I get dozens of pitches a day, so please forgive me if I don’t get back to you, especially if it looks like a mass mailing. But I am always looking for story ideas!
All pitches asking for sponsored posts, or offering contributed columns, are sent directly to the spam folder.
I no longer cover breaking news, so pitches offering quotes about current events, or with news announcements, get deleted. Pitches with surveys or research reports relevant to my areas of coverage are archived in case I need them later.
I do not write articles about new products or services. I also do not cover mergers or acquisitions or personnel news. However, there might be a feature pitch in there somewhere, and then I would be interested. I would also be interested in experts in cybersecurity and in artificial intelligence.
I prefer to be contacted by email, at maria@korolov.com.
Pitching an expert
Please send me their name and short bio, and a list of topics they can comment on. Also, contact information for either them personally or their PR person.
I will add them to my list of experts. There are a lot of experts out there. There is no guarantee that I will reach out to them.
I am particularly interested in talking with enterprise CSOs and CISOs for CSO magazine, with CIOs and CTOs for CIO magazine, and with data center managers for Data Center Knowledge.
Pitching a feature
To get a feature story on the editorial calendar, I need to see some evidence that a substantive change is happening in cybersecurity, such as expert opinions, surveys, or analyst research reports.
I also need at least a couple of CSOs or CISO at non-tech companies who can confirm this trend, and be willing to talk about how it affects their companies. If I have that, then I can also include a couple of vendors to get the technical details of what is going on.
If you are a vendor looking to a pitch a feature story to me, I would need at least one customer reference, a couple of experts or analysts, and the names of at least a couple of competitors.
I also do big-picture overview stories. If I — or someone else at the magazine — has done that story within the past year, I might still be interested in it, if there’s a new angle to it.
You can see the kinds of stories I write here:
Do you want me to write an article for you?
First of all, if you want to pay me to write an article about your company for publication in one of the outlets I write for, then not only is it a firm no, but I will also forward your request to my editors at that publication.
If you are an editor at a non-competing publication, or a vendor-sponsored editorial site that does not overlap with my areas of coverage and has a vendor-neutral editorial policy, then please do drop me a line. My lowest rate is $1 a word for editorial publications.
For vendor-focused sponsored sites, white papers, case studies, ghost writing, and other marketing communications my lowest rate is $3 a word. In addition, I would not be able to write about that vendor in my regular reporting, to avoid potential conflicts of interest.