5    Studying the print market

Grace is given of God, but knowledge is bought in the market. (Arthur Huw Clough, 1819–61)

It is normally best to offer ideas and wait for a commission before you write a feature. But if you’re a beginner you may find editors slow to commission on the basis of a proposal (until you have a reasonable track record), or even reluctant to give you a ‘we’ll have a look at it but no promises’. You’ll find it hard to get an editor jumping at the idea of you doing a piece about getting lost in the Brazilian jungle and being mistaken for an Indian, or about your life-after-death experience, or about your wanting to describe a child’s first day at school from the child’s point of view, in the child’s language. But if you believe you could do something brilliant with one of these, then go ahead and do it. This chapter should help you through all degrees of orthodoxy.

And there is a market for ‘specs’ – magazines and small ones rather than newspapers. It’s worth looking for them, and writing the occasional piece on spec is beneficial anyway. It can get you out of a rut, liberate your creativity, open your mind to more possibilities, increase your potential. Needless to say, the riskier your venture, the more careful is the market study you do to prepare.

Try everything, but most of your time has to be spent on preparing and writing commissioned features. Note what was said in earlier chapters about networking and develop that activity as you progress. Keep a close watch, as described in Chapter 2, on how much time you spend on different activities.

The most common reason for rejection is not defects in the content, structure or writing, but unsuitability for the market. Be prepared to learn from rejection, to rewrite if asked to or to submit to another market. You may want to file away some of your rejects and rewrite them at a later date.

This chapter provides a general guide to market study and suggests ways of deciding which subjects and which publications you are likely to find favour with.

THE WORLD OF FEATURES

For convenience newspaper editorial matter is labelled ‘news’ or ‘features’ although the lines of demarcation can be blurred. With the increased need for background to the news already broadcast there are hybrids such as ‘news features’. We’ll stick to the obvious candidates for the title of feature.

Background or ‘current situation’ articles deal with politics, the economy and social questions, and include the Op Ed and the similar pieces that follow them in the middle of the qualities. They may be called think pieces or opinion formers.

Research features at some length and depth may be called investigative. They have in the past covered such themes as dangerous drugs put on the market with insufficient testing and aeroplane accidents due to negligence at trial stage (notably in The Sunday Times). Such features are often linked with campaigns to obtain better compensation for victims. They may be running stories produced by a team of reporters, feature writers and researchers.

Human interest stories (‘people journalism’) are rated high in most newspapers. They deal with people being victimized, being abused, struggling against illness or misfortune rather than with the statistics of social problems because that’s the way to get readers’ interest. The expert on social problems draws on such material, of course, for case studies. Similarly it’s usually more interesting to read about people being successful than organizations being successful. Notice how business section features hunt out the human angles. Notably ‘human interest’ are the great number of interview features and profiles in the press.

Colour pieces are descriptions of such events as the Oxford–Cambridge boat race or an account of a visit to a prison. Their effect depends on an imaginative use of language to create atmosphere and on qualities such as humour and pathos.

The new emphasis on features

There’s a constant interbreeding process between the print and the broadcasting media. Since there is 24-hour broadcasting of news, on radio, TV and on the Internet, morning newspapers, unable to compete in topicality, have to add something to what’s already known. They have moved from an emphasis on news to an emphasis on features.

The distinction between the two (especially in the UK) is often blurred. Newspapers do, mainly with features, what it’s more difficult for the other media to do. Newspapers do the background to the news – involving analysis, various investigations, social problems, extra angles, thoughtfulness, human interest. They compete with the political weeklies and magazines in some of these areas. Print remains the best medium for investigations in depth and for sustained argument. The depth varies greatly over the range.

It’s a two-way breeding process, of course. A complex TV documentary may take months to research and put together, and when broadcast will not be an up-to-the-minute account. That may be provided by the next morning’s follow-ups in the form of reviews or commentary or background features in the papers. The arguments may then be sustained in the weekly papers and magazines. These trends mean that the feature writer is increasingly valued for writing techniques, creativity and viewpoint. The traditional Op Ed page in the quality nationals has spawned several pages of comment.

