How to pitch to BLACKSTAR Haus

What makes a good BSH pitch? Probably one from a writer who already knows who we are and what we're about, which is why we suggest spending a few minutes reading our recent work before you write to us. The site will tell you faster than this page can whether your pitch fits.

If you've done that and you're back, here's the rundown.

What we publish

BSH is, before anything else, a Ghana-and-diaspora exclusive editorial publication covering art, culture, and entertainment. We launched in 2025 with the idea that Ghanaian talent deserves the same global, culturally savvy coverage every other scene gets, and that's what we're here to do. A pitch about a Nigerian designer or a Senegalese musician isn't going to fit no matter how interesting the angle, so please don't send those our way.

We have five pillars: Sound, Fashion, Screen, Visual, and Society.

Sound is exactly what it sounds like (no pun intended). We're music heads, all of us, and our coverage runs the full range from afrobeats to alt R&B, punk to electronic, and anything that doesn't sound like everything else. The artists who make us drop everything are usually the ones doing something experimental: the R&B singer with a punk streak, the alternative rapper everyone will be writing about in six months, or the electronic producer blending different genres. We want studio visits, interviews with artists about to release, music video write-ups, and lists profiling the artists doing something different in Ghana or abroad. (Please don't pitch your friend's first SoundCloud upload. We can tell.)

Fashion is where the seasonal trend roundup goes to die. We want the costume design on a new diaspora-led series, the manicurist behind the hyper-niche acrylic style everyone's about to copy, or the stylist pulling vintage pieces for a stadium tour. We love a photo essay too, but please don't pitch one expecting us to foot the bill if you're not the photographer.

Screen is film, TV, and 2D or 3D animation. Introduce us to the directors pulling off insane concepts on a micro-budget or taking on highly anticipated studio work, the writers staffing the comedies everyone is currently watching, the animator on a Japanese team for an anime adaptation release, and the breakout actors on the big screen who are stealing every scene they're in. Reviews are accepted, but they're a hard sell. You need a take so good it makes us jealous we didn't think of it first.

Visual is sculptors, set designers, painters, and beyond. A gallery press release isn't going to do it. Pitch us the set designer building physical stages for the biggest pop stars in West Africa or abroad, or the digital artist rendering a dystopian London for a video game.

Society is cultural commentary with somewhere to go: pop-culture savvy, take-forward, ideally something we'd argue about over brunch or in a group chat. We want the essay on why afrobeats needs a real lover boy revival, the rise of alté subcultures, what parasocial fan culture looks like when it comes to Ghanaian artists, what the rise of the Christian girlfluencer aesthetic is really selling, or the VIP-fication of Detty December and what that means for the club experience and the social media recap. (If you're writing about December specifically, leave the traffic complaints at home. Everyone has heard them.)

The email

We sift through a lot of emails by title. Your subject line is the only guarantee you have that we'll open it. Please format it exactly like this: PITCH: [Your Name] + [Topic] + [Working Headline]. We know it's boring, but it's functional.

Keep the email itself tight. Five to seven sentences is plenty.

Start with a quick intro: where you are, what you do, why this story is the one you want to write. Then give us the pitch in three sentences: what the story is, why you think it's relevant right now, and how you plan to pull it off (including who you've already reached out to). Finish with a working headline, ideally a punchy one-liner, since that's the way we craft our titles.

If we haven't worked together before, link two or three examples of your published work so we can get a sense of your voice.

Here's an example of a pitch we'd commission tomorrow:

That tells us who you are, what the story is, how you've already started on the access, and gives us a working title to pin it on.

A few more things worth knowing before you hit send:

On access. Don't pitch us an interview just because you want to meet a celebrity and you think we have them on speed dial. The writers who get their dream profile are usually the ones who did the legwork to reach the subject themselves, so come to us with a plan for how you're getting through, or proof you already have.

On visuals. We sponsor the occasional photoshoot, but never without a plan. If you want a visual budget, pitch the photographer and the concept alongside the story, and have a brief or moodboard ready in case we commission. If you're proposing a feature on an artist, exhibition, or book, confirm you already have the press images we'll need to publish.

On drafts. Please don't send us a finished manuscript. Building the piece with you from the start saves us both a brutal editing pass, since rewriting someone else's prose into an already finished draft almost never works. Pre-written articles get filed under "not for us" before anyone opens them.

On timing. This should go without saying, but please don't pitch us something if you're about to disappear for five weeks. Make sure you have the time to write the piece before you send it our way.

On personal essays. We love a great one, but the bar is high. We're a publication, not a blog, and a first-person piece has to do something for the reader, not just for the writer.

On freshness. We're looking for things nobody has properly written up yet. If the take already exists as a full piece on another site, leave it for them. A tweet or a TikTok comment doesn't count as a piece, though, so if you want to write about something nobody has gotten to yet, bring it our way.

Rejection

We know rejection sucks. We've had our fair share of it. But getting a "no" or hearing nothing back isn't personal. Sometimes it just comes down to timing or budget. We try to respond as fast as we can, but please don't chase us after 24 hours unless your pitch is tied to breaking news. Sometimes we just need a minute to clear the inbox. Other times, we hold onto a pitch and circle back weeks later when we have the perfect slate for it.

That's everything. Good luck out there, and we can't wait to work with you. Send your pitch to pitches@blackstar.haus.