I could/should have included this in my previous post on Baum, but I believe these merit separate mention:
- Successful assignment proposals for publications such as Playboy, Rolling Stone and The New York Times.
- Unsuccessful assignment proposals for Gourmet, The New Yorker, and more.
As Jason points out, New Yorker editor John Bennet called Baum’s proposal for a story about a Mexican government official (pdf) “the best proposal he’d ever read”. Some facts from that story:
One Mexican in ten lives in the United States, about half illegally. The wages they send home are Mexico’s third-biggest source of income after tourism and oil. In the demographic undertow of that tidal wave are 90 Mexican microregions that have been drained of men. Migration to the U.S. is as central to Mexico’s culture as it is to its economy.
Update: Dan Baum now offers a proposal-writing service and as such his collection of proposals have been removed. A real loss. Luckily for us, the proposal above (for a story about a Mexican government official) is still available.