Submissions

Jewcy happily welcomes article submissions and pitches. Please send them to submissions@jewcy.com. But before you do, read the following guidelines for feature articles:

• Keep articles short: 1000 words max.
• Ledes should get us into the crux of the problem/argument immediately. Like screenplays, the rule for us is to start as close to the action/problem as possible.
• Pieces should be marked by their analytic rigor. Reader should step away saying, “Damn, that was smart! I never thought about THAT in THIS way!”
• But the analysis should be done conversationally. Pretend you're writing a persuasive email to a friend. Our pieces shouldn’t slog; they should punch. Active, short, declarative sentences. Good transitions. Precise, clear language. Avoid Merchant-Ivory sentences that begin: “Long ago, in the autumn, as the foliage began to turn…” Get on with it!
• Don’t use quotes. Jake Weisberg of Slate says: “Our view is that quotations are there often to thank the sources, or for the writer to kind of congratulate himself on having talked to the person. We try to keep things in Slate very tight and concise.” Reporters all too often use quotes as filler. It’s empty calories and excess verbiage. Quotes should not provide exposition. They should echo what one has already written. If a quote is used, it better be good and it better be lean.
• Immediacy. Something happens—and we instantly respond. We can’t pull that off at the moment, but we should constantly be thinking how to make each piece topical, of-the-moment, contemporary. Other Jewish mags bathe in the retrospective glow of our past, either celebrating, lambasting, or reinterpreting the Jewish yesterday. Jewcy, on the other hand, should antagonize the present, with a forward-looking view of how we might live and change and grow tomorrow.
• Relevancy. How does this relate to my life? How will this information change the way I do or think about things? What is the “Jewcy takeaway?” How will I put this information to use? As Malcolm Gladwell says, most of us are rich in experience and poor in theory. Jewcy gives you the intellectual tools, the perspectives, the framework to see things— religious, cultural, political, sexual –and make sense of them.
• Every piece must have an authoritative voice. The writing must express self-assurance, even if you're bluffing it. People don't want to read a lot of “Oh dear, this is so terribly complicated. I just can't make up my mind.” There’s a difference between having the intellectual integrity to address counterarguments in your piece and the tragic tendency to equivocate and “see both sides” of an issue. (We might even run a rebuttal to your argument the same day/week, so keep the doubt out of your thesis: we’ll handle that, or the reader will.) Let it be clear: authority doesn’t mean each article says, "I am certain that this is the answer." Our pieces will show a bit more intellectual turmoil, bringing the reader along not by sweeping him or her in a tide of certainty but by sort of conceding the points that the other side ought to get conceded, and then showing how you’ve reasoned through to your conclusion. But there should always be a conclusion, an argument, a point of view.

For guidelines on submitting artwork click here.