A Call for Health and Wellness Writers for a New Medium Publication

Wise & Well is a new outlet for topical experts and journalists that’s part of Medium’s Boost program

Update Feb. 7, 2024: We’ve been swamped with inquiries from a lot of talented writers, and given limited editing capacity and the considerable time I put into editing all our stories, I’ve been forced to hit the pause button. I’m putting everyone on a waitlist to ensure I give proper editing attention to our existing writers. The call for writers remains here, so feel free to give it a read and send me an inquiry (per the instruction below) but expect a form-letter response noting our (hopefully temporary) pause on new writers. I’ll reach back out when we lift the pause and if I find your work to be a great fit.

In late May of 2023 I launched a new publication on Medium. Wise & Well is a health and wellness publication offering science-backed insights into healthy behaviors to cultivate physical health and mental well-being.

As an invited participant in Medium’s recently launched Boost Nomination Pilot Program, Wise & Well is a great opportunity for qualified health journalists and degreed topical experts, and other experienced writers from a wide range of backgrounds, to share their knowledge with the world and find wider readership.

Wise & Well writers are physicians, psychiatrists, research scientists, dieticians, fitness experts, journalists and other professionals

As the publication’s editor, I specialize in helping professionals and topical experts with solid writing skills improve their craft and better serve lay readers— that is, the vast majority of us.

I bring to the mix more than three decades of experience as a reporter, editor and media executive overseeing science and health journalism in newspapers and online (my bio). I’m now seeking to work with some of the best writers on Medium, to make Wise & Well a trusted hub for health and wellness insights and inspiration. I’m also eager to give back by mentoring emerging writers who exhibit raw talent and skill and could use a little guidance.

I also publish the Writer’s Guide newsletter on Substack, in which I offer weekly guides and essays on non-fiction writing, along with editing and coaching services.

Given the tremendous response from writers, I’ve received a flood of inquiries and am now accepting only a handful of new writers. So please don’t reach out until you’ve read this document, as well as our launch announcement, then do so as indicated below.

Under a mountain of inquiries, delightful and heartwarming as that is, I’ve got no choice but to be very selective. Nothing automatically disqualifies anyone, but proof of skill and experience is a must.

Writers who already have published work on Medium, and/or who understand how Medium works OR take the time to find out before inquiring, have a natural leg up. As do people who communicate way more concisely than I do in this lengthy post. :)

Why write for Wise & Well?

We have audience reach right out of the gate and are working on ways to promote great stories even more as we build the publication’s following and its group of excellent writers.

Boost: Wise & Well is an invited participant in Medium’s recently launched Boost Nomination Pilot Program, in which a select group of editors act as nominators of top-notch writing. When I nominate our best stories to Medium’s internal curation team, they will often get boosted (see Medium’s boosting criteria). A boosted story typically sees at least a few hundred views and sometimes thousands or even tens of thousands. Individual outcomes can’t be predicted, but it’s a great program to be aligned with. I do not nominate my own stories, btw.
Newsletter: The Wise & Well Weekly Newsletter promotes selected articles to all Wise & Well subscribers (you can Subscribe now) and engages readers with some of their own feedback, via insightful comments they post on our articles.
Flipboard: Your stuff will get posted to my Wise & Well magazine on Flipboard, which typically generates dozens to hundreds of visits into a Medium story (the headlines are on Flipboard, the articles stay on Medium).
My personal reach: I will also promote the best Wise & Well articles on Mastodon, BlueSky, Substack and elsewhere.

What we want

Our main focus is on two types of articles:

Original, well-researched and well-attributed articles about all aspects of physical health, mental and emotional wellness, and the navigation of life.
Powerful personal essays on physical, mental or emotional well-being, also rooted in scientific reality and with supporting information and links as appropriate.

In either case, articles should be insightful, contextualized by actual science, and engaging, leaning into actionable and motivational themes as much as possible. In the end, they should be memorable, or as Medium puts it: The story should enrich readers’ lives.

Articles can be of any length, though 500 to 2,000 words is a sweet spot for many writers on many topics on Medium. Longer can be great… in experienced hands. Just make sure each paragraph, sentence and word is necessary and the article is extremely well organized. (See my advice on how long a story should be.)

