Defector is a sports blog and media company. They publish articles about sports, but also on a wide variety of news and culture topics.

They pay at least $1,000 for longer essays and reported pieces, and at least $500 for shorter pieces.

However, even if you’re not a sports writer, and never will be, I highly encourage you to read their pitch guide.

Why? It includes six examples of pitches that got accepted. Reading these pitches, along with the linked articles, is a wonderful way to get an inside view of the actual process for getting published in a magazine that actually has decent pay.

What’s not talked about in their pitch guide, but what should be very strongly thought about: The pitch still closely matches the type of article they published. This should seem obvious, but it’s not. An incredible pitch to the wrong publication will never get published. Pitch the right piece to the right place, always! (Well, at least try.)

Read their pitch guide here.

You may also want to read their freelancer policies, if you’re interested in actually pitching them.