How to Pitch Ms. Magazine

Michele Kort has been senior editor at Ms. Magazine for nine years but started freelancing there in the ’80s. During that time Kort, now 62, covered numerous topics, including an abortion clinic story that was part of the Supreme Court case Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. Most recently, Kort and co-editor Audrey Bilger released Here Come the Brides! Reflections on Lesbian Love and Marriage, which she jokingly reforest to as “The Norton Anthology of Lesbian Marriage.” Kort shares advice on how to freelance for Ms. and beyond.

The pitch is most important

“Really, really, really know the magazine and be able to measure yourself up to what’s in the magazine and what you are able to deliver. Do something that catches the editor’s interest with a great lede and teaser, and let us know why you’re the right person to do it, not necessarily what your credentials are but what you know about this particular subject. ”

If you have the whole piece, send it

“I’m not that good of a liar to say I get a good instinct from a two-line pitch, but I do get an instinct if it’s not quite right. Getting the whole piece seems more fair.”

Pitch vs. credentials

“Obviously I’m impressed when people say they’ve been published by x, y and z papers, magazines and websites. But that’s not going to impress me as much as writing a great pitch. You could write a great pitch or send in a great piece and have no other experience. ”

Think about the reader  

“[These writers] are really eager to express themselves and have cathartic experience, but try to cast it as something that people would be really interested in. It’s hard with a personal story to convince me that they are going to make it rise above their unique experience in a way that’s going to feel universal or have an important feminist message. So it’s hard to explain—editors know what that is— but a lot of writers don’t understand that that’s not necessarily going to be of interest.”

Best piece ever pitched

“We got a story from a Pulitzer Prize winner at AP, Martha Mendoza, about how she’d already had three kids then became pregnant and the fetus died in utero. The doctor said, ‘We’ll give you [medication] to give birth to the the dead fetus.’ [Mendoza] said, ‘I had wonderful experiences with my other pregnancies. I want an abortion. I want to you to take this out.’  Because this was the third-trimester, she had a terrible time finding someone who’d do this treatment. Even though it was a personal piece, it so transcended personal experience to be a commentary on the ridiculousness of anti-abortion law. She was also a beautiful writer—I could tell right away from her short pitch. ”

Try starting with the blog

“It’s not that we’re less critical on the blog, it’s just that we have room for other things, and they can be shorter pieces than in the magazine. We can’t pay [bloggers], but some people who become steady bloggers find a place in the magazine. ”

What Ms. doesn’t want

“Too often people give their opinion on some feminist issue. They are not adding something to the discussion, just reiterating stuff we already talk about. Quite often they’re younger writers who are not experienced enough to know what a magazine is looking for. ”

What Ms. does want

“We are looking for a feminist lens on things in the world: stories we don’t know about that someone else is investigating. For example, one woman did all of this reporting on these women who were found in Albuquerque. These murders didn’t get very much attention, maybe they were sex workers or drug addicts. But, we were really glad to get pitches from someone who has done their work.”