Here’s everything you need to get started writing for us
This webpage contains everything you need to know about contributing to the site. Take some time to digest the information on this page, and if you have any questions at all after reading, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me (Beth) on [email protected]
- Make sure you login to our WordPress site at www.indiependent.co.uk/login and change the password that was shared with you in your acceptance email to something more memorable. If it doesn’t work then email Beth ([email protected]) and she can reset it manually for you. Please note: the password reset link option does not work so enter a new password manually
- Fill in this spreadsheet with links to your social media accounts—this is so that when you’ve written your first piece for us, the editorial team can quickly find your account and tag you in your work. Add which sections you are interested in being added to the mailing lists for – you can sign up to as many as you like. Please note: it’s alphabetical, so insert a new row in the right place
- Follow/like all of our social media pages so that you can see when your work is live and also engage with the work produced by the rest of the team—we’re on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, SoundCloud and TikTok. Better still, invite your friends/family members to like them too so they can keep up with your work!
- Read all the information on this page and confirm that you agree to follow the contributor behaviour expectations (outlined below) via the acknowledgement form. You won’t be able to get a pitch commissioned until you’ve signed the contributor terms.
Table of Contents
Contributor behaviour expectations
The Indiependent is run entirely by volunteers—unfortunately the site doesn’t make enough money for us to be able to compensate editors for their work. We’ve put together the following set of behaviour expectations to ensure that the editorial process is as streamlined as possible.
Not following the style guide or repeatedly submitting work with the same errors might not seem like a big deal, but when everyone doesn’t follow editorial guidance it makes the whole editing process much longer than it needs to be—and crucially, it means it’ll take us longer to publish your work, too.
Here are our expectations of you:
- You will work within the word counts and deadlines assigned to you at the commissioning stage—if you wish to discuss a word count or deadline extension, please contact us via email well in advance of your deadline to discuss
- All work commissioned by The Indiependent will be published on our site—you should not pull your piece after we’ve given your pitch the green light and self-publish or take it to another outlet (especially if we’ve taken the time to give you feedback on your work—this is rude and unprofessional)
- You will adhere to the style guide with each piece you write for us. It can be downloaded from the button below, but we also recommend saving it to your bookmarks so that it’s easily accessible.
- You will run your work through a spellchecker before submitting for editing—you should write in word-processing software with spellchecking functionality e.g. Word, Google Docs, not the WordPress dashboard. Use a browser extension like Grammarly if you know your spelling is not great.
- You will proofread your own work before submitting it on WordPress or emailing it to an editor for feedback—we recommend reading it out loud to yourself and/or printing a copy out to check for easily avoidable phrasing problems/typos.
- If submitting straight to WordPress, you will notify us via email when you have submitted your work.
- You will be professional (and hopefully friendly) in your communication with editors.
- You will take editorial feedback on board—if you’ve never been edited before, it is easy to feel like feedback is personal/a comment on your ability as a writer. It never is—our job as editors is just to help your work be the best it can possibly be! Our goal is to help you develop and improve as writers with each piece you write.
- You will only contact editors on the email addresses listed below or by replying directly to an email — you will not direct message editors on any other social media apps. This helps us strike a work life balance!
If you do not meet our expectations in these areas, you will be given a warning by the relevant section editor. After three warnings, you will be contacted by Beth, who will inform you that we will be removing you as a contributor. All work published will remain on the site, with your bylines remaining in the form of the ‘Words by’ credit at the bottom of the article.
If you have any questions regarding these expectations, please contact us: [email protected]
Our commitment to you
As editors we will:
- Respond to your pitches in a timely fashion—even if it’s a no, we’ll tell you why. Please note: feel free to follow-up within 48-hours on news and live reviews (between Mon-Fri), but leave it at least 5 working days before following up on non-time-sensitive pieces
- Give prompt feedback on any commissioned work submitted to our email address
- Consult you about any substantial amends required to your work—we’ll make minor edits without consulting you, but we encourage you to make major edits yourself to ensure your work remains in your own voice. If you are ever unhappy about the editorial process, please talk to us.
- Publish any articles submitted on WordPress (upon receipt of an email from you telling us you’ve submitted your work) promptly if it’s time-sensitive (news/live reviews/anniversary features) OR giving you an indication of when we plan to publish it if it is not time-sensitive (most features).
- The only reasonable grounds you have to challenge an editor’s edit is if it i) significantly changes your opinion/personal experience or ii) if it introduces inaccuracy into the piece. We are happy to discuss changes with you, but our word is final. We have the right to refuse to publish your work if we feel it is not up to our editorial standards.
