How to pitch a Christmas feature to New Scientist
It’s beginning to look at lot like Christmas… well, it is in the vicinity of the New Scientist features desk anyway. Around this time every year, we start thinking about our holiday issue, a double-length magazine that is packed with about 15 features and comes out at the end of December. Commissioning stories for this issue is one of the things I most enjoy about my job because we’re looking for something a little bit different from the usual stuff. We are still looking for science and technology, but we want the issue to be a little more light-hearted, quirkier, and generally to be a wonderfully diverting thing to read as people relax over the festive period.
We rely heavily on freelancers to write our features and so I wanted to set out in some detail the kinds of stories we are looking for. If you have an idea, now is the time to pitch it — that is, ideally before the end of June 2022. Here’s some more detail that should help you.
What makes a Christmas feature?
New Scientist is a magazine about science and technology, but for this issue we want to write about these topics in a less serious, more quirky and more punchy way. It’s worth saying, however, that our stories still need some new science (the clue is in our name…); we’re not going to do just a general explainer on the science of chocolate or reindeer or whatever. The typical length for a Christmas feature is 1200 words, though they certainly can be longer. Here is my best stab at the categories we often like to hit…
- It’s a traditional that we always have stories about charming or unusual animals, ideally doing odd or amusing things. See this on whether monkeys really rafted across the oceans or this on sloths and why living life in the slow lane is so great or this on spiders wrapping gifts.
- Stories overtly connected to the holiday season and/or winter (with apologies to Australia). For example, the science of artificial snow, a grand unified theory of snowflakes, how to win arguments round the dinner table with game theory, and anything to do with alcohol, getting drunk, hangovers, or eating too much. (You can let your imagine run riot here. Is there a story about frankincense, partridges, kids toys, peace on Earth — you get the idea — that you are burning to write?)
- Charming histories to do with science or technology, ideally with some modern relevance or lesson.
- Pieces that ask unlikely-but-fascinating questions. Take this piece on why roundabouts are everywhere in the UK but nowhere in the US. Or simply: why don’t animals have wheels? You want to create the reaction: “Huh, I never thought of that, but how interesting.”
- Stunts. The classic of this genre is the wonderful “Can I eat myself drunk?” from way back in 2014. Or how about a selfless investigation of whether flavour pairing theory can help us invent tastier cocktails, compete with taste-test?
- Interviews. We have rarely done these in the past but my feeling is they can work and provide a nice way to mix up the content. Is there a delightful Christmas-type story we could tell through the medium of an interview?
- Stories where a reporter goes behind the scenes somewhere fascinating that has a tenuous connection to Christmas/winter/etc and reports back. I’m thinking of this nice piece where intrepid reporter Alison George visited the tent in Berkshire built to avert a global chocolate catastrophe.
This is probably not an exhaustive list. It may also be worth checking the list of all the stories in our Christmas issues from the past few years, which you can do here:
2021: https://www.newscientist.com/issue/3365/
2020: https://www.newscientist.com/issue/3313/
2019: https://www.newscientist.com/issue/3261/
How do I suggest an idea?
Unless you already happen to have a working relationship with another feature editor at New Scientist, please send them to me at joshua.howgego@newscientist.com. Ideally, you would send a pitch of about three paragraphs explaining the headline idea and giving us some idea of where the story will go as it develops. But if you have a kernel of an idea and want to just send a few lines, at this point, that’s fine too — if I like it I can help you develop the pitch. (If you want more advice about what form a pitch should take, try having a look at this guide I wrote a while ago.)
How much will I get paid?
That depends on a number of factors. But as a rough guide, the amount we would pay for a 1200 word feature would start at about £620.
What happens next?
We decide on the features to commission for Christmas in early July. If you pitch us an idea, I will let you know whether we’d like to commission it once those decisions have been taken. If you’re successful, we’ll have a detailed conversation about the story at that point.
Good luck and happy pitching!
