Part of EW’s mission (in addition to providing “a voice for the oppressed and dismissed, and support unfettered artistic expression”) is to “seek to provide employment, training and a supportive work environment for Eugene’s most creative writers, artists, photographers, graphic designers, salespeople, office workers and managers” and that includes freelancers.

FREELANCE

Article or guest viewpoint?: Are you a journalist looking to pitch a story, or are you a citizen writer looking to express a view? We welcome both so please check out our opinion guidelines here.

Pitching: First, send a query to the appropriate editor (go to “About us” for who to pitch to), and see if we are interested in your idea. Or if you don’t have a particular story idea but are interested in writing arts or news coverage on a regular basis then send us an inquiry email with clips and a resume.

Know Eugene Weekly: Read EW’s previous coverage and know what we have covered and topics we seem interested in covering. We try to avoid repeating other local coverage. We provide alternative information to what you can get in other newspapers and local magazines or give an alternative angle.

Is your story new or a new angle on topic? Is it interesting, timely and appealing to our readers?

Then tell us why your idea would be a great for EW and our readers, why you’re the one to write it and what kind of resources you will use to report the story. If we have not worked with you before then include a resume and three clips (attached or via links).

Please let us know if you have pitched the story elsewhere or if it has run in a different version elsewhere.

If you are a new writer to us, and we accept your story proposal, we might ask you to submit your article on “spec” the first time — we will reserve the right to not publish the piece if we feel it does not meet our standards and if editing won’t salvage it by deadline.

Our pay scale is comparable to other alternative newsweeklies. Payment varies and will be negotiated individually by the word or set fee. We pay biweekly and ask you to fill out a W-9 when your submission is confirmed.

Eugene Weekly buys first-time rights to your work, plus the right to post your work electronically on our website and social media as well as archival rights (microfilm, microfiche, etc.), and the right to publish in anthologies. We also assume permission to make articles/images available via third-party online databases such as AltWeeklies.com.

You retain the rights to sell, republish or repackage the article/image in non-competing markets outside of our distribution area, which spans from the south end of Lane County to Salem and from the coast to the county’s eastern border. If you do republish, we ask that a credit line stating that your story first appeared in Eugene Weekly runs with the piece.

Conflicts, Competition and Disclosures

EWstrives to give local writers a voice and to launch new writers into their careers. We are delighted when our interns and freelancers are able to get the exposure they need to further their careers either with us or if they move on to other publications. Lane County has several other competing venues for writers — the R-G and Eugene Magazine to name a few that compete directly for readers and advertisers.

We welcome competition — it keeps us on our toes — but because of our competition, EW needs tomaintain its own unique voice. We ask that current and new freelancers be aware that writing for a competing publication in our local market might preclude us from featuring you in EW’s pages. There may be some rare exceptions to this, for example a writer who writes for us but sells a photo to the R-G, but our goal is to keep overlap in our pages with our competitors to an absolute minimum. Application of this policy will be up to the discretion of the editor.

A staff position or a contract job with a competing publication in our market area will constitute a conflict of interest and preclude you from contributing to Eugene Weekly.

Please do not pitch stories for which you have a conflict of interest — you cannot write about institutions or people in which you have some personal or financial stake. However, if you would like to submit an opinion piece, please feel free to pitch or send a viewpoint.

Finally, story pitches that involve your friends or family must be thoroughly reviewed by our editors. Disclosing these issues in advance helps mitigate any possible problems.

Thanks, and we look forward to hearing from you!

EW staff

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