Some publications accept these challenges and some don’t. When broadcast media are getting most of the hard-news scoops, some newspapers go for the soft-news ones – the love lives or disgraces of celebrities. Popular papers give much space to the private lives of the stars of the TV ‘soaps’, sometimes blurring the distinction between these actors and their lives as fictional characters.

The democracy of the electronic media, with interaction via telephone and email, has invaded the print media. Feature writers, especially columnists, get much feedback from, and stay close to, their audiences when they encourage correspondence via email. There is much gain. On the other hand columnists can lose sharpness and individuality if they forget where they left their high horses, and there are justified complaints about dumbing down.

Specialists in demand

Freelances in particular have a much better chance of getting work for newspapers if they’re pitching as a specialist. They may need more than one specialism. Generally they have to be versatile, adapting to different audiences. Let’s have a closer look.

Specialist features include Parliamentary sketches, arts reviews, expert commentaries on law, medicine, science and technology, education, fashion, and so on. Then there are the regular service columns, giving advice on shopping, holidays, DIY and so on, most conveniently done by staff.

Specialists know exactly when it’s time to analyse a trend, propose an article and start researching it in their or in a newspaper’s cuttings files or databases. The likeliest opportunities are in areas where it’s difficult for a staff writer to keep up. The content is the thing, but success is assured if they can develop the popularizing, jargon-free writing skills required, as described in Chapter 19.

The obvious candidates for such openings are scientists, doctors and professionals in general who can make a useful second income by writing. Full-time freelance writers are advised to specialize in one or two areas so that their knowledge and experience of them can quickly be called upon when required. They can ask themselves which subjects they’re particularly interested in and check on the coverage given to them in the national papers and specialist magazines. Is the subject coming into or going out of fashion? Are there too many writers jostling for space or too few?

Local papers

About 80 local, also called regional or provincial, newspapers are sold daily and about 1300 weekly, plus hundreds of free papers or freesheets, almost all of them distributed weekly. The analysis of local papers done by Ian Jackson in The Provincial Press and the Community (Manchester University Press) in 1971 is still useful. He identifies four functions of local paper features: reflector, booster, watchdog and pump-primer.

The reflector function is carried out, says Jackson, by articles on local history that ‘deepen the sense of community identity’. Booster features are stories of local heroes, champions of local causes, sports champions. Watchdog campaigns are frequently started off or sustained by public annoyance or concern. Attempts to stop a planned motorway spoiling a particular area is an example of a watchdog campaign that has been waged all over the country for years. In rural areas the risk of genetically modified crops contaminating the fields of organic food growers sounds many an alarm. Pump-priming includes those general environmental concerns over urban developments, local transport problems, lack of recreational facilities for children. Here are some samples of local paper topics that range over the past decade, with the more recent ones quoted from.

Samples of local topics

1  ‘Will this hero win the war on litter?’ by Aroha Webster, Edinburgh Evening News. Computer-generated animated adverts are part of a campaign about to be launched on TV and cinema screens. They will urge teenagers to log on to a website condemning litter vandals. The adverts feature a Terminator-style robot who will educate them – saving them from the sentence of death passed on them by the army of robotic waste management wardens who were losing the battle. (Watchdog/pump-priming function.)

Intro:

It is the year 2002 and the city is about to be taken over by artificially intelligent litter wardens who have turned against humans:

Tired of fighting a losing battle trying to keep the streets clean of dropped litter, the waste management wardens have now decided it is easier to keep on top of the problem by wiping out humans instead.

Sounds like the stuff of films, but if you think the plot could have been penned by a Hollywood scriptwriter, think again.

2  ‘Luxuries in store for London rubber-neckers’ by Anne Cowan, The Herald (Glasgow). This guide to shopping reflects the growing confidence of Glasgow as a cultural centre. (Booster.)

3  ‘The great north-south divide built with bricks and mortar’ by Eric Baird, associate business editor of the Glasgow Herald, about the problems caused by the vast differences in property prices between Scotland and England.

