Submit a Pitch

Use this form to submit a pitch.

Below are some guidelines for submitting a pitch.

A good pitch should set up an issue or other story idea, explain why it’s compelling to cover, provide basic information about the background of the issue, and suggest some reporting avenues of inquiry and research. It shouldn’t be overly complicated or long, and should leave the writer and editor who are eventually assigned to the story room to be creative in how they go about tackling the pitch. Some background research or knowledge will likely be required to write the pitch, but it shouldn’t be so involved that you feel you can write the story with the information you’ve obtained for it—there should still be a lot to report out that we learn in the process

FOR EXAMPLE:

A handful of prominent Black politicians and activists are pushing for local reparations conversations and ordinances. Chicago has a rich history here—there’s the Burge reparations project and Chicago City Council was one of the first legislative bodies to pass an ordinance around this, in 2000—and it seems like momentum is picking up. 6th Ward Alderman Roderick Sawyer, head of the City Council’s Committee on Health and Human Relations, is holding a hearing in coming weeks about reparations and has a bill to create a commission to study the issue, and former mayoral and current Senate candidate Willie Wilson has been pushing that bill as well. West Side state rep and former mayoral candidate La Shawn Ford has also recently been pushing the legislature on this. Profile all of these efforts (and others not discussed in this pitch), attend public hearings on the topic, interview those involved, and tell us exactly where these efforts are going.