Documentary Magazine Editorial Vision and Pitch Guidelines

Editorial Vision

Since 1988, Documentary magazine has been dedicated to covering the art, craft, and business of documentary films. We produce thoughtful writing in a beautiful, tactile package that readers will treasure forever. We connect disparate communities of documentarians, highlighting field-building work and new initiatives that will create a more vibrant documentary ecosystem for audiences. We work hard to support new voices, from makers to viewers, writers to thinkers.

Documentary treats documentary as a practice, not simply a genre or a format. The writing we publish supports documentary practice that seeks to traverse differences and destabilize sameness. As much as it draws from an anthropological urge to render the unfamiliar familiar, it should just as much, or more, render the familiar unfamiliar.

We understand documentary practices always bear the mark of its makers, if not their presence. The writing we publish concentrates on documentary practice that goes beyond only the makers, even in forms of the first-person, personal, or diaristic. We understand that documentary practices do not necessarily depend on evidence or documents. The writing we publish recognizes that documentary practice, however, creates both evidence and documents. We understand that documentary practices are commodified and aestheticized, produced and consumed. The writing we publish acknowledges that the power of documentary filmmaking comes from both its production and consumption.

Documentary makes good documentary practices desirable and vivid. Our writing is detailed and precisely illustrates cause and effect. It brings business deals, craft mechanics, and genuine artistry to life. Documentary covers the entirety of the changing documentary landscape, delving into the art, industry trends, and societal impacts of documentary filmmaking.

Documentary is a quarterly print journal and weekly digital home for interviews with filmmakers, festival dispatches, news items, reported investigations, open letters, critical essays, trend pieces, legal analysis, practical guides for documentarians, updates from IDA, and other essential updates for our general readership.

If you would like to write for us, please see our pitch guidelines below.

Pitch Guidelines

Please direct all pitch emails to Editor Abby Sun at abby@documentary.org, copying magazine@documentary.org. Start your email subject line with “PITCH” so it’s clear what the email is about, followed by a brief one-line summary. For example, “PITCH: Interview with Director XYZ.” A pitch should be around 100–200 words. Outline your idea, mention necessary sources, and estimate when you expect the piece to be ready.

If you are pitching a piece linked to an upcoming documentary release (see this calendar of upcoming releases for ideas), anniversary, or other peg, please include any relevant dates.

All assignments are paid, so please do not offer your services for free. We do not accept drafts for editorial consideration.

Please note that Documentary operates with a small, dedicated team, which cannot always respond fully to the volume of pitches we receive, limiting our ability to offer detailed feedback on every pitch. Thank you for your understanding. If you do not receive a reply from us within two calendar weeks, feel free to take your pitch elsewhere. For print, we take pitches three-four months in advance. For online, pitch one–two months in advance. The calendar for the next print issues is as follows:

• December 2024: Vol 43 Issue 3, IDA Documentary Awards 40th Anniversary (Winter 2024)
• March 2025: Vol 44 Issue 1, Regulating Streamers for the Public Good (Spring 2024)
• June 2025: Vol 44 Issue 2, Summer 2025
• September 2025: Vol 44 Issue 3, Fall 2025
• December 2025: Vol 44 Issue 4, Winter 2025

We will not republish previously published works. We will consider previews of longer pieces (books, longform investigations, monographs, clip debuts from feature films) or reflections or learnings based on past work (“Why we ____” or “Five things we learned from ____”).

