Fees: The Transmitter, a digital publication about neuroscience, pays a starting rate of $1 per word and goes up from there, depending on the experience of the journalist.
Submit to: Freelancers should submit pitches to news@thetransmitter.org, which is monitored by all editors. Freelancers who have worked for The Transmitter can email pitches directly to their editor.
Website: thetransmitter.org
Owner: The Simons Foundation, a philanthropic organization dedicated to advancing the frontiers of basic science through grant-making, in-house research and public engagement.
Readership demographics: The readers are neuroscientists. “We have to have the science absolutely right, and it’s got to be written at a very high level,” said features editor Brady Huggett. “But even though this is for scientists, we don’t want it to be filled with jargon.”
Frequency of publication: New content is added to the website daily.
What they look for in a pitch: Pitches should identify whether the story is news, a trend that would make a good feature or an interesting person who exemplifies some broader issue and would make a good profile.
The pitch should then discuss the sources the reporter has spoken with and why they are saying this is an interesting story idea.
“Please search our site for coverage of the topics your idea relates to and explain how your story would advance that coverage,” according to The Transmitter’s writing guidelines. “Also, make sure your proposed story hasn’t already been covered elsewhere.”
Freelancers should keep in mind that the publication focuses on basic research, advised Huggett. “We’re going to be covering the things that are still happening in the lab,” said Huggett. “When it moves into clinical trials and drug development, that’s not really our area.”
For feature stories, Huggett is looking for trends. “What we’d really like is a pitch that says, ‘There’s a paper out, and it relates to an experiment that happened last year. And I know that someone in this field is also working on an opposing theory.’ Now we know that there’s a field of thought that has to be parsed out in the article,” said Huggett. “That’s the kind of stuff our readers love.”
The same approach pertains to pitches coming out of a conference. “I want someone to come back from a conference and say, ‘This is what the vibe was. I was at two or three presentations, and they kept saying the same thing. I know there’s a story there,’” said Huggett.
If applicable, freelancers should include a link to an in-depth story that shows they know how to dig deep.
“If you have a background in neuroscience, absolutely tell us that. If you used to work in a lab, tell us that, so that we know that you can handle the material because it’s dense,” said Huggett.
Do the editors accept pre-pitches: Yes.
Biggest mistakes the editors see in pitches: The biggest mistakes are incomplete pitches, for instance one saying the reporter read a journal article and wants to write about it.
“That doesn’t really tell me anything. We saw the paper too. What are you going to write about it? Why does our audience need to know about it? Who are you going to talk to and what might they say? That is a full pitch,” said Huggett. “We have too much to do to help you figure out what the story is.”
Lead time: Editors respond to every pitch. “The lead time, of course, varies. If it’s a feature and it’s 4,000 words, we may work on that for three months,” said Huggett. A more newsy piece might take one or two weeks to go through the editing process.
Best place to break in: If a freelancer doesn’t have a history of writing long feature stories then it’s best to pitch a 800-word news story.