Pitching To Metro

As you may well know, Metro has recently shed a lot of its staff. Nearly all of those responsible for print-first editorial were let go, with those on the digital side tending to have survived. The casualties include sub-editors, designers, editors and contributing editors such as Laura Millar. Not only because she’s one of the loveliest people you could meet, it’s tremendously depressing.

I was told that any outstanding, already-commissioned travel features will be honoured and will run — hence those in recent editions by the likes of Teresa Machan and Patrick Welch — but that there was no budget moving forward for freelancers.

That about-turned, to a degree, when I was asked to do some regular cruising copy.  This is print-only as far as I can tell, and may very well prove temporary — its success or failure will depend on how much advertising revenue it stimulates.

Otherwise, though, there is unlikely to be any work for freelance writers. If you’re hoping for features, then, it’s best to approach Claie (no, autocorrect, it’s not Claire) Wilson, the new overall travel editor, or a fellow staff member — as it’ll be someone on staff who will be covering the trip, should they want to do so.

Cost-cutting and job cuts have long been the way of media, especially in print. In the travel sphere, we’ve also seen Suitcase close lately, and I’ve lost another regular gig due to a lack of budget at the publisher’s end. It’s grim, getting grimmer. But there we are: your job, I suppose, is to be sympathetic, to be on top of the latest news and, in Metro’s case, to exclusively pitch to Claie from now on. Send your pitches to travel@metro.co.uk