NACLA Style and Submission Guidelines: Online
We welcome contributions from academics, activists, students, and journalists covering political and economic developments in Latin America and the Caribbean, issues affecting U.S. Latinx communities, and U.S. policy in the hemisphere.
The following guidelines apply primarily to web submissions. The majority of articles for the print magazine are personally solicited. However, do look out for calls for proposals for future issues.
Our corrections policy is available here.
Pitch: Please do not send completed drafts or manuscripts. We prefer short queries that describe the story, why you are qualified to tell it, what the reporting process will look like, and why it is unique and timely. Please also include examples of your previous work. Before you pitch us, make sure to read our previous coverage to make sure the story hasn’t already been written as well as to get an idea of our style. You can send pitches to our web editor at editor@nacla.org. We aim for quick turnarounds.
Supporting investigative journalism: We are interested in working with journalists on investigative projects, and we encourage contributors interested in publishing investigations with NACLA to apply for reporting grants. If you’re applying for a grant, feel free to get in touch with us about your idea. If we think it’s a good fit, our investigations team—made up of investigative journalist Dawn Marie Paley and NACLA staff—is willing to work with you to help develop your application. If interested in this opportunity, please send the pitch you plan to apply for the grant with, clips of previously published work, and any relevant deadlines to NACLA managing editor Heather Gies at hgies@nacla.org.
Style: Online articles are typically 1,200-1,500 words. We consider other longer web stories on a case-by-case basis.
To the best of their abilities, our writers tell stories. Our web publication is more journalistic than academic, which means we strive for compelling narrative, accessible language, and strong characters and sources. If you are less familiar with non-academic or journalistic writing, you may find it helpful to refer to our complete style guide as a helpful guideline. At the same time, NACLA does not publish straightforward reporting of events. NACLA articles should always include the relevant sociocultural or political-economic context in which the reported events unfold. We typically have more analysis than typical news articles.
NACLA does not use footnotes. Please include hyperlinks for every verifiable fact and sources of ideas. If your source is not online, please include language to acknowledge it in the body of the text and include a footnote so that the editors can verify. We encourage authors to put their ideas in conversation with other journalists and scholars by engaging, citing, and amplifying other important work in their areas of research and reporting.
Language: NACLA publishes primarily English-language material with occasional translations into Spanish. We welcome pitches and drafts in Spanish, which we will publish bilingually, depending on capacity, in our En Español section. We also welcome translations of English-language articles.
Payment: NACLA is a small not-for-profit, and unfortunately has a limited budget. At the same time, we recognize the precarity of journalism, and strive to pay our writers to the best of our ability. Currently, our policy is to offer a small honorarium to contributors who depend on writing as their primary source of income. This can include freelance reporters and graduate students. The honorarium depends on the intensiveness of the reporting, ranging from $100-$200 depending on the type of piece. We have a modest budget for photos and can offer $25 per original photo to contributors who make a living from their photography. We understand this is a barrier for many working journalists and will occasionally partner with other publications to co-publish pieces to increase the commission. Please feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns.
Photos: We generally rely on Creative Commons-licensed photos from Flickr and Wikimedia for our stories. However, we prefer to receive photos from the authors, so please let us know if that is possible in your pitch. When sending over photos, make sure to include attribution and a caption (who/what/when/where). If you have photos from another source that you would like to use, please be sure to get explicit approval for their use.
Rights: While articles from our quarterly magazine are copyrighted, our web articles are available for republication. Please inquire if you’re interested in republishing—all we ask is that you specify “Originally published in NACLA” at the beginning of the article and link back to the original.
Thank you very much! We look forward to hearing from you.
