Pitching us is simple! There’s one crucial factor we think about when considering pitches: publishing work which is engrossing, exciting and fun to read — even if the topic is serious.
A great read can take many different forms: it could tell a gripping narrative. Your proposed piece might make a compelling argument which hasn’t been put forward before. It might be an exciting investigation highlighting possible wrongdoing, incompetence, negligence, abuse of power or something more sinister. You might set out to clear up widespread confusion on a topic most people in your city don’t understand or interrogate a cliche about your area that’s more complicated than it first appears and set the record straight.
It could spotlight a side of a hotly-discussed topic underreported by other publications. Perhaps you want to get really granular about a viral trend centred on the city or pitch us some great first-person gonzo style reporting. You might simply be very funny about a trend or problem in your city — in which case, step this way, please.
What we pay: We agree a fee with writers when we make a commission and our fees vary greatly depending on the type of story and the location of the writer (it’s more expensive to live as a writer in London than it is in Sheffield etc, and our fees reflect that). For most of our publications, we pay around £200 for a quick-hit and approximately £300 for something more reported and we also have the budget to pay significantly more for highly investigative stories that take months of work.
We also cover reporting expenses if they are agreed in advance with the commissioning editor. And we will pay an appropriate ‘kill fee’ if the story doesn’t work out.
How to reach us: Please send your pitches to editor@glasgowbell.co.uk with the title of the paper you’re pitching in the subject line.
We love working with freelancers, but as a tiny team, unfortunately we don’t always have time to email everyone individually with instructions as to our house style, our editorial process and how to invoice. As such, we’ve compiled a list of tips, both in terms of our editorial process — and house style — plus how to get paid.
If you have further questions, do please drop the editor you’re working with a line.
Below we’ve written some details about:
- Our editorial process
- Reporting standards
- Our house style
- How to invoice
1. Editorial Process
How we edit
Sometimes, when we have time, we go back to a writer with comments and questions on their draft, and ask them to re-file (a process used by some larger magazines). But often, because we have a small team, we don’t have time for that, so we go ahead and make the changes we need to make, and then publish the story. If you’re a writer who likes to have approval for every sentence, it might make more sense to approach a larger publication.
Copy/quote approval
We have a strict policy of never offering interviewees copy approval — this compromises editorial integrity. If an interviewee asks you in advance to have “quote approval” i.e. that they see their quotes, and there is no way to secure an interview without this (which should be rare), we will agree. But it should never be offered by us without prompting, and should only be agreed to in exceptional circumstances — and in this case, only to correct mistakes or misunderstandings rather than to change the meaning of the quotes.
Filing your story
Please make sure that when you file your story, you send us:
- Your copy, ideally in a Google Doc or Word Doc
- Photos to illustrate your story, with a numbered list of captions and credits
Confirmation in your email that you have offered all the key people mentioned in your story a full right of reply.
2. Reporting standards
Right of reply
Right of replies offer people or organisations we are writing about a chance to give their side of a story — whether that’s correcting factual mistakes, offering context that changes how a story is perceived, or helping us to avoid very serious legal risk. They are absolutely critical in avoiding lawsuits against us and upholding our responsibilities as a high-quality news organisation committed to facts and high levels of integrity. If in doubt, give someone the right of reply. Here are some basic guidelines for your right of reply:
- Publish time: Make sure that you specify the date your article will be published, even if it might be pushed back, or at least the earliest date it might be published.
- Deadline: Specify very clearly — both at the start of the email and the end — the date you need your right of reply to be answered by.
- Time offered: Give people at least one full working day to reply to basic stories. The more serious the allegation, the longer the time you need to give them. If the story will require a person to consult documents or will require a press office to get hold of multiple individuals or recall events that are way in the past, give them a minimum of two days. For stories that involve complex financial allegations, give them a week.
- Details: Ensure that every detail you plan to report is in your email. It is very important that your subject is not surprised by any detail in the story. If you omit something by mistake from your initial email, it is fine to send another message asking your subject to respond to an additional claim.
Editorial standards
The Bell is committed to very high standards of journalism. We adhere to the Editor’s Code of Practice, which all of our writers must be familiar with. Please read it if you haven’t before, because it forms the basis for our official Complaints Process.
Plagiarism
One of the worst mistakes a media company can make is to publish work that is plagiarised, intentionally or otherwise. Plagiarism can creep into a story if a writer is careless about copy and pasting quotes into their notes and then into a piece. Please make absolutely sure that what you file to us doesn’t contain a single phrase that has appeared elsewhere unless it is properly quoted and attributed. A simple rule helps: unless you are explicitly quoting a person or a written source, write every word of your story yourself.
Gifts and freebies
None of our journalism should be influenced by a writer receiving free gifts, tickets or services from someone who we are writing about. Please make sure that you flag to your editor if you have received any freebies from organisations or people you are writing about. The same goes for personal ties that you may have to anyone in your story.
Fact checking
It’s essential that you fact check your work before you file. Please go through your piece and mark everything in bold that needs to be checked: the spelling of locations/people’s names, dates, distances, numbers, and any other facts that don’t fall under these categories. When you’ve checked it is correct, please change from bold to normal type. Unfortunately we do not have a large enough team to fact check freelancers’ work for them, so this step is crucial. It can be very embarrassing for a piece to be published with the same mistake dotted throughout.
3. Our house style
If you have read lots of our stories, you will probably have picked up most of our house style, but to save lots of time in the editing process, please do read over this very brief list before you file.
The basics
- Numbers 1-10 are written “one, two, three” etc. Numbers 11+ are written in digit form.
- Dates are written like this: 6 September 1973.
- Art exhibitions, book names, film names, TV show names are italicised.
- Song names, short story names and poem names are put in quote marks. e.g. 'Yesterday' by The Beatles.
- Newspaper names do not need to be italicised, but the t should be capitalised in The when appearing mid-sentence. So: “Anna is a journalist who used to work for The Independent.”
- Dashes should be em dashes (—), not hyphens (-) when used in place of brackets.
Quotes
We never run consecutive paragraphs of quotes, nor do we run full blocks of quotes. As such, please break them up by paraphrasing and keeping the strongest (most colourful/emotional/funny/interesting) parts in quote marks.
Names
After initially citing the full name, please use the person’s surname for all subsequent mentions. Please try not to overuse the name — revert to he/she/they wherever possible unless necessary to clarify who you’re talking about.
4. Invoicing for your work
Please follow the following simple steps to get paid for your work.
- Create an invoice addressed that includes the following details:
- The date you are submitting the invoice
- Your name exactly as it appears on your bank account
- Your postal address
- Your bank account details (please double-check they are correct)
- The name of the publication you worked for (The Bell)
- The story headline or one sentence describing the article you wrote, with a link to the online version if possible
- The fee we agreed for this work
- The name of the editor who commissioned the work
- Send the invoice as a PDF attachment to finance@millmediaco.uk
- Wait for us to pay you. We aim to pay all invoices within 4 weeks of publication, often sooner. If you haven’t been paid after 4 weeks, please email finance@millmediaco.uk again. If you don’t get a response, it might mean your account is being blocked, so then please cc your commissioning editor on that (third) email.