Hard to find a unique angle on a saturated topic like Epstein but @benlorber8.bsky.social has done just that — he examines the antisemitic underbelly of the MAGA obsession with the billionaire pedophile and warns against progressive amplification of these narratives.

newlinesmag.com/argument/pro...

Finally: Folks, don't send me a pitch that you used AI to write. These are glaringly obvious and really sad. I work in the news media; there's already enough to be sad about. Please don't make it worse.

Also, if you submit a pitch, please be patient. These calls yield a lot of responses and it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff (yours is wheat, I'm sure of it). I usually wait until the end of the pitch call to make final decisions about which stories to pursue.

Rates: $600 for a spotlight $800 for regular essays, with some flexibility for extraordinary access, multimedia or other factors.

TO SUBMIT A PITCH, email me with "PITCH" + a suggested headline in the subject of the email. Put the pitch IN THE BODY OF THE EMAIL, and please send a few clips of your past work, particularly pieces over 1500 words. My email is in my bio.

All our spotlights are here: newlinesmag.com/spotlight/

I’m also looking for pitches for Spotlight, a newsletter about underreported news and cultural trends from around the world. These short (~1500-1800 words) pieces tackle the upswell of ideas/events before they go mainstream, or they untangle a hot topic in a new and fascinating way.

Or this unexpected confluence of cultures about Taiwan's literature and its appeal in Eastern Europe newlinesmag.com/reportage/ta...

Stefania d’Ignoti writes about discovering her grandfather’s past as a soldier for Italy during its fascist expansion into Italy. It weaves together the personal elements with lots of history and uses all of that as a lens through which to view the present day newlinesmag.com/first-person...

We are currently flush with stories about conflict, migration and climate change, so I’m looking for stories that touch on different, fresh topics and do it in a New Lines way.

Here are a couple that do that really well:

As ever, I'm looking for hard-hitting & enlightening reportage that touches on topics & places traditional outlets ignore. My primary beat is NORTH & WEST AFRICA & the diasporas of those places. I’m especially interested in stories from Algeria, Morocco, Burkina Faso, Mali & Mauritania