Jewish Currents
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How to Pitch Jewish Currents
Jewish Currents is a print and digital magazine of politics, culture, and ideas. Our print issues appear quarterly, and we publish pieces online several times a week.
We’re a magazine rooted in the questions that animate the Jewish left, and the left more generally. Issues we cover include—but are not limited to—the uses and misuses of antisemitism, the inner workings of Jewish communal organizations, Israel/Palestine politics on the ground and internationally, race and racialization, strategies and horizons of American left movements, the global rise of the far right, diasporic cultural expression, labor, climate, incarceration, immigration, and feminism. You don’t have to be Jewish to contribute to Jewish Currents, and your story does not necessarily need a Jewish angle; it only needs to speak to issues of critical importance to our audience.
We seek timely pitches that offer original reporting on the forces rapidly remaking our world, new angles on familiar narratives, and fresh arguments that reframe existing conversations. The best pitches make a strong case for their own urgency, while demonstrating a lasting value beyond their news peg.
Pitches should sketch out a clear argument or intervention, and answer the questions: Why? Why now? And why you? In other words: What are the stakes of this story, why is now the time to publish it, and why are you the person to write it? Successful pitches also tend to demonstrate a strong familiarity with the work of the magazine.
Send us pitches for:
- Original reporting on the topics in our wheelhouse.
- Ambitious investigations and exclusive scoops.
- Sharp, in-depth analysis of current events that makes substantive interventions in existing debates, or challenges the very terms of those debates.
- Critical engagement on matters of domestic and foreign policy by experts in a given field.
- High-quality reviews of literature, art, and culture that make an argument about the work. Review pitches should also demonstrate why the work is of critical importance to our audience.
- Conversations with or profiles of thinkers, doers, and makers that speak to topics in our wheelhouse, pegged to recent books or current events.
- Analytical dispatches from the streets, the picket line, or conferences related to our beats.
Please do not send us pitches for:
- Op-eds.
- Program updates or softball coverage of activist groups. We rarely give a direct platform to activists.
- Open letters.
- Sermons or divrei Torah.
- Academic papers (we welcome submissions from academics, but expect any work that draws on academic research to be reframed with a general audience in mind).
- Pieces revisiting a historical event without a contemporary peg.
- Event coverage.
- Human interest stories.
- Capsule reviews, or reviews that summarize a work but do not make an argument.
- Reviews of books, film, or exhibits older than six months.
- Reposts of blogs or articles already published elsewhere.
- Personal essays. We only consider full drafts of personal essays, and we accept them very sparingly.
- Articles under 1000 words.
For translations:
We consider full drafts of literary work and historical documents
originally written in Jewish languages—including Yiddish, Ladino, and
Hebrew—or otherwise related to our beats.
For literary and creative work:
Jewish Currents is currently closed to unsolicited fiction and poetry. We will read unsolicited poetry sent during the month of June. We accept creative nonfiction sparingly, and only with a draft in hand. We are open for comic submissions.
If you are a visual artist or illustrator and would like to be considered for our print issue, please send an email with the subject line “Art – Your Name” and include a link to your website.
Please direct all pitches and submissions to submissions@jewishcurrents.org.
Our freelancer agreement:
In a series of meetings, the staff of Jewish Currents
engaged in a conversation facilitated by the Freelance Solidarity
Project of the National Writers Union about how to ensure that all
writers and contributors are treated with the respect they deserve and
compensated equitably for their work. These principles and guidelines
are a result of that conversation. In commissioning new work, Jewish Currents will share these guidelines with its freelancers alongside a formal contract; we are also making them publicly available here. Below are some highlights:
- Whenever possible, editors shall make a good faith effort not to go longer than three weeks without letting commissioned writers know the status of their commissioned piece.
- Management and editors will not assign freelance-generated ideas to others on the editorial team.
- Jewish Currents will indemnify and defend a freelancer against any third-party claim arising out of any article we publish, unless the claims arise out of the freelancer’s breach of representation, warranty, or obligation under their contract.
- Jewish Currents will publicize base rates for freelancers, and commits to pay equity for disadvantaged and underrepresented groups.
- Jewish Currents commits to paying freelancers 25% upon receipt of a draft, and 75% upon completion; freelancers will be paid within 30 days of completion.
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