HARK! A sound doth bellow across the horizon! Is it the glorious bellow of a PRV V6, wheezing out the back of a DeLorean? NAY! It is the call for writings. Your writings, specifically. Rather than having you scramble for ideas, we’re going to give you some of our own. And we’re paying.
As you know, our hardworking staff aims to track down and tell the best stories in the world here. But sometimes our best stories come from the outside, not within. That is where you come in! We’re blatantly and shamelessly stealing the idea of Inverse Pitching from Ratter because it’s brilliant, even if it’s not the best idea A.J. Daulerio has ever had.
The thinking behind it is simple enough. We’re getting a bit tired of every rando off the street sending us their inane feature pitches which all inevitably end with the line “and that’s the story of how I tracked down and murdered every single member of an Internet forum,” and then demand five thousand bucks from us.
Instead, we’re going to tell you not only what sort of story we’d want, but also how much we’d pay for it.
These are stories we’d not only want to read, but stories we’d want to read here:
Fear and Loathing At Jefferson North: Chrysler’s Jefferson North Assembly plant in Detroit, Michigan, is where the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango are built. It’s also, somewhat more notoriously, a place where factory workers love them some good old fashioned intoxicants, both legal and otherwise. But that’s okay, because if you get caught and you get fired, you’ll just get re-hired again.
We want to know what it was like working at Jefferson North, and what the drug scene is like there. How prevalent is it? How easy is it to access? And how good is the weed and/or pills?
Price: $250.00
Show Us The Next Corvette: We here at Jalopnik have a history of getting a sneak peak at the next generation of Corvette, sometimes years before anyone is supposed to see it. We want to keep that streak alive, and to do it, we need your help. But we don’t want to spend a lot of money.
Now, we know what you’re thinking. “Sneak into a secret GM lab, snag professional-level photos of an early prototype, then wait 16 hours for the guards to pass before finally shimmying my way through the vents just to get out again, all so you can pay me the grand bounty of $6.52? Forget it.”
And you’re right! To ask all that would be crazy. Instead, we’re going to ask you to draw the next Corvette, using your imagination. Of course, some imaginations are better and more well-informed than others. We’ll accept all comers, and we reserve the right to post all entries to our website. This one only pays out, however, once the first images of the C8 Corvette are released. The grand prize goes to whoever’s drawing was closest.
Price: $6.52 (negotiable)
I Own A BMW Z1: The BMW Z1 is one of the rarest, and most coveted, of all the Bavarian roadsters. It also has the best doors in the world. Few of us have ever even seen one driving out and about, let alone driven one. We want to know what it’s like to own a Z1 and it’s sweet, sweet doors.
Where did you find it? How much did you pay for it? What’s it like to live with it? And how many shovels do you own solely for the purpose of scraping rabid BMW fans off your windshield?
We’re dying to find out.
Price: $200.00
This is the sort of thing we want to see this week. Next week, we’ll have even more. As your humble Features Editor, I’ll be taking a look at all your stories. Shoot them straight to ballaban [at] jalopnik [dot] com.
Happy inverse pitching.
Photos credit Car and Driver, AP, BMW
Contact the author at ballaban@jalopnik.com.
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