Features
Part of Magazine pitching and commissioning: a practical guide
Feature commissioning case study: scope change and the law
This feature commissioning case study follows a fictional assignment through a lost site and a scope change, set against New York's Freelance Isn't Free Act.
What to take away
- The editor buys a specific inquiry, not a conclusion the writer must reach.
- Fee, expenses, revisions, rights and kill terms are agreed in writing before reporting starts.
- A lost location becomes a documented scope changenew travel, new cap, new deadline.
- Payment follows acceptance, not the issue date.
- The writer checks the proof for factual error, not for house style.
Fictional magazine Common Ground receives a pitch about repair cafes. This feature commissioning case study follows that assignment. The writer wants to follow donated appliances after volunteers decide an item cannot be fixed. The idea suits an issue on product life. The first email does not yet show access or records.
What the editor asks for before commissioning
The editor replies with a short list. The writer must supply:
Pre-commission writer checklist
- Two or three repair sites, access status
- Public records and who holds them
- Central question in one sentence
- Scenes writer expects to witness
- Conflicts of interest, including payments
- Why this writer can report it
- Two or three likely repair sites, with access confirmed or refused.
- The public records that could set context, and who holds them.
- The central question in one sentence.
- Scenes the writer expects to witness.
- Conflicts of interest, including any payment from a group in the piece.
- Why this writer, specifically, can report it.
The writer confirms preliminary contact with two independent repair groups and names municipal waste records that could frame the numbers.
Poynter's guide to freelancing as a business treats sales, planning and payment collection as part of the job, not overhead. Common Ground runs the editorial conversation and the commercial terms side by side.
The written commission
The assignment note specifies a 2,200-word reported feature: two site observations, records analysis, and interviews with organizers and repairers. It requires a response from the municipal waste authority, one reporting check, one structural revision, and source queries at fact review.
Commission terms at a glance
- 2,200 wordsReported feature length
- 30 daysPayment after acceptance
- 2 site observationsRequired reporting
- 1 structural revisionIncluded in brief
It fixes the draft date, the fee, and payment within 30 days of acceptance. It covers approved local travel, kill terms, limited publication rights, credit, and the editor's name.
The brief asks what happens to unrepairable items. It does not ask the writer to prove that repair cafes cut waste.
That distinction matters. A brief that demands a result turns reporting into illustration.
When the scope changes
One site withdraws access mid-reporting. A stronger replacement exists in another city, but the trip adds rail fare, one night's stay, and two reporting days.
The editor does not slip the travel into a comment on the draft. Both sides sign a change note: new location, expense cap, added fee, three-day extension.
The Authors Guild session on legal rights and making contracts work notes that a publishing agreement can set a writer's income, rights and liabilities for decades. It covers freelance and ghostwriting deals alongside book contracts. The fictional arrangement follows that logic by amending the record.
The law behind the paperwork
Had Common Ground been a New York City magazine, the written commission and the change note would not have been courtesy. The city's Freelance Isn't Free Act, Local Law 140 of 2016, took effect on May 15, 2017. It gives freelance workers the right to a written contract, timely and full payment, and protection from retaliation. Violations carry penalties including statutory damages, double damages, injunctive relief and attorney's fees, and where there is a pattern or practice of violations the Corporation Counsel may seek a civil penalty of not more than $25,000. The rules sit in Title 20, Chapter 10 of the New York City Administrative Code.
Publishers have been held to it. The city announced a settlement with the media company L'Officiel USA over violations of the act in 2023, and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection announced a settlement with BuzzFeed over late payments to freelancers in 2025. A signed change note is the record that shows the added fee was agreed, and payment on acceptance is the term that shows when it fell due.
Draft, revision, acceptance
The first draft supports the main finding but presents one city's records as a national pattern. The structural edit narrows the claim and asks for national context from a suitable source. That fits the agreed assignment.
The editor accepts the corrected draft, records the date, and sends invoice instructions. Publication moves to the next issue when another feature becomes time-sensitive. Payment still follows acceptance.
The contributor reviews the final proof for factual change. The writer has no open-ended right to approve house style or layout.
Common questions
Is Common Ground real?
No. The magazine, writer, repair groups, locations, records and terms are invented to show the sequence.
Why did the trip change the fee?
It added time, expense and reporting work outside the original scope, so both parties amended the record rather than absorbing it.
Why did payment not wait for publication?
The agreement tied payment to acceptance. The delay was the magazine's scheduling decision, not the writer's.
Was the national context a scope change?
No. It corrected an overbroad claim inside the feature already commissioned.
