Lydia Dishman is a business journalist who covers a lot of ground with a lot of publications. Some of her most often covered topics include leadership, innovation, and retail, for publications such as Fast Company, Forbes, and The New York Times. At Cave Henricks Communications, we work with Lydia to provide her expert sources with interesting new angles and ideas.

This week we were fortunate to speak with Lydia for our “Five Questions with…” media interview series. Below she shares her thoughts on working with publicists and what she looks for in a book.

1. What’s your biggest publicist pet peeve?

People who pitch a client without knowledge of my coverage area or without trying to figure out how that client could work into my beat. Pitching me and several of the other writers I work with simultaneously.

2. What gets your attention in a pitch?

Relevance and brevity. If you can’t say it in five sentences or less, you haven’t spent enough time working on refining your pitch.

3. What causes you to pull a book out of the stack?

Not really a fair question for me as I used to work in book publishing at Random House. I look for things no regular reader looks for such as the publisher. I am more likely to pull a title from a publisher with a quality track record.

4. During your time as a business journalist, what is the most interesting thing you’ve learned that has stuck with you?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

5. What’s the best book you’ve read lately?

Bobcat, a book of short stories by Rebecca Lee.