What is the contributor hub?
What does it mean to be part of the Weekly’s freelance pool?
What are the rates for stories?
How do I get paid?
What if I blow a deadline?
What’s a kill fee?
Who is part of South Side Weekly?
What is the editorial process at the Weekly?
How do I attend office hours and pitch meetings?
What’s the pitch doc?
How do I submit a pitch?
How do I claim a pitch?
What is the contributor hub?
The South Side Weekly Contributor Hub is a landing page for writers in the Weekly’s freelance pool and other contributors. It contains most of the relevant links, forms, and information for writers to submit and claim pitches, sign up for office hours, access resources, and get paid.
Currently, the Weekly is prioritizing collaborating with writers who have some journalism or freelancing experience, and so many of the resources on the hub are presented with those writers in mind. We are in the process of developing pathways for emerging journalists who want to start getting involved.
What does it mean to be part of the Weekly’s freelance pool?
If you’ve been invited or accepted to be part of the Weekly’s freelance pool, you’ll have access to the hub, the pitch doc, and be added to the freelance listhost, which we use to share new pitches and updates.
What are the rates for stories?
We pay fixed rates for stories based on type of story, complexity, and length.
Q&A / Profiles: $100
Reviews: $150
Stories under 1,500 words: $150
Stories between 1,500–2,500 words: $250
Stories above 2,500 words: $350
Investigative stories: $350 or 25 cents a word
How do I get paid?
After your story is published, head over to southsideweekly.com/invoices (password: weeklyin) to submit an invoice. If you’re submitting an invoice for the first time, you’ll get an email from Gusto, our payment processing platform, and will have to create an account on Gusto before getting paid. In general, you should expect to get paid within 14 days of submitting an invoice. You’ll find additional instructions at the link above.
What if I blow a deadline?
We get it—life happens, and stories can take more effort and time than anticipated. But it’s important that you remain communicative with the editor you’re working with. If we stop hearing from you (i.e. you don’t respond to multiple emails in a span of several weeks), an editor may kill the story or assign it to another writer and you won’t get paid.
If you don’t make a deadline for a timely or breaking news story, even if you are communicative, we may have to kill the story if it’s no longer newsworthy.
For stories that are less timely, we can try to work with you on setting a new deadline or reworking the story. But please note that writers who are consistently late with stories or are uncommunicative will likely get fewer assignments in the future.
What’s a kill fee?
If you turn in your work but we decide that we can’t or don’t want to run with it, you may be paid a kill fee. The reasons for why that might happen are numerous: maybe another outlet beat us to the story and it doesn’t make sense to duplicate coverage; the piece could need a significant amount of work (in our opinion) but we don’t have the capacity for that; there’s a mismatch between the story and our values as a newsroom; and so on.
If you submitted a draft, the kill fee is 50% of the original rate. If we kill the story after a round or two of edits, the kill fee is 75%. You’ll retain all rights to your work and could shop it around to other publications.
Who is part of South Side Weekly?
You can find the Weekly’s masthead here. There are a few full-time editorial positions, several stipend positions, and a wide network of freelancers. Generally, being on the masthead means having weekly or monthly responsibilities, while freelancers can work on assignments as frequently or rarely as they see fit.
But it’s really that wider network of writers, artists, researchers, and community members that makes the Weekly special. Throughout the year, we try to organize meetings and events to bring in people from that network to meet and chat with staff, share feedback and story ideas, and plan future events or coverage.
What is the editorial process at the Weekly?
Nearly every story the Weekly publishes goes through three rounds of edits and a fact-check to ensure quality and accuracy. Stories can begin either as pitches that a freelancer submits or as a pitch our staff creates and is claimed by a writer. The writer will then work with a primary editor, who will be the main point of contact, on creating a reporting plan, setting deadlines, and thinking of appropriate visuals, whether photos, illustrations, or data visualizations.
From there, depending on the story, it may take days or weeks for the writer to send a draft, during which the editor will remain in touch to offer support. Once a draft is submitted, the primary editor will work with the writer on editing the story until they are both satisfied, and sending to a fact-checker and a second editor for another pair of eyes. Finally the story will be copy edited prior to publication. For certain stories, the writer and primary editor may also work with the Weekly’s engagement editor to come up with a social media or engagement strategy.
How do I attend office hours and pitch meetings?
You can schedule a meeting with an editor here. You can also find this calendar at the bottom of the contributor hub page. These office hours are usually virtual and are an opportunity to talk to an editor 1-on-1 to ask questions, pitch and brainstorm story ideas, get feedback on a project, and so on.
Pitch meetings are currently semi-regular virtual meetings where contributors and editors brainstorm story ideas. Information about upcoming pitch meetings is sent out via the freelancers listhost. We are working on making these meetings more regular and potentially have an in-person component.
What’s the pitch doc?
The Pitch Doc is a living list of pitches that we or contributors have crafted and are available to be picked up by freelancers. The list of stories on the Pitch Doc will change over time as some are picked up or are no longer relevant and new pitches are added. From the Pitch Doc you can click on ‘Claim Pitch’ to express interest in writing that story.
How do I submit a pitch?
Use the Pitch Submission Form, which can be found on the contributor hub, to submit a pitch for consideration. You can submit pitches for stories that you want to write yourself or that you’d like others to write. The form includes links to our pitching guidelines, which explain what makes something a good pitch (in our opinion) and more likely to be accepted.
We do receive pitches at our editor@southsideweekly.com email, but it’s more likely your pitch will be missed; less so if it goes through the form.
How do I claim a pitch?
While scrolling through the Pitch Doc, each pitch will have a ‘Claim Pitch’ button next to it. Clicking on that will take you to the Pitch Claim Form; use this to tell us which story you’re interested in and why. We review these regularly and strive to respond within 7 days.