Seeking Science Writers for Aha!

Looking for topical experts and trained journalists who write about cool science topics and seek professional editing.

Since its launch on Jan. 1, 2024, Aha! Science has been publishing informative and entertaining science articles by a growing number of excellent writers, reaching large numbers of Medium readers through participation in the Boost Nomination Pilot Program. And now we’re looking for a handful of additional writers with the right stuff to help the publication continue growing. Here’s the mission:

Celebrating science by revealing amazing discoveries and images from our world and beyond and exploring life’s most intriguing, strange and unexpected questions.

Please read this entire post, and read some of the stories in the publication to get a feel for what we’re up to, before reaching out as a potential contributor.

As founder and editor, I run Aha! much like any mainstream science publication, reviewing pitches and editing every story we publish. The curation and editing means a great experience for readers, and an opportunity for writers to improve their craft through professional mentorship.

I’ve got more than three decades experience editing and managing science publications, including Space.com, where I was editor-in-chief, and Live Science, where I was the founding editor and later editor-in-chief. You can see testimonials for my editing here.

Nowadays, though I’m supposedly retired, I keep doing all this because I love communicating complex science to lay readers and making it fun to read, and I also love teaching the craft to other writers. Editing is my way of giving back to the writing community.

Who we’re looking for

Given our limited editing time, and the serious elbow grease that goes into every story, we’ll be taking on only a handful of new writers. We’re looking for either of two basic skill sets:

• Trained journalists with experience in science writing.
• Scientists, researchers, educators and other professionals with topical expertise.

In addition, all our writers have solid basic English writing skills, and some flare or the glimmers of it that can be developed, plus very thick skins and a desire to improve. I’m a kind but straightforward editor. I tell writers what I think needs to be done to improve a story and, since this is Medium, writers decide how to accept, reject or otherwise use my input — your stories are still your stories.

For those willing to put in the hard work and take the lumps, I help writers go from wherever they are to a higher level of skill, helping polish headlines, ledes, nutgraphs, outlines and other aspects of structure and flow that improve readability and credibility. This means hands-on coaching on the fundamentals and special sauce of great nonfiction article writing. (If you are already a highly skilled science writer, great — you’ll make my job easier.)

To give you a better sense of what we’re looking for, it can help to explain what we’re not looking for. If you’re a “content writer” or you’re playing the SEO game, we’re not a good match. If you publish more than three stories a week, you’re likely not generating the quality we seek. If you write about any and all topics, you probably don’t have the focus our existing writers bring to the mix.

The types of stories we seek

Aha! covers all aspects of science, including Earth science, biology, wildlife, astronomy, technological advances, and human quirks and oddities.

Our articles aim to make science understandable and accessible to lay readers. We simplify complex topics without dumbing them down. We avoid or define jargon. We bust myths, explain mysteries, and generally geek out on science — always with the primary goal of serving lay readers.

Many headlines on Aha! are framed as a question, reflecting the nature of our inquisitiveness. Other headlines are more conventional. Some are just strange — because science can be strange (and amazing). But the stories all reveal new scientific findings or take in-depth looks at our ever-changing understanding of ourselves and the world around us. We explain things and answer questions. We don’t drone on. We avoid tangents unless they’re irresistibly interesting. And we back it all up with science.

While long, deep dives are welcome, most of our stories are in the 800 to 1,500 word range. You will have gathered twice as much information as what ends up in your well-informed article. When done well, the reader won’t have a clue how much time and effort you put into it, but they’ll appreciate the light and breezy, informative and entertaining read. The end result of your efforts will be stories that scientists can enjoy and appreciate yet which are easily grasped by lay readers.

What we don’t want

• Rants, unsupported opinions, unsupported or otherwise sketchy advice, clickbait.
• Biased writing meant to insult or inflame.
• AI-generated writing.
• Product reviews or endorsements.
• “Content writing” aimed to benefit from popular search terms (instead, tell a story, something we haven’t read a gazillion times).
• Thin lists (any lists will have to blow us away, really offer something fresh and useful and adhere to all of the above guidelines).

Also, no pseudonyms. Your Medium handle (thus your byline) has to be you, and your bio has to provide an honest and tangible, if brief, snapshot of who you are. Readers deserve that full disclosure.

TIP: If you need further guidance on what we’re looking for and how to write successfully on Medium, dig into Medium’s Quality Standards for insight into stories they deem worthy of boosting and broad distribution through their human-assisted algorithms. We concur with it all.

Why write for Aha!?

Besides editing and mentoring, our writers get good exposure within Medium and beyond.

• Boost: Aha! is a participant in Medium’s recently launched Boost Nomination Pilot Program, in which a select group of editors act as nominators of top-notch writing. When we nominate our best stories to Medium’s internal curation team, they will often get boosted (see Medium’s boosting criteria). A boosted story typically sees at least a few hundred views and sometimes thousands or even tens of thousands. Individual outcomes can’t be predicted, but it’s a great program to be aligned with.
• Your stuff will get posted to our Aha! magazine on Flipboard (the headlines are on Flipboard, the articles stay on Medium).
• The Aha! newsletter on Substack just launched (May 24, 2024).
• We will also promote the best Aha! articles on Facebook, Mastodon, BlueSky and X.

Your stories on Aha! remain your stories. You own the copyright. If your article is included in the Medium Partner Program (which pays writers based on reader engagement, out of a pool of money created from reader subscriptions) you’ll receive 100% of the revenue that it generates, as you would if you published it on your own Medium blog. Aha! isn’t involved in that equation.

How to reach out

If any of this is TMI, then we’re not a good fit. Our writers are serious about improving their craft, and they have a passion for informing and entertaining lay readers by untangling and explaining complex but very cool science topics. That takes effort. And time. And editing.

If all this sounds great, and you have what it takes, email me at ahasciencepub@gmail.com and include the following:

• The full url of your Medium profile, where we’ll look for examples of your successful, compelling science writing
• Articles you’ve published on other publications/platforms, if relevant
• Relevant professional degree and experience, in a handful of bullet points (don’t need your life story)
• The sorts of topics you wish to write about, and roughly how often (there’s no right answers here — we just want to have an idea)
• Optionally, URL(s) of a story or two in particular you’d like us to be aware of (not required)

Please do not send drafts. We don’t accept articles prior to evaluating and onboarding writers — rather than one-offs, we seek to build editor-writer relationships that offer the best outcome for readers in the long run.

Finally, please note that due to the volume of queries and our limited capacity to edit, we’ll be accepting only a fraction of the applications we receive. If there’s one thing we look for above all else, it’s an existing body of excellent work that aligns with our mission and ticks off the points discussed above.

Cheers,
Rob