Career Advice

How to Pitch: Out Magazine

By Rani Molla September 17th, 2012

Jerry Portwood is the executive editor of Out, a high-end gay lifestyle magazine with a print circulation of 200,000 and a mostly male audience. In April, Out owner Here Media outsourced the magazine’s content to Grand Editorial, an editorial startup run by Out editor in chief Aaron Hicklin and comprised mostly of former Out employees. The magazine’s staff are technically all freelancers. The Freelance Strategist spoke to him about what he looks for in a pitch.

Gay is not the only angle

“Some people think that because we are an LGBT publication that if [the story] has to do with a gay person we’re interested. It has to be a good story if you take the gay element out. If it’s only interesting because of the gay element, then it’s not the best story for us. People get bogged down on that angle. We do a lot of stories on people that aren’t gay—it’s not the only angle. ”

Offer an outside opinion

“We don’t always want the same well. We like to hear from people who have access to different contacts, points of view or slices of life. Instead of being bogged down with the binary of New York and LA, we like having someone from, say, the Arab world, who can offer a clear perspective. Or maybe we don’t have money to send correspondents to Southeast Asia, but we can get someone who’s been traveling or dispatching from those areas.”

Remember that editors are not just your bosses, they’re also your peers

“We have empathy for writers and want to give them a lift now and then. We’re not just weird editors. Among Out, we are all also writers. That’s not the case everywhere. We are a different beast. All of us contribute to other publications so we understand what you’re going through.”

If you want to write, read

“Read the magazine. We want people who actually understand the magazine and the audience. It’s generic but I think it’s true.”

“It’s interesting when writers are able to understand a specific area. If someone focuses on fashion, they can understand something about fashion, but they’re not always writers. We like to bring in people with a highly defined skill in an area but who are also excellent writers. As writers, it’s good to be a generalist,  but it’s also good to be an expert at something.”

Get Your Foot in the Door with an Internship

“Once we develop a relationship with new writers, and we feel like we can assign them articles and they can write, then they can potentially become contributors as freelancers or employees. An internship is still a really great access point. It also gets people over a lot of inhibitions of, ‘we don’t know how or what a publication wants or expects.'”

Try the web

“There’s still a difference from the web and print, although I don’t hold that there should be. There’s less room in print, more hurdles. Sometimes in the editorial meeting someone has a really good idea we shouldn’t miss. It starts getting done, but then gets cut because there’s not enough room. We’ll continue working with the writer for web. People are going to see [the piece] but doesn’t have same sexy cache of print design different. However the website receives 1.5 to 8 million page views a month, whereas print circulation is a little over 200,000.”

Be persistent

“Often there are good, really experienced writers who give up because they’re not persistence, while some mediocre writers might never give up. You might get five ‘no’s, but then the sixth is a yes. After five they think it’s never going to happen so they go somewhere else. I’m pretty honest. I will make it blunt if I really don’t think it’s going to work out. Or I’ll say I’m not interested this time, or that it’s not the right time or it’s already assigned. I don’t try to be rude, just honest.

Let time work for you, not against you

The hardest thing is dealing with the lead time for a magazine. We already basically have [three months from now] assigned, and are looking at the following months, so you have to think that far in advance. Sometimes people think of big stories but forget about smaller utility pieces. Every magazine has a gift guide and we always need ideas and help with that. Pitching for the December gift guide in August—those things can work well for writers to get their feet wet.

 Images courtesy of Out.

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