How to Pitch: Wired

Mix of original / features reporting and service journalism centered around tech — sort of holds itself apart as the serious tech publication.

TONE

Mix of original / features reporting and service journalism centered around tech — sort of holds itself apart as the serious tech publication and as such has a lot of cybersecurity and policy reporting and really senior, established reporters in those categories. More recently expanding into consumer tech SEO stuff, entertainment, and broader coverage of internet culture along the lines of what Motherboard has tried to do. Still a lot of middle-aged white people running the show over there but they seem to be “trying!” Founded San Francisco in the ‘90s, so historically got suckered by the Silicon Valley vision of a tech-enabled utopia. Currently making some effort to not look so dumb.

STRUCTURE

Print and online.

Print version is published monthly, website updates daily. Print content often appears online first, in sections broken down as follows:

• Business: mostly following and news-explaining big players like Amazon, Uber, etc., but does a fair numbers of startup profiles. Some labor coverage, more in the last couple of years, and they still do pretty extensive media coverage compared to peers in the tech site space. Edited by Scott Thurm, previously of the Wall Street Journal for ~20 years — very traditional all around.
• Culture: Very odd mix of politics, pop music, TV and film but mostly only in sci-fi genre, comic books (??), YouTube, and some sports. You can probably get away with anything here as long as it applies to a wide audience that’s predominantly male. Edited by Peter Rubin, he’s been there forever but was previously executive editor of Complex (before it was a mess?? unclear).
• Gear: Product reviews and deals. Roundups, occasional trend reports or analysis of a scene. But basically the moneymaker part of the site — SEO, affiliate links, etc. Edited by Michael Calore who used to be a copywriter at Sony, lol.
• Ideas: Opinion / analysis of tech policy issues, environmental stuff, work, big tech companies, Facebook Facebook Facebook.

• Science: Environment, health, urban planning to some degree, robots, bioengineering, etc. Very cool features in this section — both local and global stories — and typically more longform here than other parts of the site. Edited by Sandra Upson, who founded Wired’s longform vertical Backchannel (previously at Medium, Scientific American).
• Security: Mostly from a consumer standpoint — has a lot of how-tos, and service-y oriented histories. Follows the big guys, primarily Google and Apple. Although an obscure cyberattack can still end up the cover story once in a while! Edited by Brian Barrett, used to be EIC of Gizmodo.
• Transportation: Lots of news roundups, car reviews, Elon Musk news, most features have to do with autonomous driving or other “future of cars” type stuff. Very car focused, not as much space or public transit or airline coverage. Edited by Alex Davies for several years.

COLUMNS

Not so much columns, just a really elaborate tag system that can’t possibly be helpful for SEO but does give a good idea of the range of coverage:

E.g. Jargon Watch, What’s the Deal, Crazy Math, Worker Equity, Anti-Social Media, While You Were Offline, Dream Teams, Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, Obsessed, Lines of Communication, and so on, there are dozens of them, all fairly vague.

Print magazine is organized roughly into four categories:

• Alpha: Supposed to be all about firsts, and new ideas, new important people and personalities in tech sphere, weird experiments, innovations, etc.
  Ultra: Entertainment and pop culture, largely about gaming and comics, tech behind movies.
• Q: Short for “FAQ,” supposed to be general interest stories. In the first issue that they did it in it was about what’s inside golf balls and how NYC is building an underground railroad to connect the LIRR to Grand Central.
• Gadget Lab: Consumer tech “tips and tricks,” the how-to section, DIY stuff, “how to set up your new iPhone,” whatever. Teardown photo essays.

EDITORS (c. September 2018)

General email template: [email protected]

Senior Editor: Michael Calore

Edits all of the consumer tech coverage (print and digital), particularly phones. Also into internet culture and used to be a surfer and skateboarder hippie guy.

News Editor: Brian Barrett

Oversees all daily news but is also the point person on most security coverage (previously EIC of Gizmodo).

Transportation Editor: Alex Davies

Edits transpo stories for the website (launched the section a couple of years ago), mostly focusing on Elon Musk and co., but also driverless cars, EVs, some infrastructure stuff, some airline stuff, etc.

Articles Editor: Jon Elienberg

Edits Alpha and Gadget Lab sections of print magazine (see above), annual tech gear issue.

Deputy Web Editor: Sarah Fallon

Mostly edits special projects and big editorial packages for the website.

Senior Associate Editor: Jason Khe

Helps edit the Alpha section for print, also edits print essays and features. Comes from an arts background.

Senior Editor: Caitlin Kelly

Edits daily content for the website re: politics and internet culture. Comes from editing features at Vice.

Senior Editor: Anthony Lydgate

Edits features for the print magazine, comes from science and tech at The New Yorker and Harper’s.

Senior Editor: Lauren Murrow

Edits longform features and special projects for the print magazine, does the front-of-book stuff every issue and the back page (6×6 column, see above).

Features Editor: Mark Robinson

Edits longform investigative stuff for online and print magazine.

Senior Editor: Alexis Sobel Fitts

Edits digital features, writes about tech and policy. Comes from Columbia Journalism Review and Medium and wrote a lot about tech’s effects on journalism.

Business Editor: Scott Thurm

Edits all the Silicon Valley stuff, the features and reports on major tech companies.

Features Editor: Vira Tirtunik

Edits print features only, prestige hire for them last year — moving from executive editor of New Yorker online and before that NYT Business editor.

Senior Editor: Sandra Upson

Edits online features, business focused.

Senior Associate Editor: Angela Watercutter

Edits the pop culture stuff, deputy bureau chief in New York.

PITCHES THAT WORKED

From Study Hall Listserv

Submitted by: Andrew Zaleski

Topic: Drone racer profile (feature)

Pitch: Say “Charpu” to anyone who follows or flies drones, and they’ll light up just like rapper Drake does when he’s in Lebron James’ arms. Otherwise known as Carlos Puertolas, he’s drone racing’s first household name. Flying under the pilot name Charpu, his YouTube videos of his quadcopter zipping through abandoned buildings and under cars have more than 2.5 million views. Mark Zuckerberg knows who he is, and has liked videos of Charpu’s aerial exploits posted to Facebook. “Charpu is as close to a god in FPV, I think, as you can get,” California drone racer Keith Robertson told the New York Times last November. Puertolas is arguably the most impressive drone pilot on the planet, and the first celebrity of the still growing but rapidly expanding world of FPV drone racing, where pilots use goggles and drone-fixed cameras to give them a first-person view of their drones’ flight paths. But now Puertolas, who’s more at home flying in secret locations, has to navigate being the face of a sport that he’s always thought of as just a hobby. “Going to some hidden place somewhere with a few people and then racing, and then not telling anybody that you’re racing—that, to me, always felt like a Fight Club,” says the 34-year-old from LA, who splits his time racing with a full-time animator job at DreamWorks. “I do enjoy racing, but I get really stressed.” Lost among the current discussion over Federal Aviation Administration drone regulations are the circumstances surrounding how “drones” became bigger than a buzzword, and how average guys like Puertolas became the heroes of a world 400 feet above the ground. With the advent of a new Drone Racing League and a forthcoming drone-racing world championships in Hawaii—an October event for which Puertolas helped scout flight locations—this could be the year drone tech starts turning into a real business for some pilots, and I think profiling the best-known pilot out there is a way to break into that story. Puertolas is OK with me shadowing him for a few days (I’d want to be at an official race, as well as tag along to one of the secret locations where he flies) to tell that story, and figure out how a guy who always thought drone racing was just a hobby is navigating the spotlight as the sport’s first big name.

Published: Sky Pilot

Rate: $2 per word for 2500 words

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