Call for Writers: Menopause Matters

A new publication in Medium’s Boost program is looking for journalists and topical experts to share their expertise

On September 1, I launched Menopause Matters: Empowering Women’s Health, as an invited participant in Medium’s Boost nomination pilot program. Menopause Matters is an evidence-based, plain talk publication for women (and the men in their lives) to learn more about this major time of transition, based on science and facts.

It’s also a great opportunity for journalists, degreed experts, and experienced writers to share their knowledge and expand their audience reach.

Why write for Menopause Matters?

Boost: Menopause Matters is part of the 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.

Experience: I’ve been a health journalist for three decades, writing and editing stories on all kinds of topics, including women’s health and aging. I’ll bring a journalist’s perspective to your stories, and work with you to help hone your own writing skills.

Amplification: I’ll be promoting the best Menopause Matters stories on various social media platforms including LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky and Facebook, expanding your story’s reach beyond your personal circle.

Articles of interest

Menopause Matters’ main focus is on two types of articles:

Original, well-researched and well-attributed articles about all aspects of menopause, perimenopause and post-menopause, including physical, mental and emotional wellness, treatments, and navigating life and relationships.

Powerful personal essays on physical, mental or emotional changes and adaptations, also rooted in scientific reality and with supporting information and links as appropriate.

MM isn’t here to offer medical advice — but rather, to guide readers to reliable, vetted resources, encourage them to have more informed conversations with their own health care providers, and make the best decisions for their personal well-being. A treatment that worked for you may be inappropriate for someone else, for many reasons. So rather than a “try this, it works great!” approach, especially those lacking scientific evidence, a personal essay on how something like meditation or a change in diet worked for you, in your situation, (backed by science) is more appropriate.

Fads, “miracle” cures or unproven remedies won’t fly here, although of course, you’re welcome to publish those elsewhere.

In either case, articles should be insightful, contextualized and engaging, leaning into actionable and uplifting themes as much as possible.

Articles can be of any length, though 500 to 1,200 words is a sweet spot for many writers on Medium. Longer can be great… IF the subject warrants it. Here, organization and necessity of inclusion is key.

What I 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 I haven’t read a gazillion times).
• Listicles (any lists will have to blow me 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 Menopause Matters. But here are some things I look for:

You might be an established, skilled writer who needs little to no editing. Or perhaps you’ve got talent and/or training but are early in your writing career or otherwise could use some direction and suggestions. I’ll work with talented writers of all stripes who are willing to put on a thick skin and grow.

HOWEVER, You will have at least one of these qualifications:

• Journalism degree or equivalent experience writing for professional publications. If you’ve got solid clips (and you know what I mean) you’ve got one foot seriously wedging the door open.
• Topical knowledge with professional experience or other qualifications to write about an area of expertise (think: research scientist; OB/GYN; clinical psychologist, nurse practitioner, 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 writing for a lay audience is an entirely different endeavor.
• Tremendous passion and proven research/writing skills. If you’re not already a health writer or a health/science/wellness expert, this may be the toughest nut to crack. Good reporters and writers can often transfer their skills to new topics. Consider doing some more writing (ideally on Medium!) that incorporates all the suggestions in this post and come at me when you feel confident in your pitch. For starters, I’m looking more at contributors who are strong writers, with advanced degrees or practical professional experience, or trained journalists doing original reporting and sourced interviews; however, I’m happy to consider promising newcomers who know their way around a journalistic story and can seek out and vet clinical evidence.

It’s your work, your revenue

I’m looking for your ideas. If you have a body of work and aren’t sure how you might best contribute to Menopause Matters, I might suggest story topics that would fit your expertise, but this is your opportunity to wow me (and readers).

Important note: Writers are compensated via Medium’s Partner Program. 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 Menopause Matters, you retain full copyright. I ask that you leave the article on Menopause Matters for at least 30 days and indefinitely if you don’t mind, out of courtesy, but there’s no requirement. Similarly, I ask that you not publish the story elsewhere for at least a week.

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. Menopause Matters 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 Menopause Matters.

Before you submit

Submissions should be accurate, spell-checked and as typo-free as possible:

• Use a high-quality spell-checker (Google Docs does not fit the bill). Grammarly, Medium’s built-in spell-checker and even Gmail are all good (just don’t hit send!).
• Additionally, I strongly encourage copying the url of your draft via “Share draft link” and pasting it into a fresh browser page, then using the “listen” function to reveal clunky bits, unnatural-sounding passages, missing words and other mistakes that spell checkers don’t spot.

How to get started

If you’re ready to write for Menopause Matters, email me at [email protected], and introduce yourself (a few bullet points, not a full-on résumé). Like all readers, I have many things competing for my attention, so prove to me you know how to communicate concisely.

Include your most relevant education and experience (again, I don’t need your life story) and some examples of your writing (links are fine), even if it’s not 100% Menopause Matters-ish. I want to see that you’ve got obvious talent or strong promise. It should be a given, but treat the brief email like you would any important communication — write right!

Feel free to include in that introductory email a link to a story you’d like to see on Menopause Matters, or an idea you have for a story, but neither is necessary at the outset.

I prefer unpublished articles and will typically respond to pitches within 48 hours, often sooner. However, if you’ve published something to your own page within the last three months, and would like to submit it for consideration, I’m happy to take a look. I’d love to work with writers who will submit regularly, though there are no minimum requirements. The hope is to establish a mutually beneficial long-term relationship.

Once you’re on board, I’ll share more specifics — including information on how we can best work together and a publication style guide.

Looking forward to helping you reach a wider audience through Menopause Matters! — Liz

…

Note: This publication will be most relevant for people born with ovaries. To remain consistent with most current research and data, we will use the term “women”; however, we acknowledge that this term does not capture all people who experience menopause. There’s still not enough known about how diverse genders experience menopause, and we hope that the information provided in Menopause Matters will help any person experiencing this life transition.

Many thanks to Robert Roy Britt writer extraordinaire and founder/publisher of Wise & Well, for sharing his insight, documentation and permission to adapt this document.