Writing Contributors
Do you like what you read on COLOR and want to support the site with your writing? First, thanks for thinking so highly of the site, and second, you can contribute!
I must say upfront that writing guest posts for COLOR is an unpaid position. At this point, I can’t pay contributors, even though I’d like to. However, I can promise that with COLOR, you will be giving your writing access to an audience of like-minded individuals who also want to see society a much more just place and entertainment a much fairer representation of the world.
Contributions must pertain to one of three different types:
Longform pieces: These pertain to an issue in society and how it might relate to race and culture. For example, you might have a post on the plight of black men in America or you might have a post retaliating against a form of bullying in feminism. Also included in longform pieces are thoughts on certain activist hashtags.
Entertainment discussion: These are posts that expound more on popular TV shows. These can be as long or short as you want them to be; they can be posts aiming to read TV show tea leaves, plotlines you want to see happen, hashtag movements, or they can even be reviews of shows not covered on COLOR, like Marco Polo, Mozart in the Jungle, Scandal, Jane the Virgin or any others, particularly ones that have an important/discussion-worthy message about race and culture.
Entertainment discussion can also include movie reviews. I don’t have a lot of movie reviews on COLOR, so if you’re more of a movie watcher, I’d welcome your film opinions.
Entertainment analysis: These pieces are somewhere in the middle of longform pieces and entertainment discussion pieces. These might focus on an element of a show and how it relates to a larger, real life issue, like black-Asian relations as shown in Fresh Off the Boat.
Entertainment analysis can also pertain to films and how they might correlate to a societal/racial issue. Or how certain Hollywood scandals are indicative of a larger issue.
Other posts that are welcome are Queer Coded posts (posts outlining how certain characters uphold Hollywood’s unspoken coding of villains or the “Other”), Fantasy Casting posts (in which the writer recasts whitewashed movies or speculates on the casting for upcoming films or films they wished would get made), Racially Sensitive and Racially Insensitive Casting posts, and MOC Monday/WOC Wednesday posts.
The word length is up to you; the only guidelines are that longform posts can be longer than a traditional post (think investigative piece-length).
The only rule I have is that the posts must be original and from individuals who are not writing posts to increase the page ranking of a corporate website aka individuals participating in link scamming. For instance, if you are an SEO writer hired by a company to write guest posts on other sites to increase the page rank of the company site.
The hope is to create a community of like-minded writers who all share a common goal. Please feel free to follow me on Twitter and Facebook, and I’ll make sure to do the same.
If you have questions or comments, please email me at monique@moniqueblog.net.
