If you are not a staff writer at a journalism institution, but you want to publish a nonfiction article, you will have to pitch it, first. In practice, this means sleuthing for the email of an an editor at the publication you would like to write for, and sending them your idea. There are exceptions to this rule. Fiction you will generally need to submit fully formed, and some nonfiction publications do prefer full manuscripts. But in general when it comes to nonfiction, the best way to get a piece of writing published is to pitch it.
Ask five editors the key to a good pitch, and you may receive five wildly divergent responses. There is no magic formula to getting a pitch placed. But there are broadly applicable principals to keep in mind—whether you want to write a movie review, an experimental personal essay, a political opinion piece, or a hard-biting piece of reportage—that will increase your likelihood of being taken seriously by an editor.
Read the publication’s prior work, and think hard about how you can produce a piece that would be a good fit.
More than anything else, serious editors think about “fit.” This slippery word could refer to content, tone, structure, style. A publication that only publishes reported pieces—rooted in interviews and original research—probably won’t want your strident polemical. A publication that covers movies probably doesn’t want your travel essay—unless you managed to work in a sharp movie angle.
But fit goes beyond just subject matter. Professional writers have distinctive personal voices, but they are also chameleons, who can inflect the sound and style of their work to appropriately match the context. When pitching Mangoprism your pitch needs to sound and feel like a Mangoprism piece.
You need a story, not a topic.
Stories usually have characters. Often they involve scenes demonstrating conflict, change. Stories take place place contingently. They are situated in time and space. And perhaps most importantly, good stories ultimately reveal something about the world. They raise timely and concrete questions, and hopefully even make some kind of argument in response! This is true whether you are writing a personal essay, a news article, cultural criticism, a profile, or whatever else.
What exactly you want to say must not necessarily be fully established in the pitch. And an “argument”—basically the upshot of the story you want to tell—can take many unexpected forms. But at the very least a good pitch centers a proto-thesis which gives the editor a clear picture of the core purpose of the piece, what direction it will go, and why a reader should care.
Demonstrate that you, specifically, can be trusted to write this story well.
Have you written on the matter before? Do you have personal experience with the given issue? If so, great! You should note that in your pitch. It is generally a good idea, at the end of the pitch, to link to some “clips”—pieces you have previously published—that seem relevant to the story at hand. But even if you don’t have personal experience with the realm in question (or any clips at all, for that matter) you can help an editor trust you to do a good job with the proposed story by demonstrating that you have done your homework.
Sometimes this means pre-interviewing a source or two to get a sense of the lay of the land. Sometimes this means learning and discussing the relevant history with which you will put the proposed story in context. And it always means writing your pitch well, with a tone, structure, and sensibility that will reflect the robust final product you intend to produce.
Use high quality sourcing and/or data to support your claims.
The best journalists do not ask you to trust them. Rather, they find and provide explicit evidence for their claims. No matter what kind of piece you are proposing, when you make a claim, you need to cite it. Sometimes this simply means inserting a hyperlink to a trustworthy source (i.e., one that is explicit with its own sourcing).
Sometimes this means attributing a claim to someone you yourself have talked to. And you should always strive to contextualize anything you discuss with both history and data when applicable.
Model your pitch after those of other writers who have had success.
The best way to learn how to pitch is to model yours after those that have successfully convinced editors in the past. Fortunately, the internet is teeming with examples of effective pitches. Look at Dan Baum’s successful magazine proposals, which landed him (however fleetingly) a lofty perch at the New Yorker. Or check out this (fledgling) database of successful pitches. Lots of news organizations have pitch guides of their own. Here is an NPR guide. Here it the New York Times Styles desk freelancer guide. Here is the High Country News guide. Here is the pitch that landed one Mangoprism editor a piece in High Country News on a ski patrol’s unionization effort. Here is the pitch that landed another Mangoprism editor a piece in GQ on a favorite video game from his youth.
Don’t get demoralized if your pitches aren’t getting accepted—or even dignified with a response.
At Mangoprism, we make a point of responding to every reasonable proposal (though sometimes it might take a while). But sometimes you may never hear back from a publication. There are so many reasons your pitch might not be getting accepted, and many of them may well have nothing to do with its quality! If you don’t hear back from an editor, reach out again a couple weeks, and then move on to another publication.
(Note: There is a convention in the media world that you should not simultaneously pitch multiple publications the same story. While in their own work lives, Mangoprism‘s editorial staff tends, reluctantly, to abide by this principle, we encourage you to use your own judgment on the matter.)
The media realm is tough. The pay is often insultingly terrible, and just as importantly, publications frequently fail to treat their contributors with dignity. It is, in our own personal experience, common for an editor to commission a piece and then literally not respond to you once you have submitted it. Many very fancy-seeming and relatively wealthy publications will kill pieces with no justification after they have been submitted—and not compensate the writer, even a little bit, for all of the work they have done.
The point is, these issues are systemic, and when you get treated badly, you shouldn’t take it personally, and you certainly can’t let it affect your sense of self-worth. At Mangoprism, we will always do our best to treat you with respect. And many editors throughout the writing world will do the same. Trust yourself, understand that the work, on a certain level, must be its own reward, have fun, and don’t ever hesitate to ask for help.