What Peoples Feed is looking for
Peoples Feed publishes reporting about named people who change what happens to other people: civil servants, doctors, teachers, professors, scientists, diplomats, defence personnel, social workers, vice chancellors, policy makers and anyone whose work visibly altered somebody else’s circumstances.
We are looking for contributors who can do one specific thing well: take a real person, find the document behind what they did, verify the number, and write it in plain English. That is a harder skill than it sounds and there is a shortage of people who have it.
Pitch to editorial@peoplesfeed.in.
Who we want to hear from
- Reporters with a beat and a district. If you know the health system in a state, the campus politics of a university system, the working of a state secretariat, or how a particular regulator actually operates, you are useful to us.
- Former or serving practitioners who can write. Doctors, teachers, scientists, researchers, officers who have retired from service, and administrators who understand a system from inside. We have rules about conflicts, below, and they are workable.
- Researchers and academics who can turn a paper or a data set into something a general reader can follow, with the DOI attached.
- Local reporters in districts and tier-2 and tier-3 cities, where most of the work that changes lives actually happens and where almost nobody is reporting it.
- Data reporters who can build and defend a number from NFHS, UDISE+, AISHE, NCRB, Census, data.gov.in or an RTI reply.
Who we are not looking for
- Content agencies offering bulk articles.
- SEO writers offering guest posts with a backlink. We do not publish guest posts, and we do not sell links. Please do not ask.
- PR professionals pitching their own clients under a byline. If you want coverage for a client, use Get Featured and say who you represent.
- Anyone offering AI-generated copy. We will spot it, and the relationship ends there.
- Writers who want to publish opinion about a person without reporting on what that person did.
The four shapes we commission
| Shape | Length | Minimum sources | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brief | 250 to 600 words | 3, all primary | An order, an appointment, an award with a citation, a result, a rescue, a published paper, a milestone. Stop when the facts stop. |
| Story | 900 to 1,400 words | 4, of which 3 primary | A decision with consequences, a controversy with documents, a programme with numbers, a resignation, an inquiry. |
| Profile | 1,200 to 1,800 words | 6, of which 3 primary and at least 1 independent of the subject | One named person, one verified body of work, one thing they changed, told through documents and numbers. This is the house shape. |
| Guide | 2,000 to 2,800 words | 8, of which 3 primary | How a system works and who runs it: how Padma awards are decided, how a cadre allotment works, how a vice chancellor is appointed. |
A profile with no source independent of the subject is a press release, and we will not publish it. That single rule kills more pitches than anything else, so read it twice.
The sourcing standard
This is not negotiable, and it is the main reason a commissioned piece gets rejected on delivery.
- Link the original document, never another news site’s version of it. The PIB release, not the story about the PIB release. The gazette notification, not the summary.
- Every number in your copy has its source named in the sentence or the one next to it. “According to the district health office’s 2025 annual report” is right. “Reports suggest” is not.
- Every biographical claim is traced to a document you opened. Where they studied, what rank they hold, what they won, how long they served. Do not reconstruct a career from memory.
- Wikipedia is an index of sources, not a source. Open its citation, verify it, cite that.
- Preprints on arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv and SSRN are not peer reviewed. Write “a preprint, not yet peer reviewed” on first mention.
- Never write “reported” or “sources say” without naming who.
- If you cannot verify a fact about a living person, leave it out. Do not estimate, guess or round.
- Never fabricate a quote. Every quotation is copied from a source you opened, with the date and place it was said. No quote is better than an invented one.
We will not accept: Medium, Substack unless the author is the subject, personal blogs, Quora, Reddit, ResearchGate posts, content farms, AI aggregator sites, unattributed listicles, “top 10 inspiring people” pages, awards from vanity award mills, or social media posts by people who were not participants. A post by the person themselves, their ministry, their university or their unit is citable, attributed with the date, and you should screenshot it.
Our full source hierarchy is on the Fact-Checking Policy page. Read it before you pitch.
The rules on writing about living people
Everything we publish names a living person. Before you pitch, read the living-person rules in our Editorial Policy. The short version:
- Never state an allegation as a fact. An FIR is not a conviction.
- No private life without public interest. Family, health, finances, caste, religion and sexual orientation stay out.
- Children are protected. Do not name or make identifiable anyone under 18 in a story about wrongdoing, a crime, a medical case, an examination failure or a family dispute.
- No caste, religion or region as a descriptor, in the headline, the body or the alt text.
