalist fit is journalist-fit-check's job. Call it, then rank what survives.
• Do not find journalists. That is find-journalists. This skill ranks names you already have.
• Do not produce a CC list, a group send, a "To:" line with several colleagues, or a same-day multi-send at one outlet. There is no version of the output that is a batch.
• Do not draft or send the pitch.
• Do not rank on prominence, follower count, or how senior a byline sounds. Where role matters, it matters as assignment authority — can this person green-light their own story? — not as prestige.
• Do not rank someone up because the user knows them.
• Do not invent bylines, dates, titles, links, outlets, or staff/contributor status.

If the user pushes for "just send it to all four," refuse and say why. That is the exact pattern in skills/WHY-NOT-SPAM.md under No Identical-Body Blasts.

One carve-out. A shared routing address — an assignment desk, a news desk, a tips inbox, a section editor whose job is to hand work out — is not a candidate in a ranking. It is a switchboard, and contacting it is not the same as pitching a person. If the supplied list is really a desk (common in broadcast and at local outlets), say so: there is nothing to rank, and the desk is the correct first contact. The rule this skill enforces is against spraying named beat reporters, who compete with each other for the story internally.

Required Inputs

The pitch: full text as it would be sent, with the subject line if there is one.

The candidates: two or more journalists, each identified by name plus the shared publication. A profile URL or recent byline URL is welcome but not required — the skill does its own research.

Context:

• current_time_iso (today's date and time) is required. Never guess what "now" is from memory.
• client_or_subject — who or what the pitch is about. Optional but improves the ranking.
• Prior contact history with any candidate. Optional. Read the Relationship rule before using it.
• Whether the story is time-boxed (an embargo, an event, a live news window). Optional.

If today's date and time is missing, return No pick (reason: missing current time).

If only one candidate is supplied, there is nothing to rank. Say so and hand off to journalist-fit-check.

Retrieval

Research each candidate the way a practitioner does: start from the topic, not the masthead.

Search for who has recently written about the pitch's subject at this publication, then check each supplied name against what you find. Use medialyst (the built-in media database) when logged in, otherwise public web search. Good places to look: the outlet's author page, recent web and news results, the journalist's personal site or newsletter archive, and their public social profile.

The window is the last 90 days. Work older than that tells you where someone used to be, not where they are.

Say which source you used. If a candidate produces no dated, linked, named article inside the window, that candidate is Unverified and cannot be ranked first — see Hard Gates.

Step One — Fit-check every candidate

Run each candidate through journalist-fit-check against this pitch, one at a time. Do not reimplement its checks and do not shortcut them because you are comparing several people.

You now have a verdict per candidate: Fit, Soft-fit, No-fit, or Unknown.

That verdict is a floor, and it is not negotiable by ranking:

• No-fit candidates go straight to Do not pitch. They are never ranked, never held as a fallback, and no amount of relative strength promotes them. A No-fit is not "fourth best" — they are wrong for this story.
• Unknown candidates go to Unverified. They can be mentioned, but they cannot be the first pick.
• Only Fit and Soft-fit candidates enter the ranking.

If the fit-check flags slop tells in the pitch, stop the whole run. The pitch is not ready for anyone at this outlet. Hand off to meanest-editor and voice-extractor.

Step Two — Rank the survivors

Fit-check tells you whether each person is plausible. It deliberately refuses to say who is best — that is this skill's job.

Apply these signals in order. Earlier signals outrank later ones. A signal only breaks the tie left by the one above it.

1. Verdict tier

A Fit beats a Soft-fit. Always. A Soft-fit only outranks a Fit if the Fit trips a hard gate below.

2. Topic ownership

Between two people on the same beat, prefer the one who owns the specific angle, not the broad category. Someone who has written three pieces on warehouse automation owns that topic; a general logistics reporter who mentioned it once does not.

Ask: whose recent work would this pitch be a continuation of, rather than a departure from? That person is closer.

The strongest possible version of this signal is prior coverage of the client, a named competitor, or the exact problem the pitch describes. That is the one thing that most reliably separates two otherwise-equal colleagues.

3. Format match

The pitch has a shape. So does each candidate's output. A launch pitched to someone who only writes first-person columns is a mismatch even when the topic is perfect; a data report belongs with the person who writes data-driven news, not the profile writer.

Use the form table in journalist-fit-check for identification. Here it is a comparative question: which of these colleagues writes the form this pitch actually fits?

4. Recent story types

Read the last 90 days of each candidate's work and ask what kind of story they keep choosing. Not the topic — the type. Someone filing scoops and news breaks wants different material than someone filing weekly analysis.

Prefer the candidate whose recent story types the pitch can actually feed.

5. Staff writer vs. contributor

Establish which each candidate is, and say so in the output. It changes both the odds and the value:

• A staff writer or full-time reporter is the outlet's real byline. Their coverage carries the outlet's weight, but they are pitched more heavily and often need an editor's buy-in.
• A contributor, columnist, or freelancer is usually more reachable and more actively looking for material, but the piece may carry less institutional weight and may sit in a section readers and aggregators treat differently.

