Pitching Science Blog Posts: A Guide

If you have a story to tell…

Welcome to SciLogs.com, where we now have a Guest Blog where you can pitch your best science blogging ideas!

How do I pitch a blog post, you ask?

The criteria are simple – send me (pbrow11[at]tigers[dot]lsu[dot]edu) a blog post pitch. Once approved, send me a draft in Word doc format with any visuals or embeds you’d like to include plus a headshot of yourself and short bio.

Who is the audience, you ask?

Well, that depends somewhat on the audience your story appeals to. But in general, a guest blog post to SciLogs.com should aim for a general, science-interested audience. This audience should not be expected to have background or expertise on the topic you are exploring, however, and thus you should define terms, avoid jargon, etc.

What kind of topics are you looking for, you ask?

I’m not looking for topics… I’m looking for stories.

Any topic in science, engineering, technology, scientific publishing, science communication, science & society, science journalism, ethics of science, etc. is welcome. By etc., I mean that any topic you are passionate about as a scientist, student, science writer, science journalist, or science educator, is a go.

But a topic isn’t a story. You might tell me you’d like to blog about polar science, or about women in science, or about an emerging field of science. Sounds great! But that’s only the beginning. It’s not so important that you hit on any particular topic of interest to a wide audience, but that you hit on a story or narrative that can resonate with anyone who reads the blog post. What’s the problem? What’s the action? What happened that brought this topic into the light for you? Who are the characters? What is their story? What is the progress or setback we should know about? What does this scientific topic tell us about who we are, where we came from, where we are going? What does it tell us about us, our ecosystem, or planet or our universe? What is the story here?

If you are really good, you can get me excited about your blog pitch in a short lede or teaser, or even in a single sentence.

A lake spontaneously freezes, entombing hundreds of stampeding horses; could this happen in real life? As it turns out, a bacterium exists that can turn a bottle of cold water into an ice cube instantaneously. This is that bacteria’s story.

What?! Oh my goodness? How cool?! I want to read it now. NOW!

It’s true, not everything we have to say about science is this dramatic. But whether from drama or the exact lack of drama, there should be a story for you to tell that lets me know why you are excited, passionate, mad, sad, inspired or moved by this science topic or story.

Tell me a story. Make me feel. Argue with me. Tell me about yourself. Inspire me or open my eyes to something I hadn’t seen before.

And no word limit – use as many words as you need to tell the story, no more, no less.

Also, visuals are often a big part of any story. Make you use visuals you have permission to re-post. SciLogs.com also has permission to use Shutterstock images, so I can download any image from there you’d like to use.

Now send me a pitch already!