4  ‘Hook’s Eye View’, a column by Lib Dem Antony Hook, Dover Express. Tells the story of an elderly woman who will shortly need a great deal of care that only a private nursing home could provide, and that will require the raising of thousands of pounds by her family. Local Age Concern chairman Gordon Lishman is praised for his untiring campaign for this care to be made available on the NHS as the Lib Dems have engineered in Scotland. (Watchdog.)

Intro and ending:

The measure of a civilized community is how we support one another in living life to its fullest. An important feature is provision we make for the sick and infirm …

Please support our petition. If we put enough pressure on the Government we might just get the civilized community that the elderly and infirm deserve. If you want to help us call me on …

5  On another page of the Dover Express, in the Memories series, Bob Hollingsbee quotes from a century-old account of a visit to an estate containing magnificent ancient trees. (Reflector.)

Intro:

Something I promised myself I would do in semi-retirement was to go and see the legendary ‘Fredville Oak’ at Nonington, a favourite subject of many photographers and postcard views in days gone by.

6  ‘Author recalls bygone era of the old village’ by Anne Leask, Beckenham and Penge Advertiser. Reviews a book with illustrations about old Beckenham, on sale at the local bookshop. (Reflector.)

7  ‘Josie flies home from Olympics’ by Maria Croce, Croydon and Purley Advertiser. Interview with Mrs Jill Horton about the welcome awaiting daughter Josie who had gained world ranking of fifth in her judo class in the Barcelona Olympics. (Booster.)

8  ‘Lost stories celebrate the true voices of Cornwall’ by Frank Ruhrmund, Western Morning News. The article celebrates the publication of a book, Chasing Tales: The Lost Stories of Charles Lee, by a neglected author of the late nineteenth century. It is hoped that the book will establish him as one of the greatest of writers about Cornwall. In an illustrated double-page spread there are extracts from the stories and a column of Cornish dialogue. (Booster.)

Intro:

There was a time, and not all that long ago, when one could walk the streets of the towns and villages of Cornwall, the paths of its countryside and coasts, from Saltash to St Just, without hearing a single English, or any other foreign, voice – a time when all the accents that one heard would be Cornish.

9 ‘No Room at the Inn’by Will Smith, South London Press. Foreign tourists avoiding South London because the hotels are full of homeless families. This costs South London boroughs millions of pounds a year in lost tourism. (Watchdog.)

This is another familiar subject for local papers wherever immigrants are conspicuous. Welcoming attitudes can of course also be found.

Freesheets (free newspapers) are local, so much that has been said about writing for local papers is relevant. They can offer a promising market for the local freelance. Their dependence on advertising, however, gives them a different outlook.

New-product pieces and other news items are often connected to advertisers’ businesses, but most freesheets try to compete with paid-for newspapers, however small their staff.

Reporting experience

If you are aiming at contributing features to a local paper, experience of straight reporting will be invaluable. You will collect useful contacts for a start. Make a note of groups, societies, associations, clubs and committees in your area. Consult your friends and acquaintances, and notice-boards in libraries, town halls, church halls and other public places. Don’t, however, approach the paper’s regular sources – the police station, local council, town hall, fire brigade and so on – without checking with staff reporters first.

Plug the gaps. Find out which local organizations and activities are not covered by the paper, develop convincing arguments for their inclusion and send those arguments to the editor with some samples. If you have any success, put yourself on the mailing lists of the organizations. Attend some meetings and make yourself known to the chairmen, who will telephone you with the dates or results of any future ones. The contacts should soon provide a few feature possibilities.

National papers

A politician in the TV sitcom Yes Minister, a great success in the 1980s, said:

The Times is read by the people who run the country.

The Guardian is read by the people who think they ought to run the country.

The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country. The Daily Express is read by the people who think the country ought to be run as it used to be run.

The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who still think it is.

The Sun readers do not care who runs the country provided she’s got big tits.

