If you’re a freelance journalist and would like to pitch a true-life feature or case study, we’d love to hear from you. We’re based in the UK and welcome pitches from all over the world. You can find our rates/terms and conditions here.
what you need to know…
Your pitch doesn’t have to have a news hook. We’ve made an editorial choice not to be shackled by the news cycle as we find some of those parameters archaic and irrelevant in the sphere of great features published online to a worldwide audience. What we want are strong true-life stories. If there’s no beginning, middle and end, no authentic events, scenes, or dialogue, it’s probably not for us. If the article or pitch reads like a stream of consciousness or internal monologue, that also isn’t going to work for us because…
We don’t typically publish opinion or commentary pieces. All our stories instead have a strong narrative arc. They are not abstract, cryptic, or painfully cerebral to the point of being difficult and taxing to read. Instead, they authentically convey important topics of interest with real emotion, human connection and solid events rooted in real-life. Imagine you’re sitting down in the pub, and telling a close friend a life story of yours. It might be about a cheating husband. An eating disorder. Being fired from your job. How do you tell your friend about it? Utilise that natural story telling power to pitch your true-life idea to us.
Your pitch will need to fit under one of our five categories: health, family, careers, Lacuna men, or world, so tell us which one it’s for when you contact us. If you’re not sure, have a read of the articles we’ve already published in those sections and see which one your idea feels most suited to.
Your pitch will need to have a clear and central topic, for instance: grief, love, endometriosis, addiction, sailing etc. Our headline style is the polar opposite to the sensationalist, click-bait stuff you might find on other digital platforms. What we strive for are headlines that ‘do what they say on the tin.’ If going to prison saved your life, that’s the core message and will likely be the basis of our headline. Work to understand what your story’s key message and focus your pitch on that to give yourself the best chance of placing it with us.
Our founding editor Punteha van Terheyden takes care of commissioning, flat planning, and editing, and she endeavours to answer every pitch received. If you haven’t heard back within a few days, please give her a nudge - she may have missed your email and absolutely won’t mind being chased for answers.
We try to provide feedback on why your pitch wasn’t for us, but don’t be offended if the reply is short. We might receive a hundred or more pitches a day.
What you need in your pitch…
The essentials. A brief pitch (max 300 words) with the key info - the who, the what, where, and the topic, recent stats or studies (if relevant), context and info on the case study.
If we want to know more about your pitch, we’ll ask. Please do not send us full articles. As much as we’d like to, we won’t have time to read them and these pitches will be automatically rejected.
A vibrant collect picture package available to view via WeTransfer or as attachments to your email. Strong, varied, high resolution pictures are key to our design aesthetic. We are not fans of selfies, filters, or low res shots.
Info about exclusivity. We prefer first rights and 99 per cent of what you see on our pages appeared on Lacuna Voices before any other title.
Experience. You'll ideally have experience writing first-person, true-life features for national newspapers and/or magazines. We do commission new and junior writers as we support fresh talent, but please have a read of our freelancer terms to give you an idea of what’s expected during the editorial process. We’ve also created a simple pitching template to start you off. You don’t have to use it, but it might help clarify the information we typically look for.