Remember last week when I said I’d fired off a pitch to Virginia Wine Lover? Well, I lied. I had every intention of firing off said pitch right after posting that entry, and then my idea fizzled. Desperate to get something out last week to meet my self-imposed goal of pitching once a week, I took an idea I’d been kicking around and shot it to DC’s local alt-weekly.
(BTW, if I hadn’t had to scramble, I probably would have sat on the idea for another month, so it’s better this way!)

In honor of my awesome success (or something), here are the City Paper’s guidelines:

You’ll find that we gravitate toward stories about the city and its surroundings, and we prefer to write narratives with a conflict of some sort at the center. We publish a variety of journalistic genres, including profiles, investigative pieces, polemical essays, “Talk of the Town” type articles, and stories about local institutions. We’re not interested in Op-Ed material, fiction, poetry, stories about news conferences or demonstrations, or service journalism about 12 great places to get espresso after midnight. Nor are we much interested in the sort of celebrity-worshiping journalism that lards the pages of Washingtonian and Vanity Fair.

We put such a high premium on good writing that we sometimes abandon the above rules to publish a piece on the inner workings of a press conference, the dynamics of a demonstration, or a particularly insightful profile of a popular author or film director. We have yet to find a writer, though, who could make the 12-great-places-to-get-espresso-after-midnight idea come alive.

(There’s more)

So, I didn’t do anything special here. And that’s kind of the point.

I’m a fan of writer’s guidelines. I am. I also understand that having all your contact information and FREELANCING SEKRITS out in the open for anyone to Google is maybe a bad idea. I got that, but I didn’t really get that until I read this post: Writers Guidelines, Schmiters Guidelines. Read it; it’s brilliant.

And then I thought about the tired writers guidelines I’m using for my pitch to Runner’s World, with the generic e-mail address. Hrm. Googled around, found a phone number, was transferred to an associate editor who gave me the name and e-mail of the editor who looks at pitches. It took all of 30 seconds.

Food for thought.

Some jobs and freelance gig listings, mostly potpourri culled from my bookmarks, for you this week:

• WRITER BEWARE: Watch out for Atlantic Publishing. I’ve seen this ad making its way across the job sites for a while now, and actually applied two years ago when I was a broke, desperate freelancer. I fled as quickly as possible when I got their project specs: They request a base word count of 65,000 words PLUS at least ten interviews conducted with experts (no word on how long these are supposed to be, of course). Pay is $1,000 – $1,400. For the whole project.

  I guess it’s kind of presumptuous of me to assume that this is a “bad” gig, but really, unless you live in a third-world country, this is a terrible gig.

• Women’s Adventure is a health/adventure/travel magazine for women based out of Boulder, CO.
• Did you know Toastmaster’s International has a magazine for its members?
• STOCKYARD. is a bi-monthly cultural magazine published in and for Chicago but accessible to the urban and urbane everywhere. STOCKYARD.’s characteristic mélange of reportage; cultural, social, and political commentary; narrative nonfiction; satire; fiction; poetry; reviews; and art and photography is sure to transfix and titillate you. STOCKYARD. Magazine accepts previously unpublished reportage; cultural, social, and political commentary; narrative nonfiction; satire; fiction; and poetry.