- Never publish a living person’s private contact details or home address.
- Praise must be attributed or measured. “The Padma Shri citation described her work as” is allowed. “She is a legend” is not, because that is you, and you are not the story.
The right of reply
If your piece contains an allegation, an inquiry, a criticism of professional conduct, a number that contradicts one the subject published, or a third-party claim about them, you must give them a real chance to respond before you file. A written request to the official email address on the institution’s own website, listing the specific claims, with a deadline of at least 24 hours for a story and at least 72 hours for a profile. You send us the email you sent and the reply, or the absence of one, with your copy. If you did not ask, we will not publish the claim.
What we pay, honestly
The honest position, as at 11 September 2026. Peoples Feed launched in September 2026 and is funded by its owner rather than by an established revenue base. We are not in a position to pay rates that compete with established national publications, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
We pay a commissioning fee for every piece we commission and publish. The fee is agreed in writing, in advance, before you start work, and is specific to the shape and the amount of reporting involved. Payment is made within 30 days of publication, against an invoice. We do not ask anyone to write on the promise of a fee to be decided later.
We do not accept unpaid speculative work as a policy. If you send us a finished piece unsolicited and we want it, we will agree a fee before we publish it. If somebody at Peoples Feed asks you to write something, there is a fee attached, in writing, first.
We do not pay for expenses unless we agree them in advance. Travel to a district for a reported profile is discussable. Tell us before you go.
Write to editorial@peoplesfeed.in and ask what the current rate is for the shape you are proposing. We will tell you a number, not a range.
Credit and rights
- Every piece carries your full byline, with your name as you want it spelt, and a one-line author description that you write and we check.
- You get an author page on peoplesfeed.in/ listing everything you have written for us.
- You keep copyright in your work. You grant Incunation Global a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide licence to publish it on peoplesfeed.in/, in our newsletters and social channels, and to archive and syndicate it with attribution.
- We ask for a 30-day exclusivity window from publication. After that you may republish elsewhere, with a line saying it first appeared in Peoples Feed and a link.
- We edit for accuracy, length, legal risk, clarity and house style. Substantial changes are shown to you before publication wherever the schedule allows.
- We write the headline. This is not a slight on yours, it is how news works.
- If we correct or retract your piece, your name stays on it and the correction note says what changed. We do not remove a byline to distance ourselves from an error we published.
Conflicts of interest
Tell us before you pitch, not after we publish. You must declare any financial interest, employment, consultancy, family relationship, board seat, party membership or political role connected to the subject of the piece. Most conflicts are manageable with a disclosure line in the article. An undisclosed conflict discovered later ends the relationship. You may not write about an organisation you or an immediate family member work for. You may not accept gifts, paid travel, hospitality or fees from the people and institutions you are writing about for us.
Our position on AI
You may use AI tools for research assistance, transcription, structure and language checking. You may not file AI-generated copy as your own reporting, you may not treat AI output as a source, and you may not put confidential source material or a source’s identifying details into a third-party AI tool. Every fact in your copy must trace to a document a human opened. We ask contributors to confirm this on delivery. The full policy is in our Editorial Policy.
How to pitch
Send an email to editorial@peoplesfeed.in with the subject line “Pitch: [person’s name], [what they did]”. Keep it under 300 words and include exactly this:
- The person. Full name, exact current designation, institution, and a link that confirms the designation.
- The verb. In one sentence, what they did, and on what date.
- The impact. In one sentence, what measurably changed for other people because of it.
- The number. One hard figure and who issued it.
- Three primary documents. Links, not descriptions of links.
- The reader. In one line, who should send this to somebody, and why.
- The shape and length you are proposing, and when you could file.
- Two links to your published work, or two writing samples if you are unpublished.
- Any conflict of interest.
We reply to pitches within 7 working days. If you have not heard in 7 working days, the answer is no, and you should feel free to take the pitch elsewhere. We will not hold a pitch and use it ourselves. If we like the idea but not the pitch, we will say so and tell you what is missing.
What gets a pitch rejected quickly
- No named person, or a person who has been appointed but not yet done anything.
- No date, or a date that is months old with nothing new attached.
- No document, only a press release or a social media post.
- A profile idea with no source independent of the subject.
- Adjectives instead of numbers. “Renowned”, “veteran”, “legendary”, “pioneering”.
- A pitch that is actually a client’s PR, sent without saying so.
- A request for a backlink, or an offer to pay for placement.
Related pages
Last updated: 11 September 2026