- Sometimes there may be a delay in publishing your piece because we have lots of other content to publish that was submitted before your work—it’s in no one’s interest for us to publish it all at the same time as your work is less likely to get read if we do. An editor will sometimes ‘schedule’ your content for the following day/a few days later—in this instance we will make sure you are informed of when the piece is expected to go live.
- Again, The Indiependent is run by volunteers so we will always try and get your work up as soon as we can, but please appreciate that none of us do this full time. If you feel an editor is not following the above commitments, please email Beth: [email protected]
We’re sorry for the serious nature of these T&Cs. While we’re really excited to have grown so substantially, we have reached a level where it is important for us to implement this policy as a means of ensuring i) our output remains high quality ii) contributing to the site is a mutually rewarding process for both contributors/editors and iii) editors can give everyone’s work the attention it deserves. One person who refuses to comply with these guidelines can take valuable editorial time away from contributors who are polite, and submit clean, high-quality copy.
If you’ve read this information and agree to our terms, please indicate by filling in the form below. Once we’ve received your acknowledgement, we’ll add you to the mailing lists for your chosen sections and you can get stuck into writing your first piece for us! We can’t wait to see what you come up with.
The Style Guide - aka The Bible
Most major publications and newspapers have a Style Guide and The Indiependent is no different. Not only does having a Style Guide make editors’ lives easier (and mean your articles get posted sooner) but having a consistent style of writing and formatting articles things makes us—and you—look way more professional. Make sure you’ve downloaded the Style Guide from the button opposite and had a read in advance of writing your first piece.
See the contributor expectations above: If you repeatedly fail to adhere to the style guide or follow your assigned wordcount it could result in your work not getting published, and you being removed from the site.
Contributor Declaration
What happens now?
Now for the exciting part. It’s time to get writing your first piece for the site. You can do this by:
- Claiming one of the items offered up for review by an editor. To do this, all you need to do is reply to the email with the opportunity in expressing interest, and add a note to say this is your first post for the site. This is a great option if you don’t have any ideas of your own at this stage, but want to get stuck into writing and get some feedback on your work. Write the piece, and send it to the relevant editor via email if you’d like some feedback. Otherwise, upload straight to WordPress and give the editor a heads up via email when you’ve submitted it.
- Pitching an original idea to the relevant section editors. If you’ve already got loads of ideas of your own, then take some time to figure out what your piece is about, what the main arguments are, or whether you need to arrange any interviews before reaching out to the relevant section editor with a pitch via email. Their contact details are below, with some helpful tips for pitching.
The pitching process
Contact details
If you have your own idea for a piece you want to write an article for The Indiependent, you should email the relevant section using the correct email address from the list opposite with an outline of your idea.
Who should you pitch to?
You should email your idea to the most relevant section editor. If there is more than one area of the site that your piece would fit, choose the most appropriate section e.g. if it’s a Film News piece about a book adaptation, you would email the Film section, not the Books section. If an editor feels your pitch is a better fit for another section, they’ll reply and let you know.
What do you have to include in a pitch?
Try and answer the three questions:
- What is the piece about? For some pitches your email will be as simple as “I want to review the new Kelly Clarkson album which is out on X date, is this OK?”, but for other pitches you will need to expand on your idea and explain your argument. For instance, rather than saying “I want to write an article about feminism” you need to specify what feminist issue you want to discuss e.g. women’s unpaid domestic labour burden during COVID-19
- Why now? What makes this subject timely or relevant—has it been in the news recently? Is your piece linked to the time of year e.g. Christmas or Fresher’s Week? Or is it more of an ‘evergreen’ feature e.g. a listicle about the best songs by The Rolling Stones that would continue to bring traffic to the site over time? If the latter, why would this piece interest our readers (mostly young people)?
- Why you? Why does your opinion matter—do you have personal experience of the issue you’re talking about? Have you got specialist knowledge on this topic e.g. a History or Politics degree? Do you have access to a particular source? This question doesn’t always need to be answered in the case of reviews, it’s more for opinion pieces—but if you have direct access to a band you are pitching a review of, definitely let the editor know as we would love to run an interview too!
If you still aren’t sure what makes a good pitch, we can recommend the following resources:
- https://www.journoresources.org.uk/here-are-a-load-of-successful-journalism-pitches-to-help-you-with-yours/
- https://www.journoresources.org.uk/pitch-freelance-editor-what-i-want/
- https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/10/how-to-successfully-pitch-the-new-york-times-or-well-anyone-else/
As a matter of courtesy, if you are also pitching the piece to other outlets, we would ask that you let us know that the piece is being offered elsewhere. Feel free to put ‘URGENT’ in the subject line if you are going to offer it elsewhere if we don’t reply quickly.