Neither wins automatically. Decide on what the pitch is:

• Hard news — a launch, a raise, a data drop, anything time-pegged. Rank the contributor below an equally-fitting staff writer. A contributor usually cannot green-light a news story on their own, and the piece carries less institutional weight.
• Expertise, commentary, or evergreen — rank the contributor at or above staff when their column is the story's natural home.

Never treat "contributor" as a soft target for a pitch that would not survive a staff writer's scrutiny. That is how outlets end up with a contributor section nobody trusts.

Freelancers are a separate track, not a rung on this ladder. A freelancer is not employed by the outlet: they can take the idea elsewhere, and they still have to win a commission before anything runs. So pitching a freelancer does not consume your approach to that masthead, and it does not burn the staff reporters — but the reverse trap is real. You cannot promise a freelancer an exclusive at a named publication, because they cannot deliver that publication. Treat "I'll pitch it to them" as a lead, never as placed coverage.

6. Publishing cadence — tiebreaker only

How often is each candidate publishing right now?

Treat this as a tiebreaker and nothing more. There is no good evidence that high- or low-cadence reporters are likelier to respond, so cadence must never overturn a topic, format, or story-type read above it.

It is also two-sided, and the output must say which side it is reading. Someone publishing several times a week is demonstrably active and has slots to fill — but is also buried and working fast. Someone publishing every other week has more room to consider a pitch, and more time to do something with it, but fewer openings. Read it against the pitch: a live news window favors the reporter who can move today; a story that needs reporting time favors the one with room.

A candidate whose cadence has visibly dropped to nothing in the last 90 days may be on leave, between jobs, or moving off the beat. Treat that as a caution, not a ranking.

7. Source-type match

Check who each candidate actually quotes. Practitioners or academics? Named executives or independent analysts? If the pitch offers a founder and this candidate only quotes customers and researchers, a colleague who does quote founders is the better first send.

8. Relationship — tiebreaker only

A prior relationship separates two candidates who are already genuine fits. It does nothing else.

It cannot promote a Soft-fit over a Fit. It cannot rescue a No-fit. It is not a reason to send someone a story outside what they cover.

Knowing a journalist is a reason they might read your email. It is not a reason the story is right for them, and spending a real relationship on a story that does not fit is how the relationship stops working. If the person you know is not the best fit here, the output says so plainly and puts them in Held.

Step Three — Write the tailoring notes

The first pick gets specific edits. This is the part that turns a ranking into a sent email.

Give 1–4 edits, each naming what to cut, replace, or add, tied to a specific piece of that journalist's recent work, and doable in a few minutes. If the first pick came out of the fit-check as a Soft-fit, its required edits are not optional — carry them through and mark them as blocking.

One asymmetry worth knowing: prior coverage of a competitor is among the strongest reasons to choose a journalist, and one of the worst things to put in the pitch. Rival coverage inside the email argues that someone else already told this story. Use it to rank; never cite it as a selling point.

Do not write tailoring notes for held candidates. Those notes belong to whoever you actually pitch, and writing four versions in advance is the batch this skill exists to prevent.

Step Four — Set the fallback order and its conditions

Held candidates are ranked, but ranking is not permission. Each one needs a condition that unlocks them.

Default sequencing, unless the user has their own rule:

• Give the first pick a real chance. One follow-up, three to seven days after the original — never same-day. Silence inside that window is not a pass.
• An explicit pass unlocks the next candidate immediately. "Not for me" is information; no reply is not. On silence, move only after the single follow-up has also gone unanswered.
• Moving to a colleague works best when something has changed — a new development, a sharper angle, a different form. Re-sending the same pitch down the masthead is the spray this skill is built to stop, just slowed down.
• The second email must name the first journalist. This is a rule, not a courtesy. Say plainly that you approached the colleague and did not hear back. Newsrooms discover this anyway, and the discovery is what kills stories that were otherwise alive — a reporter who finds out secondhand can drop a piece they had already agreed to.
• Disclose the fact without framing the person as a downgrade. "I reached out to [name] and didn't hear back, so I wanted to bring it to you" does the job. Never tell someone they were the backup.
• Stop at two people per publication for one pitch. If both have passed or gone quiet, the outlet is not interested right now. A third approach converts a targeting problem into a reputation problem. Take it elsewhere or change the story.

Exclusives. An exclusive is one story, one outlet, one reporter. Never offer one without an expiry — an open-ended exclusive leaves you no clean way to move without appearing to renege. State the deadline in the offer. Never have two live exclusive offers at one publication at the same time; that is not sequencing, it is a lie. If the first pick passes or the deadline lapses, a colleague may be approached — with the same disclosure as above.

When the news is time-boxed, the waiting periods compress to hours. The disclosure requirement does not compress.