How to Pitch Gizmodo, io9, and Earther

PublishedOctober 20, 2021

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Image for article titled How to Pitch Gizmodo, io9, and Earther — Illustration: Jim Cooke/Gizmodo

We’re always happy to review pitches from freelancers who want to write ambitious investigative and narrative features, reported mid-length pieces, and first-person essays. Expose something. Take us somewhere. Tell us your incredible personal story. Send us a truly original take. Here’s how to pitch us and what we are looking for right now for our technology, culture, consumer tech, io9, Earther, and science coverage areas. This post will be updated as our needs change.

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How to Email Your Pitch

Send your pitches to pitches@gizmodo.com. Include “pitch” in the email subject. Include a description of your pitch, who you’re hoping to interview for the piece (if applicable), potential headline ideas, estimated turnaround, and links to your previously published work. If your story overlaps desks or is an outlier, send it over anyway!

Technology and Culture

We’d love to see pitches of experiential reports from extraordinary happenings, profiles of pioneers and radicals or powerful conspiracists and crafty conpeople, and engaging tales from the historic depths and wild fringes of the internet. Explore the intersection of tech, life, culture, and subcultures. Previously (by staff and freelancers):

Additionally, to compliment our news coverage, we’re looking for accessible overviews, detailed breakdowns, and deeper dives on our core coverage areas—tech and labor, sweeping policy changes, corporate misdeeds, privacy and security, and more. We also want speculative pieces (like on the future of automation, AI, or quantum computing) as well as more hopeful, forward-looking, tech-done-well themes. Previously (by staff and freelancers):

Consumer Technology

Aside from narrative and investigative features about consumer technology, we’re currently looking for oral histories of notable gadgets. We’d like stories on product design, accessible technology, and some reporting on the global chip crunch and its effects on everything. We accept consumer tech reviews on a case by case basis. Consider submitting an idea for one of our recurring series: nostalgic essays on defunct tech and roundups of tech history’s greatest fails. Previously (by staff and freelancers):

io9

We welcome more oral histories—especially on cult classics—as well as features on the state of Hollywood and working in Hollywood from multiple sources; well-known and behind-the-scenes, generally and especially in regards to diversity and inclusion issues. io9 would like thoughtful essays on genre fiction from personal perspectives, in-depth reported features on any of our coverage areas, and nuanced opinions on big franchises. We are not looking for recaps, reviews of films or television episodes (unless you have non-film expertise on the subject), most lists, or fiction (unless we’re specifically asking for fiction submissions). Previously (by staff and freelancers):

Earther

Earther is interested in communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis, in-depth reporting on Big Oil and other bad actors, and the technology that could help (or harm) the climate. We’re looking for things at the intersection of climate and culture and what it says about society and our relationship to climate change. We’re also very interested in technology that affects people’s daily lives and carbon footprints—heat pumps, smart thermostats, induction stoves—both in how they can address emissions and how they can be linked with greater governmental support so everyone has access. Previously (by staff and freelancers):

Science

We’re looking for stories that showcase the world of science and health from many angles, whether it’s a profile of a researcher obsessed with a vexing problem, a nitty-gritty explainer on how a particle accelerator works, a tale of patients fighting to get the treatment they need, a photo essay of a fossil excavation, or an investigation into a pseudoscientific scam, to name a few possibilities. We welcome pitches for both short- and long-form stories. Previously (by staff and freelancers):

Invoicing and Payment

We’ll begin the invoicing process as soon as you file your first draft. You will need to create a profile in our internal system. Once published, you will invoice through the system with a PDF invoice. (We’ll guide you through.) Fees vary based on project scope.

This post is updated as our requirements and interests for freelance pitches change.