Fees: Next Avenue pays $300 for personal essays and between $400 and $500 for reported stories, which typically have three sources. Stories are between 800 to 1,400 words in length.
Submit to: Freelancers are required to use the Next Avenue submissions form, where they will be asked to summarize the pitch in 150 words and also explain why the story is right for Next Avenue’s audience. “The key is that they know how to write for readers in their 50s and beyond, with the purpose of helping our audience navigate and enjoy their lives,” according to the submissions guide.
Website: www.nextavenue.org
Owner: Twin Cities PBS
Readership demographics: Next Avenue is geared towards people who are 50 and up, but also has readers in their mid- to late-forties.
Frequency of publication: Digital, five days a week.
What they look for in a pitch: The categories in its health channel are Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, cancer, chronic pain, fitness and exercise, food and nutrition, health care, heart disease and stroke, mental health and well-being and sexual health. Its other channels are money and policy, work and purpose, living, and caregiving.
The pitch form makes it “very clear what information we want to know,” said Managing Editor Julie Pfitzinger. The form also asks the writer to search the Next Avenue website for similar stories.“That encourages people to take a look at our site and not submit a story idea that we literally ran a month ago,” Pfitzinger said.
The pitch form also lists topics that editors are currently looking to explore. “We change those, I would say, every two months or so,” Pfitzinger said. “We’re trying to give a little bit of guidance.”
It is not necessary to list specific sources in the pitch, but freelancers should make the story idea as specific as possible. “We do get pitches where people say, for example, ‘I would like to write about long COVID and its impact on older adults.’ That’s not enough,” Pfitzinger said.
Do editors accept pre-pitches? No, just use the pitch form. The pitch description can be short.
Most common mistake editors see with pitches: Pitches that are too vague, and “pitches that do not demonstrate a familiarity with Next Avenue and the types of stories we publish, said Pfitzinger. “For our health coverage, we need contributors to have solid writing backgrounds rather than just medical expertise.”
Lead time for pitching: Next Avenue editors respond to writers within two to three weeks, said Pfitzinger, who is in charge of the living channel (books, movies, family relationships, travel, personal essays). She is also serving as interim health and caregiving editor until a new editor is in place by early summer. The money and policy, work and purpose editor is Mark Stein.
“We have so many stories in the queue, so we don’t need people to work fast to turn things around for us,” Pfitzinger said. Writers are given a month, sometimes more, to complete an assignment “because we’re also not a breaking news site.”
Best place for a freelancer to break into Next Avenue: There is no best channel for breaking into the publication. “We work with a lot of new writers, so breaking in, if you have a good idea, is not as hard as it might be with other publications,” Pfitzinger said.