How To Pitch: Pacific Standard

This intellectual mag welcomes 'dial-turning stories' in almost all sections

By Vanessa Richardson - July 6, 2012

The information in this article is current and accurate.

Circulation: 115,000
Frequency: Six issues per year
Special Issues: September/October will be the "California" issue, and special sections on "Energy" and "Education" are planned for 2013 issues.

Background: Launched in April 2008 by the Santa Barbara-based Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media and Public Policy, Miller-McCune magazine was originally positioned as a high-end research publication that proposed practical solutions to social, economic and political issues. Editor Maria Streshinsky, previously managing editor of the Atlantic, came on board in 2011 and decided to refocus the publication, starting with the name change to Pacific Standard. "In some ways, we're going back to the core of what the magazine was started for: a conduit to academia, research and primary source investigation," she explained.

The pub's target readers are university academics, as well as "influentials" who read the Economist, the Atlantic, Mother Jones and Wired, but Streshinsky plans to differentiate Pacific Standard by taking advantage of its California location and covering more of the research coming out of its top universities, including Stanford, Berkeley and CalTech, and the innovations happening in Silicon Valley and the West Coast. The new publication will also focus on the Pacific Rim, meaning any country that touches the Pacific Ocean, from Asia to South America.

"Our government, military and economy are all pivoting to the West, and Asia is our biggest financial and business story," she said. "We'd love to look at the work coming from the most innovative thinkers, those doing on-the-ground research, and how their findings will turn conventional wisdom on its head."...