10 Pitch Calls Paying $50→$1,000
Where to Pitch This Week (5.9.25) | Pitches wanted on debt, movies, wedding guests, and more!
Welcome to Where to Pitch This Week!
Today, you’ll find a successful Slate pitch and some thoughts on making pitches scannable. Then you’ll find 10 pitch calls paying up to $1,000, from Esquire to Longreads and more.
Peep This Freelance Pitch That Won a Slate Assignment
Y’all, I was all set to write this week about the state of the freelance market [cracked, hysterical laughter] and how, these days, everyone’s path is too weird to copy and there’s basically no helpful advice anywhere.
But that’s not a whole column, is it?
Besides, I wanted to give you something you can actually use. So instead of offering more vibes and despair, I’m sharing a Slate pitch that worked in 2022. This pitch also builds on last week’s theme: how writing about money can help you break in, break out, etc.
This pitch got me an assignment from Slate editor Rebecca Onion, got me Slate-top-of-site for most of a day (IIRC), and led to some radio and podcast interviews. Pretty sure I got paid $500 for the piece itself.
Here’s the email I sent:
Rebecca,
Hey there, and good afternoon. My name is Catherine Baab-Muguira, and I last wrote for Slate in 2018 (“The $500 allowance that saved my marriage”). More recently, I’ve contributed to the Wall Street Journal, and published my first book, Poe for Your Problems, which came out from Hachette last September.
Getting in touch now with an idea that I think could be right up your alley. Here's the gist.
I just sold my starter home. And now I understand exactly how millennials get priced out of the housing market.
My husband and I recently sold our modest starter home in Richmond, Virginia. And I do mean modest—at 1,500 square feet, in a so-so neighborhood, it’s cute but nothing special.
Back in 2015, we paid $181,500, because that was a thing you could do in Richmond then. House prices were rising off the recession lows, but they remained affordable. Flash forward to March of 2022, and our house commanded $331,000, an increase of 82% in just seven years.
That’s not the worst of it for home buyers, however. Our house went on the market on a Friday morning, and by Sunday we had 15 offers, mostly from 30-somethings, all of them complete with begging letters and tear-jerking photos of bidders’ children. We even received a video message from someone’s lender, pitching the couple and endlessly repeating their first names in an apparent effort to forge some emotional connection. Hostage negotiators use the same tactic.
Every serious bidder waived inspection and offered to make up any appraisal gap in cash. This is where the bidding grew seriously intense, and where you could actually see how millennials get priced out of the housing market. Coming up with a down payment is hard enough. Coming up with $100,000 in additional cash—which is what sealed the deal for the winning bidder—is an impossible ask for most anyone. Another couple offered a $50,000 gap and lost out.
As a millennial myself, I find this heartbreaking, but such is the market for starter homes now even in unexciting second-tier cities. Would you be interested in a personal essay about this? I could see Slate readers really sinking their teeth into it.
Thank you for your time and consideration, and all best,
Cat
Now here’s why this pitch worked (I think), i.e. a few quick takeaways for anyone trying to land a freelance piece right now:
Establish credibility early. You want to help the editor understand, right away, who you are and why you’re writing this story to them. A past byline, relevant publication, or even “I read your call for pitches” works here. “I’m a mom of three in Topeka who knows Target’s toy aisle like the back of my hand” works too, if applicable.
Lead with a real title. The bolded headline in the email is doing double duty: it gives the piece a shape and makes it Slate-y too, conforming to their headline style.
Use up juicy details EARLY. Don’t save the good stuff for the piece—show it in the pitch. Specific numbers, vivid scenes, anything a reader (or editor) would perk up at.
Tie your personal story to a larger pattern. In this case, I was trying to get beyond “I sold a house” to the larger issue of how millennials and Gen Z get priced out of the housing market—because I’d lived it from the jerk side.
Make your pitch scannable. Realizing opinions vary, I love short paragraphs, and I love a space between paragraphs. We all get too many emails, right? Short paragraphs, clearly separated, make an email easier to read, quicker to glance through, easier to respond to, even if it’s just a quick “Not for me, thanks.”
If I had it to do again today, I might add a word count (say, 1,200 words), maybe some stats about the housing market, and maybe a note on potential sources in case the editor wants more reporting.
But here’s the long and short: Right now, it looks bleak out there. The media market appears to be at both a cyclical and structural bottom. The good news is, it’s not just bleak for you, you know? Everyone I know—even writers I’ve assumed were set—is figuring it out week by week, guest-posting, tapping their networks, keeping the lights on however they can. The career paths and ladders that used to exist? They’re cave paintings now.
Meanwhile, we’re still here. I hope the Slate pitch is helpful for something you’re working on or toward now. Maybe use it for a Slate pitch… or for the first pitch call listed below?
Happy pitching!
Where to Pitch This Week: 10 Paid Writing Opportunities
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