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Writing an article for a newspaper

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Anyone got any experience of this?

I've noticed an interesting effect of the credit crunch and thought it would make an interesting article

If I was to write something how do you go about submitting it?

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    you need to pitch the idea first. so, what sections of which papers do you think it's suitable for?

    once you've worked that out, find out who's in charge of commissioning articles for that section and find their email address. then email them giving an overview of your idea - what it's about, who you'd talk to, case studies you'd use etc and an overview of yourself, your experience, links to any work you've had published. and make sure you emphasise why you're the right person to be writing the article. then they should get back to you with a yes or a no and telling you how much they'd pay.

    NEVER send in a finished article, always pitch the idea first. if you send them a completed article there's the chance they'll just use it. and most editors wont read a random article that lands in their inbox - they plan their pages well in advance so like to get ideas, commission them and know when they're coming in and when they'll be used.

    what sort of papers are you thinking - local or national? if it's local, you're unlikely to get paid and to be honest, a lot of local papers probably wont accept an article and would rather write it themselves, especially as space is so tight lately.

    and as for nationals, they've cut back on their freelance budgets a lot lately, some sections aren't accepting submissions because they cant afford it, some will only accept them from people who they know well.

    if you give me an idea of the papers/sections you were thinking of i can probably give you some more useful tips. (i'm a journalist btw!)
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