BackStory Call for Pitches – Natural Disasters

Hey folks. BackStory with the American History Guys is accepting pitches for an upcoming show. This from Jess: "We'd need pieces from outside contributors in hand by the end of May, and pitches that come in this week will have a significantly better shot at making it than pitches that come in later." Details HERE and below. Good luck!

-mia

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Ahead of hurricane season, BackStory's looking at a show on natural disasters: floods, tornadoes, blizzards, hurricanes, you name it. Some questions we're mulling over: why are some disasters remembered and others forgotten? How natural are natural disasters? And while we all love wild stories, we're looking for pitches that get beyond "this crazy thing happened" and show us something surprising about American society or culture. We're a history-focused show, so your story will need a clearly defined historical angle.

As always, we’re looking for features that have a couple key components: first, a story. Your characters might be alive, or they might be long dead. Either way, you should still have some character(s) with something at stake. Second, when pitching your story, think about ways to bring these characters to life. We’re open to re-enactments, experts telling the story second hand, oral histories, personal essays, and so on. But don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Questions we’re always going to ask are: What does this reveal about America at the time? Why should we care about that now?

For more information on what we're looking for and other upcoming show topics, check out our pitch page: http://backstoryradio.org/producers/ 

And here's the pay scale:

Please send pitches to Jess Engebretson at jengebretson@virginia.edu.