There is still some truth in these labels and they do give an idea of the vast differences in the national papers of Britain. It is enough to compare the circulation figures of the qualities and the populars (Press Gazette regularly gives the circulation figures and readership figures are roughly three times these) to appreciate how different the contents are going to be, in length, depth, complexity and language.

•  Qualities: The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Financial Times, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Observer and The Independent on Sunday.

•  Middlebrows: the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Mail on Sunday, the Sunday Express.

•  Populars: the Daily Mirror, The Sun, The Star, the Sunday Mirror, the News of the World, The People.

Among the special interest papers are: the Jewish Chronicle, the Catholic Herald, the Socialist Worker.

Features with topical pegs

Articles for national newspapers (particularly) must have topicality. A feature tends to be pegged to a news event. Readers want to know the background, or the ramifications, or the possible consequences.

A feature writer scrutinizing a news item about a company collapse may notice a hole in it. Something is being held back, covered up. The writer digs further, finds more figures, finds the real story, perhaps, that the reporter, being busy, missed. There may have been misappropriation of funds, or some rapid and unreported changes of staff.

The following news story was followed up by articles in many nationals. A 16-year-old youth was detained for life after attempting to rape a 10-year-old girl and leaving her bleeding and unconscious. His father blamed the sex and violence on video films the family watched.

Among the questions raised were the following: Who or what is to blame? Was the father right? How should the blame be shared? What’s going wrong with family life? What’s the law about selling and hiring videos? What kind of censorship is in operation? Some of the articles stayed close to the story, whereas others took off into other aspects of censorship, pornography, rape, family life, using the story merely as a starter.

National papers call on specialist writers, especially for background-to-the-news features, even though the current tight budgets require staff writers to be used whenever possible.

Local and national interaction

Look for stories in your local papers that might, or must, have national implications or be of interest outside the area covered. It might be a certain kind of pollution of river water, faulty building construction, nepotism in the awarding of local council contracts, wildlife dying a mysterious disease. You wonder how widespread such cases are, why they are not being investigated on a national level, what are the loopholes in the law that make them difficult to prevent?

A celebrity living locally can provide an opportunity for an interview for a national paper, for a rewrite for a local paper, and if you got a lot on your tape you may have aspects that can be written up for various other markets.

The proliferation of the media has meant a welcome reduction in newspapers of pomposity and dogmatism. On the debit side some papers have allowed circulation-boosting attitudes to result in a loss of authority. Feature writers have the opportunity to redress the balance.

Magazines galore

Most magazines are heavily dependent on advertising. As much as two-thirds of the space in a consumer magazine may be devoted to it, and the advertising itself is often as much part of the reader appeal as the editorial content. Editors and advertising directors monitor their readership market. Surveys collect a great deal of information about their readers, which supports the promotional literature sent to advertisers discussed below. An intelligent study of the pages remains, however, the best guide for the writer.

The study of a magazine should reveal continuity. It was launched to meet an observed demand and it has to steer a course carefully by the formula established. A subtle shift in direction might be made to increase or hold a circulation, stave off competition or recognize new trends, but only as much as will not disturb the existing body of loyal readers. A new gap in the market will be quickly filled, as happened with computer magazines; some of those came too late and failed to thrive.

Feature writers, especially freelance, become familiar with the volatility and keep abreast of the trends.

While the content of newspaper features tends to be urgent in tone, with information being used to work out solutions, magazine features may reflect more time on research, or give more room to colour and more attention to readability. It may tend to deal in questions rather than answers.

Subjects for all tastes

There are about 6000 periodicals in the UK, providing a world of opportunities (Figure 5.1). Consider as targets first the magazines you enjoy reading, read more widely for ideas, and add to your targets by market study.

The matching of ideas with markets undertaken in the next chapter is largely concerned with specific magazines. Here we are concerned with the general picture.

There is great variety. They are labelled general interest or consumer, business-to-business, customer, technical, hobby, ethnic minority, house magazines for companies, and so on.

There are magazines for almost every conceivable subject. There are weekly reviews, staying closer to the news, and there are professional and academic journals. At the popular end, there are magazines that aim largely at entertainment.