Once you have written and sent your pitch, the relevant editor will come back and either tell you to go ahead and write the piece (hopefully with some tips and tricks of where to take the piece if it’s a feature), or they will reject the pitch. Pitch rejections usually happen when you haven’t answered the questions above so your idea doesn’t seem very well thought through, or when someone else has already written/is currently working on a piece that’s a little too similar.
We welcome opinion pieces on the same issue e.g. Black Lives Matter, but you definitely need to have a different angle for the piece to be commissioned.
PLEASE NOTE
The Indiependent is a welcoming and inclusive space and we will not commission any piece that promotes intolerance or hatred. We acknowledge our own privilege, and are committed to providing space to marginalised voices. If an issue relates to Black Lives Matter then we would always expect white writers to give the editorial space to a Black/POC contributor. Same goes for LGBTQ+ issues—straight, cis contributors are welcome to pitch on these issues as an ally, but please note that priority will be given to LGBTQ+ voices.
This comes back to the ‘Why you?’ question: if you have lived experience as a minority, please make this clear in your pitch to an editor and your voice will be prioritised over other pitches, even if they came in sooner.
Music – [email protected]
Film – [email protected]
TV – [email protected]
Gaming – [email protected]
Books – [email protected]
Theatre – [email protected]
Opinion (World Affairs, Politics) – [email protected]
Lifestyle – [email protected]
My pitch has been accepted - what now?
You’ve volunteered to write an item that was included in a section email opportunity list, or you’ve pitched your own idea and it’s been commissioned—well done! Getting started might seem a little daunting, so we’ve put together some tips and tricks to help you out.
Do your research
Part of being a good writer is being a good reader. This means if you’re thinking of engaging with a topic that has been in the news you should read as much as you can around the issue before you start to write. Feel free to make notes but don’t plagiarise from other sources—an editor will be able to tell if you’re lifting whole chunks of a review from a well-known outlet.
Don’t rush, but be timely
It looks good if we can get opinion features live on our website as close as possible to the date of the topical event you are discussing, but it’s more important that you structure your argument coherently and link to external articles which have informed your opinion, otherwise your article is in danger of reading like an ill-informed rant.
For other articles, such as live or theatre reviews, time is a more pressing concern. We aim to get live reviews on our site within 48 hours of the event. The reason we do this is to ensure our content is as relevant as possible, and also to show PR firms that we are reliable. This means they will be more likely to give us press passes for events in the future. But more on that later.
Re-visit your choice of language
We’ve published over 5000 articles since we started The Indiependent in 2014. By now we can definitely tell who has put a lot of thought into their work. If you’re rushing to submit a review you forgot that you’d agreed to write then chances are you’ll probably use the same adjective more than once. We’re not saying that your reviews should read like you’ve swallowed a thesaurus, but it is important that you read through your work and ask yourself if every word is working as hard as it could be. For example, “The gig was very exciting” is a very bland statement. Even just “The gig was very atmospheric” is a marked improvement. But better still is showing your audience that the gig was atmospheric through your use of language. See the next point…
Be creative with structure
If you are reviewing your favourite band in concert, it is very easy to work your way through the setlist and say “This song was good” “This song was mediocre” “This song fell flat”. But this is quite a predictable and unimaginative way of writing. It’s better to capture your audience’s attention from the off. For example, start at the moment where the lead singer has got off the stage and has come to stand amongst the audience for an acoustic rendition of one of their most popular tracks. If there is a fight in the middle of the gig and Matt Healy’s autotuned voice shouted “Oi! No fucking fighting at my gig!”, start with that: these things are what sets your experience apart from other gigs on the tour.
Proofread your articles
It’s amazing how many typos and clunky phrases you miss when you’re in a rush. We recommend leaving your article for a couple of hours after writing, before coming back to do a final proofread before sending to an editor for feedback or uploading to WordPress (don’t worry, we’ll get to that part next).
If you live with friends or family who have a spare five minutes to read through your article that’s also a great way of checking through your work for errors. They are bound to spot something that you’ve missed! Our editors will of course check your work for punctuation, spelling and grammar anyway but it makes their lives a lot easier if you’ve done your own checks first.
Make sure that your work adheres to The Indiependent’s Style Guide – which you can download from the pink button above.
