Pitches wanted (food history) | $300 per piece

[This opportunity was posted 30+ days ago and has expired.]

I hope you are safe and doing well in spite of everything. I've started work on our lucky 13th edition and am looking for stories.

The theme for this volume is "breakfast" which could mean anything from a story on a breakfast king or queen to an epic early morning feast to the story of the world’s biggest omelet. Feel free to get creative but to always keep history in mind!

I am looking for stories that will ultimately be between 800 and 1500 words, are historical in nature, and can be readily tied to the theme (in any of its interpretations.)

And this bit is the same from calls for pitches past but for the new people on this list (and there are a lot of you this time around!), I realize history is not generally something that many journalists regularly write so I wanted to add a few pointers to help you all with pitching. Fundamentally this “historical in nature” is what I look for above all else. I am not interested in stories of contemporary journalism that mention history; I am looking for pieces that primarily focus on something that happened in the past that may or may not have a tie into the present. In the best stories, this relevance to the present will be evident in the history in and of itself.

Generally speaking, I also don’t go for pieces that are simply “the history of cheese” or “the history of grapefruit.” That’s not to say single ingredients don’t have fascinating backgrounds, but the more interesting historical pieces tend to have another layer on top of that. The history of cheese in a broad sense is just not as interesting to me as why Samuel Pepys buried his cheese during the London Fire; the story of a grapefruit variety that was developed after being pounded by radiation is much more catching that the general history of that fruit.

Hopefully these guidelines are helpful for developing ideas. If you want concrete examples of what I am talking about, a few sample articles can be found here. This time around I’ve also included in that folder a list of the topics of all the pieces I’ve previously published; if you’re worried your topic has already been covered, please check there.

The going rate for stories is $300 per article of whatever length and the deadline for pitches is Wednesday October 20th. Please send your pitches with PITCH: No. 13 somewhere in the subject line to help me keep everything organized! Deadlines for the full pieces would be three to four weeks after that, though I’m pretty flexible on this.

And I won’t be reading any pitches until the days after the deadline so no need to rush submissions before then. And I receive too many pitch emails to be able to give feedback on ideas before the deadline so please no “taster emails” to gauge my interest in an idea before its fully fleshed out. But I promise to respond to all pitches, even the ones I don’t ultimately choose.

Happy to answer any further questions you may have and I look forward to hearing your story ideas!

CONTACT INFORMATION:

[This opportunity was posted 30+ days ago and has expired.]