Pitch a Story

What Makes a Good Story?

• Is it an argument, or just a topic? A good story has a thesis that invites debate. What assumption are you challenging? If your premise doesn’t spark a 10-minute conversation, it’s not ready yet.
• Is there a “soul” beneath the data? We often describe our stories as “a spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down,” a la Mary Poppins. They can appear light, fluffy, and frivolous on the surface, but they often reveal a deeper truth. The reader should leave feeling differently than when they started.
• Why is this uniquely a visual data story? We love great storytelling in all forms, but we only publish visual data stories. If your idea would make an incredible podcast, video, or standard 1,000-word text reporting, there’s a good chance it’s not for us. We look for pitches that “show, not tell,” where custom data analysis and visual design are absolutely essential.
• Do you have the receipts? We don’t need a finished analysis or a fully built website, in fact we prefer if your idea isn’t full baked, but you do need to have a rough data roadmap. Give us a quick methodology of how you plan to go from raw data to complete visual story. If the data is a mystery, the pitch is a no-go.
• Is your pitch formed from human curiosity? We use AI everyday to assist us during the story process, but machines don’t (yet!) have taste, obsession, or a sense of humor, which are essential ingredients in any story we publish. If you used an AI tool to write your pitch, be sure: it’s rooted around a specific hypothesis instead of a broad synthesis, it has a distinctly human voice, and it goes beyond generic data sources. We are looking for the weird, the petty, and the profound ideas that only a human would bother to investigate.

What to Send Us

If you have a story in mind that you’re excited about and that meets our criteria, we would encourage you to complete this form to share your idea.

We have a standing meeting at the beginning of each month to review submissions and we try to provide feedback, regardless of whether or not we pursue the pitch, within a week of the review. Haven’t heard back from us yet? This is your permission to email us at pitches@pudding.cool to check in.

Want to know where to start? This flowchart about how we think about data stories might help you think through a good pitch.

Want to know what the process actually looks like? Check out this behind-the-scenes blog post where a past contributor tracks her journey from a raw idea to a published piece on The Pudding.

Compensation

We believe in pay transparency. Our standard rate is $7,200 for end-to-end work on a project (meaning you handle the reporting, data analysis, design, and front-end development, with our guidance, of course!).

If we collaborate on production (i.e. if you provide the data and reporting, but our internal team handles the design or development) we scale the compensation down to reflect the shared workload. We’ll establish a clear division of labor and a fair rate before we sign a contract.

Time Commitment

Visual data stories on The Pudding are marathons, not sprints. Building custom interactive essays takes time and our timelines are highly flexible. Many of our contributors work full-time jobs and their projects are side hustles. At this pace, projects typically take several months to complete. If you have more hours to dedicate per week, we will do our best to match your energy and help move the story along at a faster pace. Our team is built to give you the support you need when you need it.