Bad Idea is committed to publishing new talent alongside established writers and photographers.

The best way to approach us is to send an email that (i) introduces yourself, mentioning any relevant past experience, (ii) briefly outlines your idea, explaining why it would be a good fit for one of the subject areas listed below, and (iii) encloses some samples of your writing or online links to past work (please ensure samples are no more than 1000 words long).

Please be patient with us. While we try to respond to all submissions, it’s often impossible due to the sheer volume of emails we receive. If we think your idea and writing would be a good fit with the magazine, we will get back to you in good time.

OUR REMIT

Bad Idea covers cultural and economic innovation – or, more simply, new ideas and their application. Our belief is that while the process of innovation can be unsettling, it is also exciting and necessary.

The panic caused by the global financial crisis of 2007-2009 has led to terrible hardship, but also liberating opportunity: a once in a lifetime chance to remodel Britain’s future, re-imagining its place in the world and our place within it. Of course many individuals and companies realise this already, and are seeking to profit from our evolving cultural and consumer habits by employing new technologies, business strategies and philosophies.

Bad Idea strives to tell the story of these entrepreneurs, innovators and thinkers; to explain to our readers how these developments are forging all our futures; and to become a leading information resource on the subject of change and innovation. In the process, we want to take readers on a journey from the ruins of the our economic present to the frontiers of an exciting, radically altered future.

COMMISSIONING SUBJECT AREAS

Please note that we are only looking to commission stories whose subjects clearly lie within one of the following five category areas:

HOT MONEY

Articles that put the financial services industry and world business under the microscope. Think banking, hedge funds, venture capital, private equity, new investment strategies, management, compensation, corporate governance, regulation, rating agencies and so on. What new financial world order will rise out of the flames of the credit crunch? Who will rule it and who will lose out?

TOMORROW PEOPLE

Tomorrow People is where we interview some of the world’s sharpest, most forward thinking minds. Articles will usually take the form of a face-to-face interview written as features, although we will occasionally run Q+A’s. Past interviewees include Shai Agassi, Chris Anderson, Niall Ferguson, and others; think visionary thinkers, entrepreneurs, cultural theorists and those who go against the grain.

CREATIVE ECONOMY

Destruction and innovation in the creative industries; newspaper publishing, magazines, book publishing, radio, film, television, videogames, digital media including Web 2.0 companies and social networks, fashion, advertising, marketing, and all the attendant issues surrounding them – funding models, digital vs analogue, distribution, new technologies, business models, etc.

SCI-TECH

Science and technology; web innovation, nanotechnology, biotech, cognitive science, mobile communications, computing, munitions, transport (road, rail, sea and sky), scientific research, and pharmaceuticals. The geeks and numberheads who would rule the world.

GREEN RUSH

Why the environment has become big money. Green technology, renewable energy, climate change, ending oil-dependency, Car 2.0, the future of political activism, and so forth. Where will Britain’s green future come from? Who will deliver it and who will profit?

FORMAT

In each of the above sections, we run two types of article, whether online or in print.

1. Reported feature articles, including interviews and ‘immersive’ narrative journalism. Emphasis on going ‘inside’ stories and offering nuanced, even-handed analysis with a contrary twist.

Approx 1000-1500 words length.

2. Opinion blogs – short comment pieces on current events and news. This could involve a writer discussing a specialist subject, an expert from a relevant field, or a credited ‘as told to’ interview with an expert from a relevant field (e.g. the editor of a video games magazine or a professor of nanotechnology). The emphasis will be on informed opinion and intelligent polemic.

Approx. 400-600 words length. Authors will need to supply a high quality black and white photo headshot of themselves, in landscape, to accompany the piece.