Call for Stories: 25
The SCA is a global organization dedicated to engaging, inspiring, and expanding a sustainable global specialty coffee community through leadership in research, education, and events. To deliver this vision, the SCA produces a number of print and digital publications that report on, tell stories about, and critically examine the world of specialty coffee. We are actively seeking pitches from journalists, writers, academics, and other contributors of all backgrounds, especially those whose voices are often underrepresented in our industry. Specialty coffee offers a dynamic and powerful lens for storytelling, and we particularly enjoy hearing from writers whose interests, experiences, and areas of expertise originate outside of the specialty coffee world.
All accepted stories go through a collaborative editorial process.
What We’re Looking For
We encourage anyone interested in working with the SCA to spend some time exploring our previously published work in order to familiarize themselves with the type of stories we usually run, but we’re also open to exploring new types of insightful storytelling. Our aim is to provide contextualized plain-language coverage of coffee research, thoughtful reported stories, and insightful personal narratives that shine a light on the specialty coffee community or its work in some way.
We also recommend digging into our editorial guidelines and our style guide—they provide important insight into how we evaluate pitches when they arrive to editor@sca.coffee.
About 25
Named in honor of the 25 million coffee-producing families around the globe, the SCA’s biannual publication, 25, connects people from our specialty coffee community around the world through research, insights, and stories. Please submit all pitches for 25 to editor@sca.coffee with “25 Pitch” and the feature type, if applicable (see below), in the subject line.
Sustainability | Features offering a plain-language recounting or explanation of recently completed or published research related to the SCA’s sustainable specialty coffee agenda. 1600-2400 words.
Research | Features offering a plain-language recounting or explanation of recently completed or published research supported by the SCA or the Coffee Science Foundation. 1600-2400 words.
Insight | Whether business insights (market research, trends) or “lessons from a related industry,” these features are designed to offer context-driven insights and learnings to help us approach specialty coffee in new ways. 1600-2400 words.
Viewpoint | An essay or written conversation highlighting a unique point of view on a focused topic from within our global community. 1600-2400 words.
25 features are commissioned at a rate of US$225 per 1000 words. To pitch, please email editor@sca.coffee.