Please also feel free to pitch for any of our strands listed below:

• The Preview: Digital-only, capsule-length previews of upcoming festival titles. These curtain-raisers maintain film festivals’ spirit of discovery by focusing on exciting potential breakouts while remaining realistic about the festival’s status.
• Field Recording: First-person accounts from filmmakers at risk. Because of its truth-telling and evidentiary capacities, documentary filmmaking frequently puts its makers in danger. We hand the pen to courageous makers under fire for maintaining their practices and to illustrate how they fight on.
• Producer’s Diary: BTS production diaries. We ask established and emerging producers to give us a play-by-play of their successes and failures over the course of a specific project.
• Making a Production: In-depth reported profiles of production companies that make critically acclaimed nonfiction film and media in innovative ways. These pieces probe the creative decisions, financial structures, and talent development that sustain the work—in the process, revealing both infrastructural challenges and industry opportunities that exist for documentarians.
• What’s in My Bag? [aka Inside Out]: Photo and video spotlights of the setups that help create the stories of our times. We ask filmmakers in the field—and in the edit room—for your essential tools of the trade, and the essential accessories for doing your best work.
• Reality Ink: Book reviews of nonfiction titles concerning documentaries. We assign writers with firsthand experience in making documentaries to evaluate guidebooks, manuals, monographs, and other book-length texts that record how documentaries are—and should—be made and disseminated.
• Screen Time: Capsule reviews of newly released films and restorations. The sharpest film critics quickly summarize new films of note that are now available for the general public, whether that’s in theaters, as broadcast, on home video, or streaming.

Rates

FAQ

What do you consider to be documentary?

Documentary embraces documentary as a rigorous practice, rather than a genre or format. We consider covering any works that represent reality in time-based media. We have covered feature-length films, short films, serials, series, immersive works, video games, books, audio documentaries/podcasts, and more. They have varied characteristics spanning journalistic and investigative storytelling, personal or diaristic explorations, and collaborative and co-created methods. There is a wide range of nonfiction storytelling formats that we believe fall under the category of documentary; see here for our database of upcoming documentary films if you would like to brainstorm some ideas. (Note that not every film on that list will be of interest to Documentary.)

We also publish news, analyses, and opinions about how documentary films are made—and who profits from them. These pieces may have many formats, from diaristic points of view of a single maker, reported articles on an important industry trend, and critiques of business as usual to rousing manifestoes.

Will you cover hybrid films?

In the last decades, the term “hybrid” has come to denote films that mix nonfiction and fiction practices, especially when denoting more experimental practices such as animation, casting nonactors to play a version of themselves, and co-written scripts. In recent years, we have also encountered similar terms, such as “chimeric,” “speculative,” and “documentary sci-fi.” Our understanding is that many of these techniques are quite intrinsic to historical documentary practice, no matter what we call them, so we balk at pitches that position these practices as “new.” One can easily read Nanook of the North (1922) as a speculative fantasy or staged reenactment, for instance.

Documentary is interested in hybrid films that utilize documentary practices in a substantial way. For example, a “based on a true story” fiction film is far less likely to be covered in our publication than a film that restages a situation with nonactors who roleplay prior versions of themselves.

Who can pitch?

Anyone is able to pitch to us, whether you are a writer, director, academic, or publicist/distributor. Generally, successful pitches are those that can demonstrate access to their proposed sources, such as being able to provide a screener for a proposed film or an established connection to an interview candidate. Publicists and filmmakers are more than welcome to pitch stories and are advised to recommend potential writers to increase the likelihood of an assignment.

How can I make my pitch better?

We recommend that you read our archive to get a sense of the pieces we publish. We rarely publish straight reviews of individual films, and most rejected pitches fall into this bucket. It is also not enough to propose timely coverage. Accepted pitches typically include a specific angle or argument about a film, several films, or a maker. This frame should either match our editorial vision or challenge it in novel ways. If you are new to us, it is helpful to include why you are particularly suited to write this piece.

I didn’t get a rejection from my pitch, but you asked me several questions in response. What does this mean?

This simply means that we need more information! Don’t be discouraged by our curiosity, take it as a sign that we are interested in knowing more about the specifics or timeliness of your piece and wondering how it may align with the rest of our magazine.

What is the editorial process like?

Every piece is different, but we usually do up to two rounds of structural and line edits before publishing. Once designed, print articles are also proofread. For more extensive, reported pieces, we may conduct a couple of calls before drafting to narrow the purpose.

Can I pitch again?

Unless we wrote to ask you not to, we like continued interest in contributing to Documentary and welcome you to pitch again.