INSPIRATION EVERYWHERE

Finding ideas for pitches can often be one of the hardest parts of the writing process. How do you find cool, unexpected stories in the world? How do you find a new angle on a story that seems tired? Do you have to read lots of new scientific studies or spend hours listening to police scanners? While there are lots of ways to find pitches, for me, the best pitches tend to be the unexpected, and often the weirdest, ones.

I thought of one of the weirdest pitches was when an editor tried to pay me. I had just finished writing a reported piece on Iran-Contra trading cards (a story I’ll talk about later on), and my editor had sent me a payment through PayPal. But the fast cash service held it up, asking for more information. My editor and I theorized it was because they had put the phrase “Iran-Contra” into the comments section of the transaction.

As a result of this unexpected delay, I ended up writing an entire article about PayPal and Venmo’s anti-terrorism regulations for the in 2019, which detailed how the services flagged transactions including words like “Iran” or “Cuba.” The story resulted in two additional commissions later on in the same publication. One was in March 2021 on the , since the regulations were still in effect and causing issues for journalists trying to get paid for their work, as well as an article on Venmo’s attempts to be an , despite some security concerns. While the last one wasn’t on the same topic, the original article pricked my ears for issues related to Venmo and its parent company, PayPal.