Got a great story to tell or photos to share featuring the people and places of Forest Hills, Van Ness, North Cleveland Park and Wakefield? Please become a contributor. Here’s what to do:
1) Email the editors with your pitch (not a completed article).
2) Once we accept, we will eagerly await your words or photos.
Each submission, if accepted, is fact-checked (yes, op-eds too) and edited to conform to Associated Press style. The contributor retains the copyright on words and images provided.
If your piece is time-sensitive and needs to be published in a particular month, it must be submitted by the first of that month. Otherwise, we accept submissions at any time.
Length guidelines: Try to tell the story in 800 words or (ideally) less. We’ll make exceptions for deeply researched and complicated topics. For photo essays, please submit no more than 12 images. They should be at least 800×600 pixels in size. We can easily resize larger images.
In addition to your article, we might also request a photo we can crop into a headshot and a 3-4 sentence bio to append to the piece. Become a regular, and you’ll be added our contributors page!
Some writing tips: The Washington Post’s guidelines for op-ed submissions provide some great newswriting insights too. The short version:
Keep a thesis/main idea in mind.
Get to the crux of your argument/main idea by the second paragraph.
Keep it focused.
Provide evidence and sources to back your arguments. (We love links!)