Pitch Guide
The Nashville Scene has been serving our city for three decades and counting. A strong, independent voice, the Scene covers news, music, film, food, art, culture, and state and local politics in a way that only we can — with hard news, creative feature writing, long-form reporting, analysis and criticism that serve a diverse readership, and do so with a voice.
Likewise, Scene contributors have strong, unique, diverse voices. They are as comfortable with critical analysis as with political analysis. The Scene accepts freelance pitches for all sections of the paper, as well as for our online sections — food blog Bites, news blog Pith in the Wind and music blog Nashville Cream, plus our online Arts & Culture section. We prefer to receive pitches via email. Please include the word “pitch” in your subject line and a few words about the subject of your pitch. Include three links or PDFs of your published work. If you’re new to journalism and don’t yet have work published, pitch us anyway and tell us about any relevant experience. Avoid conflicts of interest — if you are friends or relatives with a subject, we will likely not accept your pitch. Please search our website to see if we’ve covered something similar in the past, and tell us how your idea might expand our coverage, if applicable. We’ve outlined the editors to pitch and their preferences for each section.
We unfortunately aren’t always able to respond to every pitch in a timely manner; if after a few days you haven’t heard back, feel free to try us again or pitch it elsewhere. We'll discuss our pay rates with you if we decide to give you an assignment.