Contributors' Guidelines

If you want to write an article for The Media Co-op, the first step is to send a pitch to info[at]mediacoop.ca.

We publish articles that are between 600 and 1500 words in length. We pay from $100 to $250, with the higher end of that range reserved for articles that involve more research and more reporting.

We are based in Canada, so we are interested in stories that are about or have some connection to the Canadian context. Our focus is grassroots journalism, so we want what you submit to centre the voices and experiences of ordinary people, and both their everyday and more deliberately collective struggles to make their lives and the world better.

The pieces we publish often focus on things like Indigenous land and water defence; climate justice; housing, homelessness, and tenant rights; struggles related to policing, state violence, and white supremacy; labour struggles and worker organizing; resisting the far right; grassroots work that is feminist, trans, queer, and/or anti-racist; disability struggles; community organizing; impacts of the Canadian state and Canadian corporations in other countries; and lots more. Though we will sometimes call for submissions on specific topics, we are generally open to a broad range, so if there is something happening where you live that you think needs to be covered, please send us a pitch!

If we accept your pitch, we expect you to be willing to engage in a collaborative editorial process. Exactly what that involves will vary, as we are keen to work with writers coming from a broad range of different levels of experience.

To learn more about how to write for The Media Co-op, there are a couple of documents produced in our earlier years that are still excellent sources – some of the details that they reference in terms of our structure and focus may have changed, but what they say about writing and about grassroots journalism are still very much relevant. See, for example, this writer's guide produced by journalists Dawn Paley and Justin Ling in 2011. And also see these guidelines produced by The Media Co-op local that used to exist in Halifax – and please note that the geographical constraints in this one don't apply.

If you have any questions as you work on your story, please don't hesitate to be in touch at info[at]mediacoop.ca.

Also, please note that The Media Co-op has historically been an open publishing platform. Our site retains that capability, but we are much more selective than in earlier years about which stories published without our input that we will review, feature, and promote. Like we said off the top, your best bet is to send us a pitch.

Good luck!