Publication: Bolts Magazine
Topics: Politics, Criminal Justice, Voting Rights, Local Elections, Social Justice
Rate: Around $800+ per article
Deadline: Rolling
Bolts is seeking freelance journalists to report on critical voting rights and criminal justice stories across the United States.
The publication wants to expand coverage of the local and state-level politics, elections, policymaking and organizing that shape these issues. This includes reporting on county prosecutors and sheriffs, secretaries of state, local election administrators, state legislators, municipal officials and activists working to change these systems.
Bolts is particularly interested in stories that connect local politics to issues of national importance.
What Bolts Publishes
Freelancers can pitch a range of formats, including:
- Original reporting on public officials who have power over criminal justice and voting systems
- Reporting on elections and the political contrasts between candidates
- News features about local developments and conflicts
- Deep-dive research and explainers
- Investigations exposing harms or injustices in criminal legal systems
- Reporting on threats to voting access and democracy
- Features highlighting people directly affected by current systems
- Profiles of activists and officials shaping these debates
Stories typically focus on a single geographic area and have enough scope to examine the issue in depth.
Examples could include activism to expand voter eligibility in a city, a state bill dealing with parole reform, a district attorney election in one county or police shootings in one city.
Bolts also occasionally considers stories examining multistate or nationwide trends.
Its particular sweet spot is a story about local politics that provides meaningful value to readers in that community while introducing the issue to a national audience.
Topics of Interest
Bolts is also looking for more coverage of issues at the intersection of criminalization and voting access.
Potential topics include:
- Felony disenfranchisement
- Election administration
- Increased policing of elections
- Criminalization of abortion
- Bail reform
- Parole
- Criminal justice policy
- Local elections
- Voting access
- State policymaking
- Grassroots organizing
The publication encourages BIPOC journalists, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated writers, journalists from communities underrepresented in media, and writers with deep knowledge of particular states or regions to pitch.
It is also interested in journalists with specialized expertise in areas such as election administration, bail reform and other specific policy issues.
Bolts does not currently publish personal essays or op-eds.
How to Pitch Bolts
Your email should include:
- A clear summary of the proposed story
- The story’s central takeaway or “nut graph”
- Whether the story is time-sensitive
- What makes the story original
- How it relates to existing reporting
- Why the story matters
- Your proposed reporting plan
- Potential sources
- A short introduction to yourself
- Links to relevant previous work
If you do not have published work directly related to the pitch, you can provide another writing sample.
Strong pitches should demonstrate that you have identified a specific story, understand why it matters and have a realistic plan for reporting it.
Pay
Most stories published by Bolts involve original reporting.
The default freelance rate is $800 for a story involving original reporting. Editors may offer a higher rate when a story is substantially longer, requires more reporting or involves a larger scope of work.
If Bolts is interested in your pitch, the editor will discuss the assignment’s deadline, word count and other details before sending a freelance contract.
Writers should expect an intensive editing process after submitting a draft and will work directly with a Bolts editor throughout the process.
Pitching Tip
Don’t pitch “criminal justice in America” or “the state of voting rights.” Find the specific local story that reveals a bigger issue.
A county prosecutor’s race, a state parole bill, an election administration dispute or a local organizing campaign can be much stronger when you can explain what is happening, who has power, who is affected and what readers can learn from the case.
If your reporting can make a local political development relevant to a national audience, that is particularly aligned with Bolts’ editorial focus.
