Dear Fellow ASJA Members:
I am always on the lookout for material for ASJA Confidential; but this time I’m expanding the ask to include the ASJA Magazine. According to President Sherry Paprocki, the print magazine is continually ranked as the top benefit of ASJA during member surveys. Which contradicts the conventional wisdom that the print media has lost its luster, as well as highlighting the considerable talents of magazine editor and fellow ASJA member Aleigh Acerni.
Follows is the editorial schedule for 2018 starting with March; the deadlines for the January issue (which is all about pitching) have already passed. Please email Aleigh with your ideas and suggestions related to each themed issue. (Notice: the deadline for pitches is about a month before the submission deadline.) Aleigh will let you know if your idea works, along with word count and so on. Only ASJA members can contribute—yet another reason to join ASJA, yes?—but we do occasionally run interviews with non-ASJA members who have a particular platform or experience that would benefit members.
Writing for ASJA can help you deepen or reawaken relationships with editors and fellow writers and can even be a helpful way to develop new clients/leads. Writing a Market Report is a great reason to connect with an editor you’ve longed to pitch. Plenty of ASJA members have leveraged their ASJA Magazine stories into other assignments, repurposed the interviews, or even sold them as reprints, since members retain full copyright.
Lastly, if you have good ideas for making the magazine more useful, please pass them along. Aleigh and her team are always looking for ways to improve.
While writing for the magazine is an unpaid gig, it’s a great way to share your expertise, get some additional promotion, and give back to ASJA. Your contributions are very much appreciated.
Thanks and happy writing!
Sandra Gurvis
Editor, ASJA Confidential
ASJA MAGAZINE: 2018 EDITORIAL CALENDAR
March/April
Theme: Freelance Journalism
11/15: Pitches due
12/18: Submissions deadline
May/June
Theme: Creating Other Media/NYC Conference
1/15: Pitches deadline
2/19: Submissions deadline
July/August
Theme: Negotiation and Contracts
3/15: Pitches deadline
4/23: Submissions deadline
September/October
Theme: Craft
5/15: Pitches deadline
6/18: Content deadline
November/December
Theme: Navigating Change
7/15: Pitches deadline
8/20: Content deadline
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