Thanks for considering Capital Daily for your pitch! We’ve written up a quick guide to help you craft the pitch that best represents your story, and gives it the best chance of being accepted.
Please note, we do not ever republish blog posts or accept "guest posts." Emails to that effect will be ignored.
The vast majority of our stories are going to be directly or indirectly about Victoria, BC. We will consider exceptional stories from elsewhere on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands as well. We’re especially interested in housing and homelessness, transportation, policing, municipal politics, science and the environment, and urban planning, but we will consider any pitch that piques our curiosity.
We’re looking for features, explainers, in-depth news stories, and investigations. We are also open to visual story pitches, including photo essays, videos, and illustrations. We are not currently accepting op-eds, columns, or other opinion pieces.
When writing your pitch, please consider the following questions:
Put PITCH in your subject line, and URGENT PITCH if it’s… urgent. (Obviously.) Please attach at least two links to your previous work. We will try to respond to all pitches, but feel free to follow up if you haven’t heard from us in 2 weeks. We are open to “soft pitches”—i.e. a pitch for a pitch—but prefer a straight pitch when possible.
If you want to send a tip for our writers but don’t want to write the story yourself, that’s great too! Please send those to tips@capitaldaily.ca
Pitches can be sent to write@capitaldaily.ca.
First and foremost your pitch should tell us what the story is. It shouldn’t be a topic or an issue, but a story — one way to think about this is “someone is doing something for some reason.” It’s not a perfect formula, but if your pitch doesn’t have those elements, it might not be a story for us. Avoid phrases like “I want to look into...” or “I want to explore...”—those words suggest that you aren’t quite clear on what your story will be.
You don’t need to tell us the whole story in your pitch, but you should give enough detail that we know what to expect. The pitch's length, and the research ahead of time, should vary depending on how involved of a story you’re proposing; a more news-driven piece might only need a few sentences whereas a bigger feature pitch might need 10. More concise is generally better, as long as you’re including everything we need to decide if the story will work for us.
Don’t feel like you need to do months of research, interviews and writing before sending a pitch. But the more ambitious your story idea, the more we’ll want to hear that you know you can deliver on it.
Your pitch should display your writing—that means mechanics like spelling and grammar as well as style. Please take a moment to proofread your pitch or have a friend look at it before you send it. Especially for a feature, it should show us how your story might be written. Finally, it should display that you have the access to sources, knowledge and skill to deliver a great story.
One idea per email, please, unless we have discussed this ahead of time. And do not send completed stories; they will not be published.
We look forward to hearing from you!
