Write for Lampline
Lampline is looking for contributors in its four city editions: New York, Atlanta, Chicago, and Houston. The beats are Housing, Transit, Public money, Schools, and Climate, and the Music desk takes pitches for Music releases. If you know a block, a board meeting, or a filing system better than anyone, that is the qualification.
What a Lampline story is
Every Lampline story follows the same frame, called Street-Level Receipts. It leads with the change in a named place, with a number. It shows the paper trail: the records, filings, and data behind the story, linked in a Paper Trail box. It ends with what happens next and what readers can do about it. Corrections are fast, public, and dated. The full method is on the How we report page.
Who should pitch
- Residents and reporters who know a block, a building, or a bus route and can say what changed there.
- Students with a record, a dataset, or a meeting they have been following.
- Public-records people: requesters, analysts, and anyone who reads budgets, contracts, and inspection logs for a living or for fun.
- Photographers with cleared work: photographs they took and hold the rights to publish.
What to send
Send a pitch of about 150 words that answers four things: what changed, where it changed, the record that proves it, and why now. Or send a finished draft with its records attached, so an editor can see the paper trail before anything is assigned. Pitches without a record behind them are hard to use. A document you cannot publish yet is fine to describe; say what it is and how you got it.
What Lampline offers
A byline under your name. An editor who checks the record with you, not just the prose. The Paper Trail treatment, so your documents are published with the story and readers can verify the work. And a public corrections record: if something is wrong, it is corrected in the open, with a date, which protects the writer as much as the reader.
Stated plainly: Lampline does not promise pay, a salary, or benefits, and none are set. If a fee is ever offered for a piece, it is agreed in writing before the work starts.
Standards
- No anonymous claims. A claim needs a named source or a document behind it.
- Documents over vibes. If the record cannot be found, the story says so.
- AI use is disclosed. If a tool helped report, transcribe, or draft, the story and the editor hear about it.
- Conflicts of interest are declared up front: a job, a contract, a landlord, a campaign. Declaring one does not end a pitch; hiding one does.
Pitch
Pitches go through Lampline on Substack. Say which edition and beat the pitch is for in the first line.