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Oct 30, 2020

Welcome to the first edition of Missed Pitches, a home for rejected ideas. Due to the high volume of submissions, only a few will be featured this week and the rest will come in subsequent editions. If you have not submitted a rejected idea, use this Google Form to have your idea featured here. Follow on Twitter at @MissedPitches

Election night pizza (by Mallory Carra)
How YouTube “Study with Me” videos feed the need for workplace solidarity (by Ida Yalzadeh)
Stealing from Baby Esther (by Jack El-Hai)
Pandemic Karaoke (by Joy Resmovits)
A profile of Raif Derrazi, the HIV+ bodybuilder (by Katherine Abando)
Freelance opportunities
Writing jobs
Writing contests

The following have been lightly edited for space and clarity.

Election night pizza (by Mallory Carra, mallory.carra@gmail.com)

It's a long-honored tradition in newsrooms for metro and politics reporters to get treated to and eat pizza on election nights. Journalists look forward to it with gusto. There's even a Twitter account dedicated to it. Pizza chains like Papa John's and Domino's also see bumps in sales on Election nights. Many outlets have done trend stories on this tradition, but I want to do the definitive oral history on Election Night Pizza. How did it get started? Is it because pizza is comforting and low-cost, or is there something else behind it? And how has this evolved throughout the years — especially after 2016's tense election?

I want to take a deep dive into the history, try to trace who started this tradition and why it's continued through the years. It would be a reported feature and I'd speak with journalists to investigate the origins this tradition — and why it's endured.

How YouTube “Study with Me” videos feed the need for workplace solidarity (by Ida Yalzadeh, iyalzadeh@gmail.com)

There are thousands of videos on YouTube that are upwards of 2.5 hours and feature people at their desks … working silently. These “Study with Me” videos have become incredibly popular for those too lonely or unmotivated to work alone, with some single videos gaining over 5 million views. How did these videos come to be such a popular part of internet culture, and what psychological need do these videos fill, especially in these COVID-filled times?

I plan to talk with some of the YouTube creators making these videos, as well as do research on the psychology of workplace sociality to make the case that these videos are a new iteration of the parasocial relationship that is central to what makes YouTube's platform so successful.

Stealing from Baby Esther (by Jack El-Hai, jack@el-hai.com)

I’d like to write about an improbable but actual court case from the 1930s called Kane v. Fleischer. Helen Kane was a pixie-faced and baby-voiced singer well known for her performances of “Button Up Your Overcoat” and many other hit songs, whose career had dried up during the Depression. Max Fleischer was the producer responsible for the Betty Boop cartoons, as well as other animations. The singer believed (correctly in retrospect) that Fleischer had based Betty Boop on Kane’s distinctive looks and singing style, and she sued Fleischer and others for $250,000 for the appropriation. When the case came to trial in New York, a series of bizarre and entertaining scenes played out in the court chambers.

Kane demonstrated her singing and showed the similarities with Betty Boop’s. The defense called in many of the women who sang Betty Boop’s songs in the cartoons, as well as others who sang in the same style, to show that Kane had no monopoly on the baby-voiced technique. (One of these singers delivered all of her testimony in Betty Boop’s voice, which she said was her normal way of speaking.) Finally, the defense presented damning evidence that Kane herself had stolen the style from an obscure African-American singer known as Baby Esther. Weary from hearing so many annoying voices in his courtroom, the judge ruled against Kane and his decision was upheld upon appeal.

Although it is farcical at times, this story has a serious undercurrent about the ownership and borrowing of an artistic style and the degree to which many different artists contribute to popular artistic trends. As you can imagine, a wealth of cartoons, newsreels, audio recordings, photos, and court transcripts are available to use in building the story.

Pandemic Karaoke (by Joy Resmovits, joy.resmovits@gmail.com)

I want to pitch an exploration of the world of karaoke, a type of business whose reopening is harder to imagine even as cities advance through reopening phases — because of everything we know about how COVID-19 is spread. Those early stories about choir practices that became super spreader events still haunt me. I would center it at Rockbox, an iconic Seattle karaoke joint — that's located smack in the middle of the area formerly known as the CHOP, this summer's protest zone. I've walked by a few times recently and it's been totally dark, of course, with a giant BLM painted across the window. I don't know what they've been able to do, and wonder if they exist as a business anymore.

If you're open to first-person writing, I could share my own experiences there, too. I would further broaden it out by contacting competitive karaoke leagues and other karaoke spots across the country, especially in New York, Nashville and Los Angeles. What are their solutions? One trend I've noticed: There's an online karaoke app that is fairly gamified that is blowing up. It started with a Filipino and Indian user base (the rooms are in many languages!) but it seems the American user base is growing. I want to learn more about their revenue model (you have to pay to sing and post songs, and then you pay more to level up and recharge) and see what I can glean about its founders.

Alas, one piece of karaoke that can't be replicated at home, no matter how good your tech is: Group songs. There's always too much of a lag for that.

A profile of Raif Derrazi, the HIV+ bodybuilder (by Katherine Abando, kabando95@gmail.com)

Prior to his HIV+ diagnosis, Raif initially took his symptoms as simply the effects of long days at the gym. After finding out he was HIV+, Raif took to practicing self-care — mentally, physically, and sexually — and offering what he’d learned through his social media platform.

On his YouTube channel, Raif is passionately open about his HIV+ status, his sexuality, and his bodybuilding journey. Raif advocates for the end of HIV stigma through in-depth discussions of his status as an “undetectable,” where the virus is non-transmittable via consistent medication. This is not often a distinction made in mainstream media.

With this profile, I would like to focus on the complexity of Raif’s identity — a gay man, a bodybuilder, and a HIV undetectable. As a fitness host for Plus Life Meda with 24k Instagram followers and 16k YouTube subscribers, Raif has a built-in audience for the changing conversation surrounding this often underrepresented community. HIV has a powerful narrative today, and Raif’s inspiring story shows what it looks like when someone lives a robust, adventurous, and healthy life, despite their HIV+ status.

Freelance Opportunities

via @Refinery29 (Oct 20): R29Unbothered, our sub-brand for and by Black women, is looking for freelance trending news writers to cover news, politics, entertainment and more. This is a paid opportunity! If interested, send pitches and resumes to stephanie.long@refinery29.com

via @PatrickLenton (Oct 24): Yo, NAIDOC week is rapidly approaching, and I'd like to reserve the majority of my budget over November for Indigenous writers, to cover anything in Junkee's wheelhouse -- politics, pop-culture, entertainment, etc. We pay $200 per article. Send me pitches plenton@junkeemedia.com

via @roxyleestone (Oct 27): Hey, religion reporters! If your focus is Islam in America, we are looking for article pitches @RNS! Send me a DM if that's you! Share with your network. Or tag someone here if you think they might be interested.

via @Amie_FR (Oct 27): Journalists everywhere: please send me your pitches! We are looking for stories around education / migration / post-colonial themes / if you can bring in the diaspora, even better. Please take note of our pitching guidelines before sending them over: https://fullerproject.org/pitch-us/

via @thewordsmithm (Oct 29): FREELANCE JOB ALERT @ PEOPLE! we're looking for a temporary replacement for a site producer as they go on leave. at least 8 weeks, up to 3 months (flexible) JOB RESPONSIBILITIES: edit the homepage, write/edit newsletters, help write/send alerts and Apple News notifications