Pitches wanted (holiday/new year special, science) | ~$760+ per article

COMPANY/PUBLICATION: NEW SCIENTIST

Deadline: By the first couple of weeks of June (11 June 2023, est)

Joshua Howgego, Feature Editor at New Scientist, is looking for pitches:

It’s beginning to look at lot like Christmas… well, it is in the vicinity of the New Scientist features desk anyway. Around this time every year, we start thinking about our holiday issue, a double-length magazine that is packed with about 15 features and comes out at the end of December. Commissioning stories for this issue is one of the things I most enjoy about my job because we’re looking for something a little bit different from the usual stuff. We are still looking for science and technology, but we want the issue to be a little more light-hearted, quirkier, and generally to be a wonderfully diverting thing to read as people relax over the festive period.

We rely heavily on freelancers to write our features and so I wanted to set out in some detail the kinds of stories we are looking for. If you have an idea, now is the time to pitch it — that is, ideally by the first couple of weeks of June 2023. Here’s some more detail that should help you.

WHAT MAKES A CHRISTMAS FEATURE?

New Scientist is a magazine about science and technology, but for this issue we want to write about these topics in a less serious, more quirky. It’s worth saying, however, that our stories still need some new science (the clue is in our name…); we’re not going to do just a general explainer on the science of chocolate or reindeer or eggnog. We need to be a bit cleverer than that. (Take reindeer for example — last year we did a piece all about our new understanding of why their eyes change colour. That’s the kid of smart twist that a Christmas feature needs.)

The typical length for a Christmas feature is 1200 words, though they certainly can be longer. Here is my best stab at the categories we often like to hit…Stories about animals doing amusing things (see “Monkeys sail the high seas”)

• Stories about food (see “the secret life of cheese”)
• Stories about booze (see “cocktails made via flavour pairing theory”)
• A hilarious stunt of some sort, often involving food or booze (see the classic “Can I eat myself drunk?”)
• Histories — that is, stories that retell some forgotten tale from the history of science, ideally with some relevance to what’s happening today. (See How crooks stalled the birth of the electric car 100 years ago).
• Something for the physics crowd with a fun, festive twist (see “Quantum board games”)
• Stories about something that has a connection to Christmas (let your imagination run wild here — it could be anything from Christmas carols to poinsettia or from snowflakes to stars and present-giving. Some of the topics we have covered recently are kindness, arguments round the dinner table and even watching TV.)
• A quiz or two. (See “Packham’s poo picture puzzle”).
• Other stuff that somehow “feels right” as a Christmas story. For instance, last year we did a piece asking what aliens would think of us from the messages we have sent into space.

This is probably not an exhaustive list. It is also worth checking the list of all the stories in our Christmas issues from the past few years, which you can do here:

• 2022: https://www.newscientist.com/issue/3417/
• 2021: https://www.newscientist.com/issue/3365/
• 2020: https://www.newscientist.com/issue/3313/
• 2019: https://www.newscientist.com/issue/3261/

HOW DO I SUGGEST AN IDEA?

Unless you already happen to have a working relationship with another feature editor at New Scientist, please send them to me at joshua.howgego@newscientist.com. Ideally, you would send a pitch of about three paragraphs explaining the headline idea and giving us some idea of where the story will go as it develops. But if you have a kernel of an idea and want to just send a few lines, at this point, that’s fine too — if I like it, I can help you develop the pitch. (If you want more advice about what form a pitch should take, try having a look at this guide I wrote a while ago.)

HOW MUCH WILL I GET PAID?

That depends on a number of factors. But as a rough guide, the amount we would pay for a 1200 word feature would start at about £620.

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

• Questions/submissions: joshua.howgego@newscientist.com
• Website: https://www.newscientist.com

TO HELP YOU CRAFT YOUR PITCH:

• Learn more about the publication: New Scientist is a weekly science and technology magazine. Its website, app and print editions cover international news from a scientific standpoint, and ask the biggest-picture questions about life, the universe and what it means to be human. New Scientist is based in London, UK, with offices in the US and Australia. More information here.
• Browse through a selection of recent Christmas articles/stories 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 paragraph 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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