Submission Guidelines

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We’re Expecting Your Involvement, Your Action & Your Voice

The Daily Activist would love to receive your Submissions, but in order to streamline the process from Creation to Post, we require our submissions to be formatted in a specific way.

• Submit your blog posts as frequently or infrequently as you’d like.
• If you wish to contribute but are not sure what to write about, you can find a list of topics that we’re interested in publishing here
• No need to “pitch” ideas before submitting posts
• 250 to 275 word posts are best.
• A conversational, informal style is ideal
• Use hyperlinks whenever relevant
• News-driven, topical posts perform best on the site — if you have a strong take on a news topic, it’s better to post promptly, when your post will be fresher and more original
• If you’re not sure of the style that we’re looking for, please read through the articles that are currently posted on our site and it may give you an idea.
• TDA focuses on engaging topics related to Human Rights, Civil Rights, Social Issues, and Current Events. We seek to publish important topics within these categories in a way that is palatable to a mainstream audience. Palatability for us means short, sweet, and concise. We appreciate snark and humor when appropriate. We appreciate big headlines and tabloid writing style in effort to “lighten up” the heaviness of difficult topics for our readers.
• Our editors may include a “Take Action” feature within your post that will allow your audience to interact directly with the topic at hand. These features may include an “Email Rally” or “Donate” section allowing users to participate in an email rally or donate money directly to a third-party charity or organization in relation to your storyline. The inclusion of the elements of the “Take Action” section are at our sole discretion and the recipients of the Email Rally or Donation links are determined by TDA staff.

***Not all submissions will be published.
While we receive a large number of submissions, TDA currently publishes only about 10 articles per day. Preference is given to those articles that meet our standards, theme, and requirements. We must — and do — reserve the right to remove objectionable, inaccurate, or inflammatory material and, if necessary, suspend or revoke blogging privileges.


Disclosure: In an effort to be as transparent with our readers as possible, we require TDA bloggers to disclose any financial conflicts of interest related to the issue they are writing about. If a blogger receives payment or income from a company, organization, group, or individual with a financial stake in the issue he/she is weighing in on, that information must be disclosed at the bottom of the applicable blog post. 



Credentials: As a TDA blogger, you must acquire an official letter of approval from a The Daily Activist editor in order to cover an event for The Daily Activist. Without proper editorial approval, you must not identify yourself as a representative of The Daily Activist while attending events. To request a letter of approval, please email your editorial contact or email to info@thedailyactivist.com


STYLE GUIDELINES

We work as quickly as we can to post your articles. The most laborious task is editing. 
We can’t post everything, but below is what we check for in submissions.

Titles
Sample Titles Done in Poor Taste Removed for Content With our limited title space, we look for a working title from you that is very short, and eye catching. Subtitles are required and should contain some detail or overarching theme of your story.

Quotes
Quoting very quickly turns to plagiarism. Please cite who said what in the text. Also, keep in mind that using quotation marks is incredibly helpful to the reader. Block Quotes are quotes that are greater than 4 lines. Those should be indented on all sides.

Italics vs. Quotes
Please Italicize: Latin (language), book titles
, movie titles, 
newspaper titles (after “the”), 
magazine titles, 
television show names, 
play titles

Please put in quotes: “book chapters” 
“newspaper articles” 
“magazine articles” 
“tv episodes”
 “poems”

Embedding Videos
To embed a video, just copy the code from the Embed box. Once you’ve copied the code, just paste it into your submission.

Hyperlinks
We use hyperlinks to link back to the original article at the end of the written content and to link to various other sources or background information within the text. Use the following tips to make sure your hyperlinks are formatted correctly.

Within Text: Place < around> around the word(s) you wish to link to. Paste the full link at the end of the paragraph.

Original Source: Write “Read more at (insert full source name here).” Paste link immediately following.

Adding Tags: 
We use tags to link articles together. Use simple one word descriptions, phrases, proper names, or places. Examples: “Politics,” “Horn of Africa,” “Human Rights,” “UN.”

Photography
We rely on Reuters to source our images. If you own the rights to an image you feel would work well with a story, submit it along with your work and we will take it into consideration.

Sharing Your Posts

We encourage contributors to promote their pieces and send them around — many readers arrive at pieces on the The Daily Activist via links passed on from friends and other sites. Here are a couple ideas:

Email Lists: Send an article via an email to your friends and family.

Social Networks: Share your post via Facebook. Each Article has a built in “Share This” Feature on the left that will automatically share the article to numerous social networks.

Forums: Members on numerous forums have the ability to share articles, links, and content. Share your link via your forum

Blogs: Many blogs offer users the ability to create their own posts, or contact the author to share submissions.

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