How Wired assesses and assigns stories

Wired magazine has posted a tutorial on how it assigns and assesses story ideas.

It writes, “WIRED is a publication about change—about the ways science and technology are reshaping the world and what it means to be human. While the subjects of WIRED stories run the gamut from deep dives into the biggest tech companies to Hindu extremism to space food to true crime, every story has technology, science, or innovation as one of its key variables.

“The science fiction author William Gibson once said that the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed. WIRED stories are often about those places where the future seems to be welling up in the present. We are always on the hunt for faint signals of change that have the potential to become strong signals later.

“What kinds of stories does WIRED assign to freelancers?

“There are three main areas where we assign stories to contributors from outside our staff: Long-form print features, long-form online features (for the Backchannel section of our site), and online essays (for our Ideas section). We also assign a smaller number of freelance stories for our business, science, and service sections.”

Read more here.