How to Pitch Stories to Eater Phoenix

Eater Phoenix is a local news site based in Phoenix, Arizona, providing a local perspective on restaurants and bars, dining and dining trends, food pop-ups and food trucks, and the business of food and drink throughout the Phoenix metro area and Arizona at large. It is part of the Eater network and under the Vox Media umbrella. Please read this guide thoroughly before sending in a pitch.

What We’re Looking For

At Eater Phoenix, we’re mainly focused on publishing travel-related pieces and local guides and maps. We’re always looking for insightful local pitches from reporters on a range of topics related to dining out in Phoenix and occasionally other metro areas such as Tucson. We are especially interested in working with those whose voices are often underrepresented in media and those with knowledge of particular food cultures that tend to be overlooked in local and national media landscape.

Eater Phoenix accepts pitches on the following:

• Dining and drinking maps, guides, and food crawls related to neighborhoods, cities, and cuisines in the metro area and in cities around Arizona.
• Reported features on local restaurants, bars, chefs, food trends, etc. are not a focus of Eater Phoenix but may be of interest to Eater Travel. More details on how to pitch Eater Travel can be found here.

Do’s and Don’ts

Writers preferably have expertise in journalistic reporting as well as a passion for the pitched topic. Because of limited budget, Eater Phoenix is very specific about the pitches we accept, which should be geared towards a broad audience visiting Phoenix or looking to find great places to try in their neighborhood. For example, a hyper-specific map of corn dogs would be less likely to be accepted than, say, a map of essential vegetarian restaurants (unless, of course, corn dogs are a local delicacy).

The site does not accept pitches regarding recipes, or food holidays, nor does it conduct restaurant reviews. Please note that we’re currently assigning stories two months out.

The author should expect to and must be comfortable with being edited in line with Eater’s editorial standards. Generally, we do not assign stories to people who are primarily employed by the restaurant industry with the exception of Eater Voices.

Plan Your Pitch

All map and guide pitches should include a subject matter with a clear angle for why Eater Phoenix readers should care (Read: Why the story is relevant to the dining scene in Phoenix? Writers are encouraged to read the Eater ethics statement to identify any potential conflicts of interest.

Some stories may not be right for our local audience but could still potentially be a good fit for our national site. Check out Eater.com’s pitch guidelines for more information.

Send pitches to phoenix@eater.com. Please provide a short summary of who you are and your professional writing background. In your pitch, we ask that you clearly explain your angle on the topic and tell us why you’re uniquely positioned to report the story. Please also include links to prior work. For maps, please include a suggested angle and a few locations that you would include.

Right Now Eater Phoenix Is Looking For:

• Local writers to create local guides to Tucson, Arizona
• Local writers to create local guides to neighborhoods, specific styles of restaurants and bars, dishes, and more in the Phoenix area
• Writers to create guides to local destinations around Arizona

We try to answer all pitches that come in, but if you don’t hear from us in a couple of weeks, feel free to send a follow-up email.