NPR Freelance Market Guide
Created March 11, 2022; checked for accuracy November 21, 2022.
Fees: Fees vary by length and complexity of assignment and the writer’s experience. NPR typically pays per article, not per word. Articles range in length from 800 to 2,000 words.
Submit to: For the “Shots” blog on domestic health, submit to editor Carmel Wroth, cwroth@npr.org. For the “Goats & Soda” blog on global health and development, submit to editor Marc Silver, msilver@npr.org.
Website:
“Shots”: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots
“Goats & Soda”: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/
Owner: NPR
Readership demographics: Wide, general-interest audience. NPR has a circulation of 16.3 million weekly website visitors.
Frequency of publication: Publishes daily.
What Silver and Straight look for in a pitch:
“Shots” is looking for timely, tightly framed pieces on health care, health science, health policy and personal health & wellness.
“It’s a big lens so we encourage writers to pitch from their own experience, passion and expertise,” Editor Carmel Wroth said.“We seek well-informed reporting on new research and scientific advances, as well as stories of the people behind the advances.”
Wroth also welcomes stories illustrating how sometimes technical policy issues play out in people’s lives — and solutions stories. Other current topics of interest include: climate change and health; stories relevant to younger adults and issues in their lives; and service stories on how to stay healthy.
“Please include in your pitch a clear sense of why this story is relevant now, why audiences need to know this or would find it intriguing, and succinct highlights of how you plan to report it out,” Wroth said.
“Goats and Soda” publishes stories about global health and development issues in low resource countries.
“We are looking for stories with strong news pegs, with new studies to support them, with new solutions to problems where there is evidence that the fixes are working (and outside commenters to assess),” Editor Mark Silver said.“Also, we love a counter-intuitive thesis!”
Both Wroth and Silver ask that freelancers keep pitches short and to the point. Pitches should demonstrate that a freelancer can write lively copy that is accessible to a general audience.
Most common mistake editors see with pitches:Freelancers should not send a pitch on a Friday afternoon. Also, writers should check the blogs to make sure the storyhas not been covered recently.
Lead time for pitching: The editors try to reply within a week. Deadlines will depend on the timeliness of the news peg.
Is there a best place to break into the pub? “Start us with something relatively straight-forward like covering a new study,” Wroth and Silver said.