Mekong Independent publishes freelance articles about stories affecting people in Southeast Asia. Please reach out to editor@mekongindependent.com if you have an article pitch! Our goal is to support the work of journalists in the region, who are facing many challenges.
Include your specific topic, planned format (article length, visuals, feature style, etc.), what work you’ll need to do (field reporting, interviews, research), an assessment of your safety, and why you think it’s important.
You can keep it short — just one or two paragraphs touching on these points.
If you want to investigate something big, that’s great. If it’s something smaller and important only to a local community, that’s also great.
- We’re especially interested in issues that fall through the gaps, such as marginalized groups or cover-ups.
- We’re not so interested in doubling up on stories that are already being covered elsewhere. This is so we can better support under-reported stories.
- As much as possible, we want to try to tell something genuinely new, not something we already know or could guess.
- We’re also supportive of journalists trying new things. If there’s something a little outside-the-box, we’ll try to help you do it.
We’re currently looking to raise money so we can increase our rates. For now, we’re paying $250 for a feature article of around 1,000-2,000 words, and we’ll cover travel expenses on top. We can pay more for an investigation, or less for a smaller news update.
Please avoid using AI for writing pitches and articles. We don’t mind seeing typos or grammatical imperfections. We need to be able to communicate with you directly, and need to know that you’ve put thought into every word.