An article I wrote was published on Qntra. To become a contributor I followed Bingoboingo's 'Write for Qntra' guide. Below is my feedback on the writing and publishing process.
Finding a news story was fairly easy as the Presidential election cycle has begun in the US.1 After finding said story, I circled back to the 'Write for Qntra' page and followed the guide in order.
Lucky for me, I already have a key registered in the WoT, a blog, and I participate in the #trilema-hanbot channel. Any technical pre-work to submitting an article was already done. That being said, the guide does an excellent job of providing the resources you may need if you are new to any of those items.
Who Are We Looking For
If seeing the garbage spewing out of "mainstream" outlets has you feeling like a dissident, you are a probably good candidate for Qntra whether you are a writer looking to develop journalism chops or an independent thinker looking to improve your research and writing skills through journalism.
The 'who we are looking for' section is the most important paragraph in the guide. Having the realization that you feel like a "dissident" cannot be taught. In my opinion, it will be the deciding factor for someone choosing to write for Qntra.
When reading the 'Using GPG' section it occurred to me to check for Bingoboingo's key on my keyring. It's not hard to find his key if you don't have it; however, a direct link to his key or a mention that it should be encrypted to him may be helpful. Also, since a signature is mandatory for submission it could be beneficial to link more information for generating a signature.
Both the formatting for submission and acceptable content paragraphs are extremely easy to follow. You can clearly see how those sections are in use when reading Qntra articles and therefore have lots of examples to look at for ideas...etc. However, if you're still stuck Bingoboingo gives an offer of providing him: "A block of text without any markup at all and a list of supporting links and comments, questions, and suggestions."
I found that the process for writing for Qntra is well established and easy to follow. I encourage anyone interested in journalism, satire, politics, and news...etc. to try their hand at a submission.
I'm published on Qntra.net - now why aren't you?
- I used duckduckgo.com/news to find a story. [↩]