What we don’t want

Rants, unsupported opinions, unsupported or otherwise sketchy advice, clickbait.
Biased writing meant to insult or inflame.
AI-generated writing.
Product reviews or endorsements.
“Content writing” aimed to benefit from popular search terms (instead, tell a story, something we haven’t read a gazillion times).
Thin lists (any lists will have to blow us away, really offer something fresh and useful and adhere to all of the above guidelines).

Also, no pseudonyms. Your Medium handle (thus your byline) has to be you, and your bio has to provide an honest and tangible, if brief, snapshot of who you are. Readers deserve that full disclosure.

TIP: If you need further guidance on what I’m looking for and how to write successfully on Medium, dig into Medium’s Quality Standards for insight into stories they deem worthy of boosting and broad distribution through their human-assisted algorithms. I concur with it all.

Your qualifications

There’s no recipe or résumé to indicate who would be an ideal writer for Wise & Well. But here are some things we look for:

You are an established, skilled writer with a track record on Medium or in other publications or platforms. If you just started writing, that’s awesome! Keep at it until you’ve developed a bit of a following and have some reader comments to indicate you are gaining traction. We do not take on writers who’ve just joined Medium and don’t have notable writing experience to point to on Medium or elsewhere (we’re looking for months and years, not weeks).

You favor quality over quantity, as we do. We’re not looking for “content creators” who churn out articles every day. The quality we’re looking for takes more time than that.

We also seek at least one of these two qualifications:

Topical knowledge with professional experience or other qualifications to write about an area of expertise (think: research scientist; certified fitness pro; registered dietician; clinical psychologist, MD, etc.). If this is you, your biggest challenge will be to prove you can write for a lay audience. Your experience writing scientific papers is important, but the skill rarely transfers. But if you’ve been writing on Medium, and you’re willing to learn some journalistic techniques and/or how to shake the perils of jargon, we just might have a blast working together.
Journalism degree or equivalent experience writing on Medium or for professional publications, particularly in the health and wellness verticals. If you’ve got solid clips (and you know what I mean) you’ve got one foot seriously wedging the door open. I’ve worked with many great journalists who did not have a journalism degree, but have topical experience and have learned the tricks of this serious trade. Show me.

It’s your work, your revenue

We’re looking for your ideas. If you have a body of work and aren’t sure how you might best contribute to Wise & Well, we might suggest ideas that would fit your expertise, but this is your opportunity to wow us (and readers).

If you already publish on Medium, you may know how this works. If not, see how to write your first story on Medium.

If your Medium article is published on Wise & Well, you retain full copyright. We ask that you leave the article on Wise & Well for at least 30 days and indefinitely if you don’t mind, out of courtesy, but there’s no requirement. Similarly, we ask that you not publish the story elsewhere for at least a week, but there are no rules there, either.

If your article is included in the Medium Partner Program (which pays writers based on reader engagement, out of a pool of money created from reader subscriptions) you’ll receive 100% of the revenue that it generates, as you would if you published it on your own Medium blog. Wise & Well isn’t involved in that equation. I strongly encourage all writers to join the Partner Program — it’s a wonderful way to be monetarily rewarded for your work based on its value to readers, rather than ad dollars. But if you’re not interested in the revenue, you don’t have to join the Partner Program — the decision has no bearing on whether your article(s) belong in Wise & Well.

How to get started

Please make sure you read the “temporary pause” notice at the top of this article. That in mind…

If you think you’ve got what it takes to write for Wise & Well, and you have a body of work to show for it, and you appreciate professional editing and want to grow and improve, please email me at [email protected] and include the following:

The full url of your Medium profile, where we’ll look for examples of your health and wellness writing
Articles you’ve published on other publications/platforms, if relevant
Relevant experience, in a handful of bullet points (I don’t need your life story)
The sorts of topics you wish to write about, and roughly how often (there’s no right answers here — we just want to have an idea)
URLs of a story or two in particular you’d like us to be aware of (not required)

Reminder: If you’ve only been at this for a few weeks, hold off until you’ve established a solid track record over time.

Please do not send drafts. We don’t accept articles prior to evaluating and onboarding writers. Finally, note that due to the volume of queries and our limited capacity to edit, we’re accepting only a fraction of the submissions we receive. If there’s one thing we look for above all else, it’s an existing body of work that aligns with our mission.

Cheers, Rob