What makes a good business pitch for WIRED
Very easy tips to create a successful story for WIRED
At WIRED, we love intelligent, original freelance pitches that will help us to cover the biggest stories in business. But often it’s difficult to know what to pitch and when to pitch it.
We are looking for authoritative, interesting work that will capture the imagination of our readers and provide a fresh insight into the big businesses that are affecting our lives.
So if you want to pitch a WIRED business story, great! Here are some things that will help to make your idea more successful:
Timely: A new and different take on the big news stories of the day — has to be something that either moves the story along, or a deep-dive that provides unparalleled level of insight into an issue or topic.
Exclusive: A news story about a relevant business that is so big that we can lead the way on it — this has to be major news that will impact an entire market or sector.
Original: A take on something that is going on in the world and affecting our lives — and that people may not be aware of. Innovative projects to save the world, ridiculously large aircrafts or ships, new and emerging economies… the wilder, the better.
So… here are the businesses we care about
Big tech: FAANG + innovative big companies
FINTECH: B2B and B2C
WeWork, Uber, Palantir, Deliveroo, Tesla, Amazon, and any business that is impacting the world as we know it
Big traditional companies that are trying to reform/be cool: Whether it’s cultural (launching a product to rival smaller players, investing in robots) or big household brands that are bucking the trend.
Things ABOUT businesses that we care about
Big structural upheaval
BIG INNOVATION
Cultural differences
Major strategy changes
Branding/product fails
Harassment issues
Worker rights issues
Every pitch has to answer the following:
Will our audience care about this?
Our audience is the general public: someone who likes gadgets, reads the news, and is interested in businesses that are going to affect his/her life directly. They already read the nationals/watch the news. What we bring is something different: analysis that gives them unparalleled insight into the big tech news of the year, or exposés that show them something they didn’t know what going on. Our audience is also predominantly US based — this has to be relevant to them.
Why are we doing this now?
What is the hook, or the reason for us to write this piece? Why not in a month’s time etc?
Read our stories to get ideas for yours: https://www.wired.com/category/business/
