Pitching stories to Raconteur

At Racon­teur, we’re inter­est­ed in what con­nects busi­ness. From the rise of the four-day week to sup­ply chain risk to the jour­ney to net zero, we want to tell the sto­ries impact­ing lead­ers and dri­ving change in the busi­ness world.

We encour­age writ­ers from any back­ground to pitch to us. We’re keen to hear from a wide array of peo­ple that can offer a new per­spec­tive or approach a top­ic in a dif­fer­ent way.

When we work with freelancers

There are two main ways we work with free­lancers. The first is on Racon­teur online. Our in-house team has a range of exper­tise and cov­ers all news analy­sis and con­tent series, so we don’t accept pitch­es for those.

Where we are keen to hear from free­lancers is when they can bring a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive to a sub­ject, can offer us access to a high-pro­file inter­vie­wee or can analyse a spe­cial­ist sub­ject. All pitch­es should bear in mind our senior busi­ness audi­ence and the top­ics of inter­est to them.

We receive a lot of pitch­es and so we look for some par­tic­u­lar things when decid­ing what to pick up. First, what sto­ry is the per­son going to tell, rather than what sub­ject are they going to explore? Sec­ond, why is this per­son telling the sto­ry; what is their expe­ri­ence or exper­tise? Third, how does it inform, edu­cate or inspire the read­er?

The sec­ond way we work with free­lancers is for our spe­cial reports, which are pub­lished in The Times and The Sun­day Times. These reports are on spe­cif­ic sub­jects, such as the Future CMO or Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, and are pub­lished in print on spe­cif­ic dates.

How to pitch for reports

We only accept pitch­es on sub­jects that are in upcom­ing reports. These cov­er a broad range of sub­jects and are usu­al­ly com­mis­sioned around four weeks ahead of pub­li­ca­tion. Pieces tend to be between 1,000 and 1,200 words, although they can go up to 2,000. We’re look­ing for a vari­ety of for­mats, from pro­file inter­views to lis­ti­cles, for and against debates to more stan­dard fea­tures. What is impor­tant is that we’re inform­ing, inspir­ing or edu­cat­ing busi­ness lead­ers on the sub­jects that mat­ter to them.

If you’d like to write for our reports, you’ll need to be on our jour­nal­ist data­base. We’re after peo­ple with expe­ri­ence of writ­ing for a busi­ness audi­ence whether as a spe­cial­ist or a gen­er­al­ist. To find out more details on sign­ing up as a free­lancer, how to hear about upcom­ing titles and sign up to receive updates, please email freelance@raconteur.net. We try our best to respond to all enquiries so if you don’t hear back with­in a cou­ple of weeks please do fol­low up.

Payment terms

We pay on a per-word basis, based on the com­mis­sioned word count. All free­lance writ­ers are required to sign a con­tract.

Other freelance opportunities

We are always in need of free­lance writ­ers to work on com­mer­cial con­tent. If you’d like more infor­ma­tion about this, please email freelance@raconteur.net and pop ‘com­mer­cial con­tent’ in the sub­ject line.

We also have reg­u­lar sub-edit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. Again if you would like to find out more, please email freelance@raconteur.net.

---

Submitting an opinion

Racon­teur accepts a lim­it­ed num­ber of op-ed sub­mis­sions a month for pub­li­ca­tion on our web­site on top­ics rel­e­vant to our senior busi­ness audi­ence. For an idea of the top­ics we cov­er, check out the tab in the menu on our web­site. Op-eds in our reports in The Times and The Sun­day Times are not open for gen­er­al sub­mis­sion.

Sub­mis­sions must be orig­i­nal and should be between 600 and 1,000 words. They must have a spe­cif­ic point of view and should usu­al­ly be in response to a recent event, trend or top­ic that has cap­tured the atten­tion of the busi­ness world. It should seek to analyse, edu­cate or illu­mi­nate our read­ers on this top­ic, not to pro­mote a prod­uct or ser­vice (if you’d like to do this, please speak to our com­mer­cial team).

When decid­ing whether to run an op-ed we will con­sid­er whether the piece is:

• Of inter­est and rel­e­vant to senior busi­ness lead­ers
• Edu­cates or informs
• Is impor­tant and/or time­ly
• Is exclu­sive

How to submit an op-ed

Please send op-ed pitch­es with a com­plete draft to opinion@raconteur.net. Please include infor­ma­tion on the top­ic in the sub­ject line.

With­in the pitch, please detail who the writer is, their expe­ri­ence, a brief sum­ma­ry of the arti­cle and the argu­ment it is making/opinion it is shar­ing, and why the writer is qual­i­fied to speak about it.

We try to respond to all pitch­es but some­times this is sim­ply not pos­si­ble. If you don’t hear back from us ini­tial­ly, please do fol­low up but if we still don’t respond please assume we are unable to pub­lish the piece.

All accept­ed op-ed pitch­es will be edit­ed to ensure they match Raconteur’s tone and style, and meet our high stan­dards. Some may require rework­ing by the writer. We will most like­ly ask you to pro­vide links or sources for any facts or asser­tions. While we will work with you on this edit­ing, we have final say over the pub­lished piece, although we will show it to you before pub­li­ca­tion.

While we have a bud­get for opin­ion arti­cles, this is reserved for reg­u­lar colum­nists or peo­ple we have approached to write for us. Unso­licit­ed arti­cles are usu­al­ly unpaid, although we will require con­trib­u­tors to sign a con­tract.

We must be informed of any poten­tial con­flicts of inter­est or any oth­er infor­ma­tion that a read­er should know about the writer. As pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed, we will not pub­lish pieces pro­mot­ing a com­pa­ny or ser­vice or crit­i­cis­ing its rivals.