Pitch Perfect: Mastering the Art of Media Pitching

Fawn Johnson is a news director at Bloomberg Industry Group focusing on state-level policies and politics, as well as government contracting. Most recently, she managed the health policy team covering, among other things, the Covid-19 pandemic. Other editor roles were in the areas of antitrust law, corporate law, telecommunications, finance and Congress. Before becoming an editor, she spent the better part of 20 years as a reporter covering several areas of federal policy for National Journal, the Wall Street Journal, CongressDaily and the pre-Bloomberg-owned Bureau of National Affairs (BNA).

Ingalisa Schrobsdorff is the Regional Politics editor for WAMU/DCist, overseeing the D.C., Maryland and Virginia politics beats. She also serves as managing producer for The Politics Hour with Kojo Nnamdi as well as for Kojo in Our Community live events. Prior to joining the Newsroom, she was the Managing Producer for the Kojo Nnamdi Show. Ingalisa earned a B.A. in political science from Barnard College, followed by a two-year stint in Japan, where she studied Japanese and taught English. She returned to New York and landed at NYU, where she launched and directed more than a dozen study abroad programs across 10 countries, including Havana, Nanjing, and Berlin. While at NYU, she also developed a journalism abroad track for undergraduate students. She went on to earn an M.P.A. from Harvard’s Kennedy School, and shifted into public media. She worked at KQED in San Francisco on the daily talk show Forum before coming to Washington, D.C. and joining WAMU.

Nick Lanyi is a media relations and crisis communications expert with the Ragan Consulting Group. He led the public affairs practice in the Washington, D.C. office of global public relations agency Porter Novelli from 2013 to 2015, and previously served as managing director at public affairs boutique LMG Inc. Lanyi spent 15 years as an award-winning reporter, financial journalist and freelance writer.