How to pitch specialist health articles
With two real life examples of commissioned pitches
Health journalism is a popular niche within freelancing, which sometimes makes it more difficult for pitches to land. You might have a great story but it is competing against thousands of other health pitches. That’s where hyper specialising within health can give you the edge.
FFJ co-founder Emma Wilkinson is a health journalist who commands rates up to 77p a word but you won’t find her stories in the health sections of national newspapers. Instead she works for niche publications focusing on medicine and health policy, with her audience being health professionals rather than the general public.
Carving out this niche makes her stand out in a busy marketplace, and more often than not she has editors coming to her. But when she does pitch, her story ideas are extremely specific, meaning her pitch success rates are extremely high.
This week Emma shares two pitches which resulted in (well-paid) commissions in The Lancet Oncology and British Medical Journal. One focuses on the impact of radiopharmaceutical shortages while the other raises clinicians’ concerns over gynaecology waiting lists.
Emma explains how she found the story ideas and how the commission process worked on each one.