Contribute

Become a Contributor to The Missoula Underground – The MUG!

Our guidelines for freelancers

The Missoula Underground can’t exist without the help of freelance writers and contributors. So, we encourage features and story pitches from serious contributors.

Here are some tips to help you become a valuable member of our team:

• Pitch stories: Our most prized contributors are those who come up with their own story ideas. If you wait around for us to hand you assignments, you will be soon forgotten and float downstream in the Clark Fork River.
• Pitch interesting Missoula stories: We are not a political opinion newspaper. We are not the Wall Street Journal. We are not the daily newspaper or website of record. We are not a celebrity stalker site. So, please don’t pitch us stories that would be appropriate for those types of publications, there are plenty of great places for those. We are a hyper-local source about people, music, food, drink, outdoors, and all the cool and fun things there are to do in and around Missoula, Montana. We want fresh, original, relevant Missoula-centric content. We want stories that explore new things happening in our town. We want stories that no one has ever produced or read before.  And, BTW – that reminds us: please search Google News and local media archives (the ones that haven’t been erased, anyway) to find out if your angle has been done already.
• Don’t pitch broad topics: If you pitch a story about community gardens or the homeless, we’ll ask you: “What about them?” If you pitch an interview with a public figure, we’ll ask you what, exactly, that person has to say, or what subject you specifically want to have them talk about. Anticipate questions about your specific approach so that we can save time on that step. If you’re interested doing a feature that’s been recently reported elsewhere, we’re not interested unless you can shed new light on it or explore a new angle.
• Short and sweet, please. The Missoula Underground is not a newspaper, it’s a digital information and entertainment source. While we are looking for compelling content, multiple pages of a story, while possibly entirely well-written, are just too long for our format.  Focus on the people behind what’s happening in Missoula.  Focus on the basic Who, What, When, Where, and (fairly briefly) Why, and our audience will be best-served by a medium that delivers valued information in short and entertaining bursts.  If you find your story running a bit long, send us the draft early-on, and we’ll let you know if it needs to be tightened up, or if your content is compelling enough to warrant a truly longer read.
• We’re not really in the market for opinion: What we need most is third-person, interview-based, narrative journalism from contributors who are enthusiastic and knowledgeable about their little corner of the world in Missoula, Montana. Opinions are a dime a dozen. You’ll stand out if you can demonstrate that you can objectively write about people, places and things that exist outside of your own bubble and point of view.
• Deadlines, word count and pay: We can’t give you a deadline or a word count until we know what deadline you think you can hit and what word count you think is appropriate for your story. You tell us. As for pay, unfortunately, we’re not a wildly profitable operation run by an out-of-town investment group. In the (hopefully near) future, we will have a small budget for contributors. For now, we’re a startup labor of love, and if you have something in or about Missoula, Montana that you are passionate about, The MUG is a place you can help widen the awareness of your topic to our wider community.   If pay is your prime motivator, we’re probably not your best fit. If you want to hone your skills, tell compelling short stories and make a difference through hyper-local digital journalism, we love you already.

Currently, we’re actively looking for experts and community voices for all kinds of sub-topics and categories in Missoula.  We have a small handful already assigned, but many are wide-open.  Please feel free to message us with what you’d like to do.  The MUG is part of the fabric of Missoula, and we need independent people who live here to join the team!

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