SUBMISSIONS ARE CLOSED

Media Diversified covers politics, social affairs, culture and lifestyle, with a dedicated academic space providing insight from the humanities and social sciences on today’s issues.

Our editorial edge comes from voices that are transnational, culturally convergent, thoroughly modern and historically aware: we feature work by and from creators living in diaspora.

In keeping with our mission to address the lack of representation and inclusivity in the UK media for people of colour, we welcome pitches for pieces and projects across media from self-identifying people of colour and people working class communities who are white. We are especially keen to hear from those who identify as LGBT, disabled, Roma, or low income.

We’re looking for original op-eds, features, reporting, social analysis, satire and essays. Please have a good trawl through our recent work and archives to get a feel for our style, and to make sure we haven’t published a piece like yours recently.

We welcome pitches and completed work across media, from photography and illustration to video and audio, as well as text. If you’re submitting a completed piece of work we would be eternally grateful if you could include a summary with the details mentioned below in the body of your email.

How to pitch

To submit email us at info@mediadiversified[dot]org with “PITCH: your riveting and descriptive title]” in the subject line. Take two or three pithy paragraphs to explain your idea or work. These should include:

  • What’s new? Describe the point you’re looking to make, the argument you want to get across, the implications of the story you have reported – it doesn’t have to shake the world but it should be original
  • What’s the wider societal context? Who has spoken on it before? Include a couple of key links to recent coverage, events or news if possible
  • How do you plan to research the piece? Who will you interview? What documents will you look at? Which plays will you compare?
  • Why is it important? And also, why do you think it’s a good fit for MD?
  • When will it be done and how long will it be? Flag any important dates that would suit publication
  • Three links to work you have previously published, ideally published on other platforms, and not personal blogs

Payment

We have a (very) limited budget and use this to pay for proactively commissioned content on the most vital stories. For submissions we do our best to pay, if we don’t have the money in our pocket we’ll let you know so that you can find somewhere else to house your fine work.

Additional info

  • We are based in the UK, but we love to hear from creators, producers and writers anywhere, especially people of colour living in diaspora across Europe
  • Be time relevant and have a news hook, you don’t have to write the first piece out on an issue, but do address issues that are being publicly discussed (or flag time relevant issues that aren’t being sufficiently covered in other media)
  • Indicate in the subject line if your email is time sensitive
  • At the moment we can only accept pitches in English, and we publish in British English
  • Pitch to one of our 5 sections, politics, society, culture, life or academic
    We don’t publish fiction or poetry

Academic Space

An experimental space for long form, typically more academic writing than you’ll find elsewhere on the site. We are looking for provocative and engaging writing from any academic discipline that will contribute to the work of Media Diversified and push us further.

As well as responding to current concerns and events, we’d like something that endures, cutting-edge ideas and approaches that will fortify and inspire. This is a democratising impulse, a move against the ivory tower of privileged knowledge and expertise. It’s part of a conversation. We are looking for clarity without jargon, careful thinking that takes risks, runs off with ideas but doesn’t compromise on rigour. We want to think deeply about the big problems that face us in everyday life, nationally and globally. In return we will offer you a lively new readership for your work and a fast turnaround. We are looking for submissions of up to 2,000 words. Send in a short abstract, 200 words or less to yasmin.gunaratnam@kcl.ac.uk

Guidance for writers:

  • The aim of the academic space is that articles should be accessible to the ‘reading public’ rather than specialists.
  • Be meticulous in your research, reading and referencing. It can be relatively easy these days to inadvertently use (plagiarise) other people’s ideas. Make sure that you credit your sources. This is more than a legal matter; it involves a politics of recognition and generosity.
  • Part of making your ideas and the literature that you reference accessible is to use sources without paywall protection. For books you can use the URL for the book on the publisher’s website or use Google Books. For academic articles try to use links to author archived texts such as those on Academia.edu or on personal websites.
  • Please embed any references as hyperlinks into the main body of the text. If this is not possible you can list your references at the end of the article (don’t use an electronic referencing system).
  • If you use quotes from articles or books, please include the page number at the end of the quote in brackets – e.g. (p.20). This will be helpful to readers who want to read the original text.
  • If your article includes footnotes, put them in brackets in the relevant part of the text – e.g. (1), (2) – and at end of sentence. The corresponding notes should be placed at the end of the article.
  • If you want to use particular image(s) make sure that you have permission to do so and/or that they are available under Creative Commons.
  • The word limit for articles is 2000.
  • Please include a short author bio, a photograph and your social media details with your submission.

Literature Must Fall

Literature Must Fall is committed to de-mystifying literature, to interrogating and challenging the authority and respect we give to writers and books. We’re looking for short or long form reviews and essays (1-3000 words) about literature* written in this spirit; without filters, without reverence, with a commitment to challenging dominant ideologies. 

We are open to new and critical perspectives that challenge what we think and know about individual texts and literature generally. We’re interested in thoughtful analysis, close reading, evidence-based argument and self-interrogation. This is a space for writing that locates literature and writers in structures rather than exceptionalising, that goes beyond diversity, inclusion and Britishness, beyond the racism vs diversity binary, to explore ongoing national and international structures of power.

This is a space to share/try out your ideas, to place work that is not easy to place elsewhere (too short, too long, too critical, too political – you don’t need to pretend to be ‘neutral’).

Send the full piece or an abstract of up to 200 words to literaturemustfall@gmail.com. We will try to respond to your submission within two weeks. If accepted, we will offer deep engagement with your work, a lively readership and the chance to initiate a debate and/or to shift public/political conversations connected to literature.

*Literature defined loosely as novels, poetry, spoken word, stories, storytelling, publishing/infrastructure, literature in any language and in translation, anything with a narrative and/or script – including theatre, TV, film. 

Guidance for writers:

  • Reviews, essays articles should be accessible to the ‘reading public’ rather than specialists.
  • Be meticulous in your research, reading and referencing. It can be relatively easy these days to inadvertently use (plagiarise) other people’s ideas. Make sure that you credit your sources. This is more than a legal matter; it involves a politics of recognition and generosity.
  • Part of making your ideas and the literature that you reference accessible is to use sources without paywall protection. For books you can use the URL for the book on the publisher’s website or use Google Books. For academic articles try to use links to author archived texts such as those on Academia.edu or on personal websites.
  • Please embed any references as hyperlinks into the main body of the text. If this is not possible you can list your references at the end of the article (don’t use an electronic referencing system).
  • If you use quotes from articles or books, please include the page number at the end of the quote in brackets – e.g. (p.20). This will be helpful to readers who want to read the original text.
  • If your article includes footnotes, put them in brackets in the relevant part of the text – e.g. (1), (2) – and at end of sentence. The corresponding notes should be placed at the end of the article.
  • If you want to use particular image(s) make sure that you have permission to do so and/or that they are available under Creative Commons.
  • The word limit for articles is 3000.
  • Please include a short author bio, a photograph and your social media details with your submission.