The Wire is a digital news magazine dedicated to understanding and explaining one of the biggest stories of our time: China’s economic rise, and its influence on global business.
We accept pitches only for longform Cover Stories that focus on some aspect of business or economics related to China.
These are reported, magazine-style articles that tend to be enterprise or investigative in nature. They run from 2,500 to 3,500 words. Cover Stories do not focus explicitly on political issues.
Cover Stories do not need to be set in China, but they should tell us something about business or economics related to China. They can be about companies, economic trends, finance, technology, environment, trade, labor rights or other areas.
We do not publish personal essays, travel writing, memoir or fiction.
Some examples of The Wire Cover Stories include:
- The NBA’s Jam: How long can the league maintain its juggling act of embracing progressive causes in the U.S. while turning a blind eye in China?
- Death of a Quantum Man: Stanford physics professor Zhang Shoucheng, a potential Nobel laureate, was among the first casualties of the U.S.-China trade war. But when the world loses a brilliant scientist, who really wins?
- The Big China Short: How an army of investigators and short-sellers got the world to wake up and smell the Luckin Coffee fraud.
Cover stories rely on heavy research and input from many sources, such as company executives, industry analysts, academics, researchers, employees, customers, activists, advocates, lawyers, public health experts, technologists and other key players and observers. We expect writers to interview at least 15 individuals for each cover story, and have most of those voices represented on the record in the story. (We do not count off the record or anonymous sources).
We particularly like stories that can feature official documents, reports and other data.
How to Pitch
Pitch emails can be sent to Chloe Fox at chloe@thewire.media. In your pitch, tell us in a few paragraphs why this story is important; if there’s a timely news hook; what it tells us about business or economics in China; if there are narrative elements (characters and/or scenes); and who you plan to talk to and interview. Please also offer a potential headline and subhead to give a sense of how the piece would be promoted.
- Doing this involves preliminary research. Please pitch a story, not a subject or an idea.
- Journalists pitching Cover Stories should ideally have experience writing long articles, some international experience, and strong reporting and writing skills.
- Please include a brief bio, links to your website or LinkedIn profile if you have one, and 2-3 examples of articles at least 2,000 words, preferably about some aspect of business or economics.
Rates are very competitive. Unfortunately, we do not have a travel budget.
We publish weekly so we take due dates seriously and when a story is edited and finalized, publication is usually quite fast.
We review pitches on a rolling basis. Due to the large volume of pitches and our small staff, we cannot reply individually to each one but will respond if interested. If you haven’t heard from us in 10 days, feel free to re-send your pitch.
Thank you for your interest in The Wire.