Open desks

The Seventh Floor is edited by students at three high schools and open to student writers anywhere. The masthead is small on purpose. It grows one seat at a time, and every seat on it describes work that is being done.

How a seat is earned

Publish two pieces through the standard process: pitch accepted, documents pass, line edit, editor in chief clears it. After the second piece runs, the masthead votes. A title describes real work; a title whose work has stopped lapses at the next review. Nobody is offered a seat before the two pieces exist, including people the editors already know.

The desks

Seven desks, each one a standing beat. A desk gets a Senior Editor when it holds three published pieces; until then its pieces are edited by the founding editors.

Economics & Markets. Budgets, regulators, and the numbers institutions publish about themselves.

Health & Science. Public health agencies, drug and vaccine policy, and the research institutions cite to justify them.

Infrastructure. Roads, transit, broadband, and water, with what a funding bill promised set against what got built.

Labor. Unions, wages, workplace law, and the agencies that enforce it.

Resources & Energy. Energy, minerals, and the supply chains behind them.

Security & Defense. States, alliances, sanctions, and the gap between what a government announces and what its own documents record.

Technology. AI, platforms, and the agencies that are supposed to govern them.

Seats beyond the desks

Senior Editor, by desk. One per desk. Writes in it and edits everything that runs under it.

Submissions Editor. First reads, the three-week promise, the acceptance letters. The seat that meets every writer this publication will ever recruit.

Data Editor. Every chart, table, and sourced number, including the One Chart format. Credit lands like a byline; writing is optional.

Creative Director. The look of everything we publish. Credit lands like a byline; writing is optional.

Deputy Editor. The succession seat. An underclassman who learns every job this year and is first in line next spring.

What it costs

One piece every four to six weeks, edited before it runs. One edit of someone else's work each cycle. A thirty-minute editorial meeting every other week. The calendar flexes around exams and application deadlines by agreement; the editing bar does not.

How to start

Send a pitch to submissions@theseventhfloor.press: the claim an institution made, in its words, and the document you think tests it. We answer every pitch within three weeks. If you have a document and no pitch yet, tips@theseventhfloor.press is the address.