There are magazines for all social, ethnic and age groups. While newspapers are mostly for large general audiences, even the non-specialist magazines need to aim at more specific readerships: young people on the town, oldies slowing down, housewives and house husbands, young executives, and so on.

Figure 5.1
W. H. Smith – opportunities galore. With kind permission of Periodical Publisher’s Association

Varying the treatment

In Chapter 4 we looked at how to identify targets for your ideas and that analysis will be taken further in Chapter 6. Meanwhile, let’s take a general subject, mental handicap, and consider more closely how the treatment given by magazines would probably vary from that given by newspapers.

A local paper would cover a story about problems in a local care home. A national paper might come up with figures showing the national prevalence of mental handicap and might analyse the way the care-in-the-community policy is working, pegging the feature to yesterday’s speech by the Health Minister in the House of Commons. A general interest magazine might follow up a fairly brief summary of the problem nationally with accounts of how several regional health authorities interpret the policy and put it into effect, with descriptions of the care provided in two or three examples of homes run by the authorities contrasted with the care given outside them.

Both a newspaper and a general interest magazine might be interested in publishing a profile of a mentally handicapped person or a professional carer, or in a story built round two or three case studies. But the treatment would vary because of the differences in audiences, and the difference between the magazine formula and the newspaper features policy. The newspaper furthermore will be much more interested if the article can be published on Mental Handicap Day or if there is a strong topical peg, such as a recent scandal involving the mentally handicapped.

A professional journal, Mental Handicap Research, published by the British Institute of Mental Handicap, printed an article under the heading ‘Changes in the lifestyle for young adults with profound handicaps following discharge from hospital care into a “second generation” housing project’.

To write for various publications requires a versatility that can only be learned by constant practice. At first you may understand the need to vary content and treatment but find it difficult to adapt your style. If you’re a freelance without regular commissions it is well worth persevering, because magazines come and go, and because of the business sense in multi-purposing.

Free publications

Free magazines are born in the same way as any other magazine. A gap in the market is noticed and someone plunges in with a free magazine to fill it. Targeting of the readership is careful so that advertisers are keen and the distribution is simplified. Ms London led the way in London. With many pages of situations vacant and a fair number offering pregnancy advice, it is aimed at 18- to 25-year-old office workers pouring into London’s railway and tube stations daily. The copies are handed out. Articles are on entertainments, pop stars, other celebrities, fashion and London life. This was followed by Girl about Town and others.

There are many customer magazines among the frees. British Airways’ Highlife, and those who advertise in it, similarly recognized the advantage of a captive audience passing through airports and travelling by plane. There are now many in-flight magazines. Each has its particular area of contents and reader-targeted style. They are mostly interested in well-illustrated articles. In general, keep in mind that your ideas must have an international angle and outlook, and if the airline producing your target in-flight magazine is in a Muslim country, your range of subjects is restricted accordingly. Take Royal Brunei Airlines’ magazine Muhibah, for example. The PR department has advised writers that they cannot refer to alcohol, religions other than Islam, dogs, pigs, political commentary, human body parts or women in revealing clothing.

AIMING AT VERSATILITY

It may take time before you find the area of the market in which you’re most comfortable and successful. Whenever that happens, it’s best to keep your options open and to be understanding and appreciative of different areas. Read the popular nationals. (Even if you have no desire, for example, to work for The Sun, it’s a good idea to keep in touch with what it’s doing because it has the highest circulation of the national dailies.) You may not like their policies or styles but their writers are highly skilled and you can learn much at any stage of your career from the way they get straight to the point.

Carol Sarler, who straddles both quality and popular camps, has a most perceptive essay in The Penguin Book of Journalism, ‘Why Tabloids are Better’, first published in British Journalism review in 1998, before qualities started going tabloid. She can do 8000 words on homeless youth for The Independent on Sunday, but also 30 words for the Sunday People on the general reaction to some news from Peru:

Much cross-cultural outrage this week at the discovery that Peruvians eat guinea-pigs. ‘How could they?’ came the cry. ‘They’re so SWEET.’

Yes. And lambs aren’t?