If you want feedback on your writing, send the piece to your editor before you upload it to WordPress (Word or GoogleDoc are preferable formats). Please don’t feel like this is annoying or too much to ask, we want to help you improve your writing – that’s our job!
How to submit your work on WordPress
Login at www.indiependent.co.uk/login using the username and password you were given/you chose when you were first accepted as a contributor
The title for your article will be the bit in bold at the top. This should be no more than 15 words in length if possible, and be formatted according to the conventions in The Indiependent style guide e.g. Album Review: Lover // Taylor Swift
You can add subheadings into your article so that it’s not a huge wall of text (ideally you don’t want more than a couple of sentences per paragraph, especially if they’re long ones). To do this, highlight the text you want to make a subheading, click the ‘Transform To’ button (two arrows in a circle), and select heading. Then, change the heading size to H3.
Make sure you write Words by Your Full Name at the bottom of the article – this is so you always have an article credit even if you stop writing for the site in the future so it’s very important.
Make sure your article is tagged in the relevant categories e.g. Film and Film Review so that it appears in the right places on the site. The primary category is the section you wrote the piece for e.g. Music.
Add relevant tags and keyword phrases to your article e.g. new sam smith album, new music, album review – these help people find your piece on our own site, as well as on Google/other search engines.
Contributors don’t have editorial permission to upload a featured image, so if you have a strong preference as to which image gets used with your piece you can send it via email to the editor when you tell them your piece is ready for editing.
You can also include a link to an image URL at the top of your piece, indicating this is for use as a featured image. Please only include links to COPYRIGHT FREE images – if you aren’t sure, don’t bother.
Some good sources for royalty free images are Creative Commons and unsplash.com
Use the ‘Preview’ tool to check that you are happy with the way your piece is laid out before clicking ‘Publish’ – this will move your piece into the pending section.
PSST: This is different to saving your work as a draft – an editor won’t know your work is finished and ready for editing if you just save it as a draft.
The Indiependent editorial team all work voluntarily, so believe it or not but they aren’t sitting around refreshing the WordPress dashboard to see if there are any new pieces to edit. Once you’ve submitted your article for review, drop the relevant section editor an email to say the article is pending, please can they take a look.
If they don’t get back to you within 48 hours, send a chaser before emailing Beth – [email protected]
FAQs
Press passes are one of the perks of being a journalist. You get access to review a gig, festival or theatre show without having to pay for a ticket. Often, you get a +1 which means you can take a friend (this is never guaranteed though so if you apply for a press pass you have to be prepared to go to the show alone if necessary).
Please be aware that press passes are allocated with the expectation that you will submit the review within 48 hours of the event. Failure to produce a review within this timeframe may lead to press pass privileges being revoked, or suspension from the site altogether. If you think your review might be a little late – tell the music, film or theatre editor, rather than us having to chase you to find out what is going on.
When we don’t produce a review on time, PR firms contact the relevant editor and ask us why our review is not live yet. We understand that sometimes you might not feel well on the day of the event, or an unexpected emergency happens which prevents you from attending. In this case, you need to let the editor know as soon as possible so they can tell their PR contact. In some cases we will be able to arrange for another writer to attend in your place.
Under no circumstances should you say nothing and just fail to produce the review. If you do this, you will automatically have your press pass privileges suspended because it is disrespectful to those who have worked to give you an opportunity to attend an event that another writer would have loved to go to.
We are not guaranteed to get press passes allocated for every event we apply to, and events are often confirmed by PR at short notice. If there is a band you really want to see live or a theatre show you really want to see, we recommend buying tickets to avoid disappointment.
A screener is a link to a film/TV series that is not yet in the public domain. Usually distributed in advance of a cinematic release, it’s a link shared with media outlets for review purposes.
If you receive a screener link you should submit your review in line with the deadline you’re assigned – this is very important as failure to submit your review in a timely fashion could result in us not getting future preview opportunities.
If there’s an embargo on the screener, this means we won’t publish your review until the embargo deadline has passed and we’re allowed to publish your piece.
Time sensitive pitches i.e. news or live reviews can be chased within 48-hours – just send a polite follow-up email to the relevant section editor to confirm that they have received your submission.
For less time sensitive features, please leave it 5 days before following up — The Indiependent editorial team all do this voluntarily so some weeks they may just be super busy at work, and plan to edit your feature on the weekeend.
If you repeatedly feel like an editor is not responding to you in a timely fashion, or you don’t hear back after sending a follow-up message, please email Beth: [email protected]