Pitch Guidelines for Azure Road

About Azure Road

Azure Road is a digital magazine about conscientious living in travel, food, wine, style, and home. Founded in 2024 by journalist and editor Lauren Mowery, we serve readers who are confident in their values and taste but want help deciding which people, places, and products to trust.

How Our Values Work

Our coverage is guided by a set of North Star values, adapted from the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Every destination, brand, or experience we feature is vetted against at least three values, such as waste management, water management, heritage value, carbon footprint, and community support. On the site, these values appear as icons, so in pitches, please tell us which values your subjects meet and how you’ve checked those claims.

Pitching

Submit ideas using this pitch form. First review our North Stars to ensure alignment. Outside of trend stories or personal essays, if your story recommends businesses (hotels, products, etc.) those recommendations must meet 3 North Star Values.

We do NOT review pitches sent via email. Pitches that leave out the North Stars will not be reviewed.

What We’re Looking For in 2026

Travel

We’re actively assigning:

Trend stories on travel for solo women, women 50+, all-inclusive adventure, wellness beyond the spa, “Africa beyond the safari,” African city overviews (including Nairobi, Johannesburg, Cairo, Lagos, Accra, Dakar, and Stone Town), and other lesser-known places like Ten reasons to put Sierra Leone on your travel list.

We’re prioritizing:

Destination stories set in places where slower, more sustainable travel is not only possible but a priority, especially lesser-touristed regions and second or third cities (Marseille instead of Paris, Nan instead of Chiang Mai, for example). For popular capital cities (Paris, Tokyo, London), we’re interested in neighborhood guides or very specific angles (for example, vintage-hunting in Paris or clusters of independent, value-vetted hotels, restaurants, and shops).

Decision-making coverage: stories that spell out the impact of travel choices, then walk readers through better options – where to go, what to book, what to buy, and what to skip (for example, the best luxury overnight trains to book right now, how to choose an ethical safari operator, how to plan a cool-cation, or whether a resort’s sustainability claims hold up in practice).

Itinerary pieces (3–5 days) that are in-depth and built around locally informed experiences and suggestions (tell us if you live there). Every business in the itinerary must meet our North Star values.

Thematic travel built around a through-line rather than a country: rug hunting in Morocco; shopping for silk textiles inUzbekistan; collecting crafts from artisans in Oaxaca.

We are less likely to commission:

Hyper-niche destination pieces with very limited appeal and no clear service hook. City and Wine Region Guides, which are written in-house (the guides on the drop-down nav bar.) Hotel profiles unless extremely compelling. Hotels are largely handled in-house.

Culinary (Food & Drink)

We’re prioritizing:

Stories about ingredients, chefs, farmers, producers, food traditions and/or innovations that are relevant to a broad, curious audience. For drinks, we cover wine, spirits, beer, coffee, and tea. Think: Upcycled Spent Beer Grains Help Address the Global Cacao Crisis.

Service pieces and product round-ups that help readers shop, cook, or drink better. For example: how to choose an artisan mezcal, what to know about the climate-resilient grain fonio, how to support responsible coffee or wine producers while saving money, or the best sustainable seafood delivery companies. We encourage writers to seek out samples for accurate and honest reviews and recommendations.

Lifestyle (Home, Wellness & Beauty, Fashion)

We’re prioritizing:

Service pieces with tested product recommendations that help readers make decisions about what to buy and why – wardrobe basics, skincare, period care, home goods, and similar categories. We may include affiliate links but that doesn’t drive our selections.

Trend stories with a service section. For example, why vintage clothing stores are having a revival and/or how to shop for vintage clothes (for example, this Swedish shopping mall only sells gently used and repair-worthy goods.)

Mental health and wellness pieces about how we take care of ourselves in a warming, anxious world. Think: how to manage climate anxiety, how to make friends and build community as you age, skincare for women over 40, and meaningful wellness experiences and rituals.

We are less likely to commission (across all verticals):

Niche topics unless the story connects to a larger conversation (climate, migration, tradition, labor, etc.), or when the people/places involved are actively engaged and likely to share the piece with their communities.

A Note on Photos

Please note whether you have personal photos or can source from PR, the subject, or if we need to find stock imagery. A pitch without photo solutions will not be answered. Ideally, we need hi-resolution, horiztontal images (1500×1000). Stories submitted with vertical, grainy, or poor resolution images will not be accepted.

A Note on Rates

Azure Road is a small, self-funded publication. We’ve recently raised our rates since launching, but remain cautious with our commissioning given the shaky media landscape, shrinking budgets, and growth of AI. That means we can’t pay what we wish we could for every story, but we’re committed to revisiting rates as we grow.

Rates & Story Types (2026)

All rates are in USD. Final fees depend on scope, reporting load, and length.

Short service & lifestyle pieces – from $50

• Concise front-of-book style pieces, personal essays, and tightly scoped lifestyle or product notes that are lighter on reporting and more focused on reflection, observation, or a single clear idea, tip, or moment. 
• Examples in Culinary Meet Fonio, a Climate-Resilient Super Grain; Travel Quiet Evenings at a Dark Sky Reserve Inspire Hope; and Lifestyle Finding ‘Sisu’ On A 50-Mile Arctic Trail.
• Typically 400–600 words
   
• These are often commissioned directly and are not the primary open-pitch category

Standard digital features & service pieces – $75–$100

• Evergreen service pieces, destination explainers, and lifestyle or product round-ups that help readers make decisions about where and how to travel, shop, or live. These often include clear how-to framing, tested recommendations, and a values-forward lens. 
• Examples in Culinary Culinary This Oyster Vodka Is Helping Clean Up the Oceans; Travel Where to Stay in Lombok, Indonesia for Low-Impact Luxury Resorts; and Lifestyle The Best Black T-Shirts for Women.
   
• Typically 700–1,200 words
  
  
• Usually involve light research, possibly 1–2 experts or on-the-ground sources. 
• For product round-ups, we encourage soliciting samples for accurate reporting.

Longform, trend & analytical features – $125–$250

• Deep-dive reported stories and analytical pieces with multiple sources. These include trend features that place a destination, region, or movement in context, or multi-voice pieces exploring a key question in travel, wine, food, fashion, or climate-adjacent lifestyle. 
• Examples in Culinary Does the Greening of Fine Dining Solve Anything?; Travel What Does Successful Low-Volume, High-Value Tourism Look Like?; Lifestyle Passive Homes: What Are They and Why Is the U.S. Behind in Building Them?
• Typically 900–2000 words, depending
  
  
• 3+ sources, clear thesis, and service-driven takeaways for readers 
• Higher rates within this band are reserved for more complex, multi-source stories that require substantial reporting time

Columns (The Stay / The Sip / The Bite / The Gift / The Look)

Our columns are usually staff-written. We occasionally commission these for lifestyle, product, or culinary stories. We are no longer taking hotel pieces (The Stay has been our most pitched column.)

Use of AI and Large Language Models

We’ve started to receive drafts that read as if they were written largely by AI. We see the patterns: generic language, repeated turns of phrase, and very little personal detail.

You may use AI tools for light support, such as brainstorming angles, organizing an outline, doing early-stage research, or cleaning up a draft for grammar and punctuation. The final piece, however, must be your own reporting, analysis, and prose, and all facts must be checked against reliable human sources.

If a draft reads as AI-generated or relies on unverified AI “facts,” we’ll return it for a full rewrite or may decline the piece without a kill fee.

Thank you for respecting this. We’re commissioning your voice, experience, and judgment.