She points out that she could have done a thousand words easily enough for a quality but she would have made the same point. That ‘cross-cultural’ contains the gist of those thousand words.

This is expressing a difference dramatically. Let’s take a closer look at your potential targets.

Market guidance

You can supplement the marketing guidebooks, journalists’ and freelance writers’ magazines, media pages of the papers and your own analyses with promotional literature and contributors’ guidelines, some of which is online.

Promotional literature

This is aimed at and sent to prospective advertisers in the form of media packs. Fliers are sent to prospective subscribers. Writers can also find promotional literature useful. Media packs normally include a recent copy of the publication, the advertising rate card, an analysis of the readership by age, class and profession, and a statement of the formula. This information will help you to fill up the framework for publication analysis recommended in the next section.

Some media packs are generous with readership information. You may discover how many cars are owned by the average family subscribing, the average number of plane flights a year, the educational level of the average reader, and the estimated numbers of single, married and divorced readers.

The fliers, which may include a subscription form, emphasize the personality of the publication formed by the mix of subjects and writers.

Contributors’ guidelines

These come directly from some publications on request, from authorship magazines and books, and from the Internet.

From publications directly

Many publications provide a sample issue to potential contributors with or without a specially printed list of guidelines. Figures 3.1 and 3.2 show samples of guidelines from the Writers’ and Artists’Yearbook 2005 (A. & C. Black) and The Writer’s Handbook 2005 (Macmillan). Otherwise, features editors can be forthcoming with advice, especially when you have embarked on a commission.

From authorship magazines

Authorship magazines (listed on pages 404–5) often extract contributors’ guidelines from publications either in the form of a full-scale interview with a commissioning editor or as brief notes. They pay particular attention to new launches, which are looking for new writers (and fresh ideas). Diane Parkin, under the rubric Market Index for Writing Magazine of December 2001–January 2002, interviewed Kerry Parnell, associate editor of the recently launched Glamour, a monthly glossy covering fashion, beauty and lifestyle. It was described as ‘aspirational, glamorous, upbeat and fun’, the target audience as ‘the 27-year-old woman with a boyfriend, no kids, and lots of disposable income’. Potential contributors were advised to study the magazine first and then to come up with an idea that will work in a particular section.

Its first ABC results put it number 2 after Cosmopolitan. What’s the difference? ‘A Cosmo feature and a Glamour feature may both be about sex, or relationships, but will be approached very differently. It’s up to you to work out what the magazine’s formula is, and then send in ideas that work for it.’ The harder the idea is to research, she said, the more likely it is you’ll get the commission. She might have added: work out whether you have contacts that are unusual or access to information not readily available – always a plus in your favour.

Have a look at these two magazines now. Does that advice need updating?

The article, ‘Easy as ABC’, also dissected Cosmopolitan, Hello!, Take a Break, Heat, Ideal Home and Top of the Pops.

Press Gazette has regular pages that help with analysis. ‘Expert Eye’ examines publications in the same sector, concentrating on whether it’s thought the formula is working or not.

From authorship books

Keep in mind, when using the marketing books or books on writing techniques like this one, that it is essential to update any market information by studying current issues and checking names of current commissioning editors and their requirements.

Writer’s Digest produces a booklet, Writing for Reader’s Digest, which can be ordered from the company. A model of clarity and conciseness, the magazine’s hallmarks, it concentrates on the kind of language and structure looked for and explains the close collaboration undertaken between writer and commissioning editor.

From the internet

Note which market guides give updated information online. WritersMarket.com, for instance, gives constantly updated listings. Marketing features for electronic distribution is dealt with in Chapter 8.

Here are suggested headings for the profiles analysis. You will have one or two headings of your own, no doubt, to add to them.

A framework for analysis

Type of publication

Popular paper … middle … quality … general interest magazine … professional … business-to-business …

Frequency and price

Weekly, monthly, quarterly …
Retail price … subscription …

Prospects for freelances

Note which subject areas in a publication are covered by staff members or regular freelances. For example, note the bylines in several issues of a magazine and compare them with the lists of staff members on mastheads. In other words don’t send speculative book reviews to markets that have well-established lists of reviewers regularly commissioned. Be realistic. Where you do see an opening, send samples of your writing, preferably published ones, plus a c.v., to back up proposals.

