Pitches wanted (insightful reported stories, culture, economy, etc.) | $2 per word

COMPANY/PUBLICATION: BUSINESS INSIDER

Zak Jason, Deputy Editor at Insider, is looking for pitches:

If you’re looking for a home for a big-swing feature narrative or essay, I’d love to hear from you: zjason@businessinsider.com. Here’s a little bit about what our team does and what we’ve been up to.

We aim to publish rollicking, deeply insightful, definitively reported, fiercely written stories and essays that readers want to share paragraphs of to their group chat and that leave them informed, empowered, and — we hope — awake to the gift of being alive.

These stories can center on anything within Business Insider’s bailiwick, which at its core includes workplace culture, the economy, tech, housing, retail, education, and beyond.

A few examples of what we’ve run recently:

• Melia Russell’s beautiful, revelatory essay about her marriage to a startup founder. "Lately, I've been fixated on a nagging question: Would my marriage be happier if my husband's startup failed?" https://www.businessinsider.com/confessions-of-a-startup-founder-wife-marriage-tiktok-games-2023-11
• Paul Starobin went to Kyiv to investigate whether Zelensky’s right-hand man may be handing war-torn Ukraine over to the oligarchs. https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraines-real-power-broker-yermak-zelensky-russia-war-biden-2023-12
• Devin Friedman’s instant classic about getting hoodwinked out of $31,000 on Zelle. "I haven't emailed you in a month," he said. Then my wife said holy fuck. https://www.businessinsider.com/zelle-fraud-scam-swimming-pool-online-payment-apps-mobile-banking-2023-10
• Rob Price with a thrillingly fun deep dive on the state of LinkedIn and what it means to be “professional” anymore. Come for the surreal morality play, stay for the sage career advice. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-linkedin-got-weird-work-life-blurred-lines-of-oversharing-2023-9
• Bethany McClean’s magisterial deep dive on the death of Goldman’s cutthroat mystique. https://www.businessinsider.com/rip-goldman-sachs-wall-street-investment-bank-dead-2023-11
• Joseph Bien Kahn's exquisite profile of Michael Schwimer, which doubles as a forensic audit of the moral gray area of treating humans (in this case teenage athletes) like startups. https://www.businessinsider.com/moneyball-plus-shark-tank-investors-treat-athletes-like-startups-2024-1

Much more to come from many fantastic writers that we’re excited to share. I’d love to work with you as well.

It’s incredibly rough out there. We still believe people will always want and need beautifully told stories. We still believe, as Faulkner did, that the writer's voice "need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

Our rates vary depending on experience and scope, but for the type of big-swing, deeply reported features I most often work on, we pay in the $2 a word range.

CONTACT INFORMATION (please do not share the email address publicly):

• Questions/submissions: zjason@insider.com
• Website: https://www.businessinsider.com

TO HELP YOU CRAFT YOUR PITCH:

• Learn more about the publication: Business Insider is a business site with deep financial, media, tech, and other industry verticals. It offers the latest news, sharp analyses and insightful commentaries on finance, markets, retails, healthcare, etc. from around the world. More information here.
• Read through a selection of recent features stories/articles on its website.
• Review the submission guidelines here and here. Note that these are the publication's general guidelines to help you refine your pitch. You must still follow the editor's specific instructions above.
• Check out our collection of pitch excerpts on this page and find more sample pitches at The Open Notebook Database and at SuccessfulPitches.com.
• Do not forget to end your pitch with (1) a short introduction about yourself; (2) a few lines highlighting your writing experience, relevant credentials and publication credits; and (3) links to your strongest work or portfolio, and online profile.

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