Pitching articles
We receive lots of emails regarding contributing articles, so please read these pitching guidelines first.
Please familiarise yourself with our site and the general range of perspectives we publish to check this is the best place to publish your ideas.
Around half our audience accesses our articles from a mobile device. With this in mind we tend to prefer short-form articles (under 1000 words), with a regular exception for our weekly Long Read (over 1600 words).
Articles should not be academic in tone and jargon should be explained or qualified. We don’t use footnotes, and references should be hyperlinked and appropriate to the piece. We are happy to receive critical pitches, particularly if they’re constructive, but we’re not interested in ‘hit/diss-pieces’. We strive for pluralism across our output and welcome the diversity of ideas an expanding audience brings.
Please send pitches, not submissions of completed articles. A pitch should tell us (briefly) what you want to write about and why it’s important. It should give a sense of the structure, an estimated word count and preferably a suggested deadline. Finally, it should tell us a little about yourself and where (or whether) you’ve written in the past. In contrast to many outlets, we read and reply to all pitches – but we’re not paid to (yet), so help us out by not sending unsolicited 1000 word documents.
Editors are here to work with you. Our job is to make your article the best it can be and help your ideas get across to the reader most effectively. You don’t have to be the most experienced writer to write for Novara, but whatever your experience you should expect to have some back-and-forth liaison with an editor who may make amendments to your writing.
Thanks to the generosity of our subscribers and donors, as of November 2015 we have been able to pay a small gratuity fee to writers: £30 for standard articles, £45 for long reads. We’re aware this doesn’t compare to commercial rates but we can only offer what we can sustain at present. Occasionally we may be allocated funding for specific projects, for which we may be able to pay elevated rates. We’re always keen to pay writers more, but the fees we can cover are always dependent on what we can budget for.
Please be aware we work to a publishing schedule, which means your article will be allocated an available publishing ‘slot’. This is a measure to make sure we don’t overspend and to ensure our articles editors are not overworked.
Titles fall under the editors’ remit. We also reserve the right to archive or withdraw any published piece from our site.
Pitches should be sent to pitch@novaramedia.com
Related inquiries should be sent to craig@novaramedia.com
Please be patient. We will respond but the number of enquiries we receive means we cannot usually respond immediately.
Editorial statement
Novara Media was founded with a commitment to radical ideas and contentious forms of politics. We value the pluralism within our team and our audience. As such, Novara itself has no fixed political or editorial line, but as a team we try to respond to political struggles, movements and developments as we find them in ways that are both informative and useful. We have always aimed to fulfil a dual purpose: creating a means by which movements in struggle are able to speak to each other, and delivering alternative political perspectives to those who might not normally have access to them. Straddling these two commitments is not always easy, and navigating them requires ongoing editorial judgement. As individuals committed to creating media and political counter-hegemony, our work is undertaken in good faith and intended to contribute to winning a better world for future generations.