The Post Mortem: When Your Cold War Jazz Story Gets Classified as “Minor”

Sometimes a story you think is explosive gets merely a ‘meh’ from an editor

I thought this story was brilliant. I had a former Cold War dissident willing to be interviewed at home, with archive photography, confirmed sources, and a story about how Moscow-based musicians are using Cold War era tactics to reach UK audiences.

But, the editor said it felt “a little minor.”

And there was more, of course. They had editorial policies that I could never have known about, until I asked.

This may or may not be a great story, but sometimes rejection isn’t about how well your pitch is written, and more about editorial realities you can’t know about in advance.

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