What Dough! IS:
Dough! is for the pop culturally conscious and economically clueless; the TikTok fluent and Excel inept. We publish stories about crypto-schemes popping up in Williamsburg, how Kristen Stewart's on-screen gayness may or may not forecast a looming recession, and other hyper-specific contemporary economic indicators and trends. It's kind of like The Economist, but if its editors didn’t know how to do their taxes.
What it IS NOT:
Dough! is not a hub for the chronically “downtown.” It is not trying to make finance cool, in fact, quite the opposite. It, frankly, does not care who’s who on Wall Street, although it does indulge in a bit of gossip every once in a while. Dough! isn’t trying to bring more VCs or tech leaders into the mix, because we believe the common man’s economic tussle has just as much value. We don’t want anything that assumes the reader already has an understanding of macroeconomics; personal finance how-tos; Twitter outrage recaps; performative concern about The Youth; stock market play-by-plays; thoughtless anti-capitalism; term papers masquerading as thinkpieces; or deep dives into crypto—unless they’re funny.
Our Style:
We like to cover the economy the way people actually experience it: through rent hikes, celebrity sports gambling, and eggflation. We want sharp but not smug; irreverent but not flippant; informed but never condescending. We believe economic stories are culture stories, and culture stories are economic stories—whether it’s the financial aftershocks of Trump’s tariffs on Kendalls Jenner’s bottomline or why every new restaurant in Brooklyn is a “wine bar with small plates.”
Pitch and Submission Guidelines
Guidelines for Print Features
- Know Dough! Make sure that the story you want to tell fits with Dough!’s voice and perspective.
- Know our audience. We distribute in cafes, bookstores, and community sites around New York City. We love well-reported stories that interest both New Yorkers and the wider world.
- Make sure the story hasn’t already been done—by us, or someone else.
- Our content leans evergreen, but if your story does have a timely peg, please mention it!
- Give us a proof of concept. Let us in on your reporting plan. Tell us who you are going to talk to (without exposing your sources), what you are going to ask them, and whatever else you might do to enrich your story.
- Keep your pitch concise. Print features will run around 1200 words. Make sure you can tell your story in this many words, and adjust your pitch accordingly.
- And finally, tell us why you are the right person to be telling this story.
- We love working with emerging writers, but do share links to published work if you have any.
Guidelines for Fiction
- We accept short fiction up to 1000 words for our print newsletter.
- Unlike pitching for a print feature, please only pitch us when you already have a draft ready to go. We want to read your story.
- We will be assessing your pitch for the originality of the idea and the way your writing makes us feel.
- Because we’re a magazine about the economy, your story needs an economic angle—however you choose to interpret it.
What we don’t want:
Visual submissions (i.e., illustration photography or art pieces) Media Reviews Q&A’s
What we do want:
Well-reported stories that connect the micro to the macro. What’s the deal with caviar bumps in Brooklyn? How’s your local chicken wings joint bringing down inflation? Personal essays that connect the personal to the political-economic. Has being a stripper given you a sense of a looming recession? What did speed dating show you about economies of intimacy? Op-eds and close reads. Are vampires at the cinema a sign we’re all horny for the apocalypse?
We look forward to reading!