Readership

Study the promotional literature sent out by publications to prospective advertisers and any other forms of market guidance you can collect (see that section above). Study the advertisements in a target publication and exploit the research the advertisers have used to make sure they are on target.

This research includes the various compilations of circulation and readership statistics and specially commissioned surveys. The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) publishes quarterly the circulations of numerous publications owned by member publishers. The National Readership Survey (NRS) calculates readership figures, which is based on the number of readers per copy, are about two to three times circulation figures, though they can be much higher for some magazines. Readership is socially described by a combination of letters from the group ABC₁ C₂ DE, representing kinds of occupation (and by implication spending power), from the top company chairman to the lowest earners and non-earners.

The advertising agency that fails to reach the target audiences desired by the clients for whom it designs and places adverts will be out of business, so much time and expense is devoted to the task. Whether or not the adverts in a publication individually succeed or fail to sell the product or the image, they collectively indicate the readership.

Readers of course talk to you out of letters pages, service, agony aunt, health and other advice columns. You see how the writers talk to their readers. You see the assumptions made about the readers underlying the editorials, the features, the general level of discussion, the pitch of the language.

What’s the average age range? Proportion of male to female readers? Educational level?

Main kinds of article

Travel … personal experience … think pieces … reviews?

Note average lengths: of articles, paragraphs, sentences, words. Type out a sample paragraph and your computer can give you the last three measures. You now have a good idea of the level of difficulty. Aim for a variety of sentence lengths, but an average of 15 to 20 words per sentence suits most markets. The counts for the first part of this chapter are:

Number of sentences	6
Average word length	4 letters
Average words per sentence	24
Maximum words per sentence	57

That long sentence has produced a high average of words per sentence. The average for the chapter as a whole is 15.

Treatment

What are the preferred treatments? Note the sorts of treatment – factual, instructional, humorous, use of quotes, anecdotes, illustrations, boxes, …

Language

Abstract … vivid … chatty … thoughtful … use of metaphor …? Note the house style of a publication when doing your market study as advised in Chapter 4. (It is sometimes available from a publication, and/or a request to follow one of the style guides listed on pages 397–398.)

Note in particular the language style that seems to be favoured for titles, intros and endings.

Structure

Note the way the trio of title/intro/ending provides a framework for article structure. Note any striking combinations, and the publication’s general policy.

Timelessness and timing

When discussing the pre-testing of an idea, the quality of timeliness was mentioned. The question is: is the time ripe for the idea, or has it been aired often enough recently? Indexes of article titles such as the British Humanities Index and the Clover Index will give you general guidance. If you propose a topic to a monthly magazine and the response is that an article on that topic appeared three or four months ago, you will probably be reminded, if the editor has time, that you should study the market before proposing. That means studying about two weeks of dailies, three months of weeklies, a year of monthlies.

Timing is the more specific aspect. When you have followed up in an article a controversy that has been raging in a publication and your effort has been politely rebuffed, it may be because you have not noticed that, while you have been writing, interests have shifted to other matters. Or it may be that while you’ve been writing there has been a change of editor or a change of policy which has suddenly made your idea or article less appealing.

In other words, however many issues you study, make sure you study the current issue.

Lead times for articles

Note your experience of:

•  time taken to consider a proposal

•  time allowed for the writing once a proposal is accepted

•  time taken between acceptance of commissioned article and publication

•  time taken between article sent on spec and publication.

Make notes on your experiences and decide when a reminder is appropriate.

Formula

Of magazine or feature articles policy of newspaper. Try to sum it up. Think in terms of recipe. What does the editor aim at in the particular magazine or newspaper you’ve been examining?

Keep a record of your dealings with target publications as described in Chapter 2. You may want to adapt the above framework on A4 page profiles of your targets, updating from your experience of them.