Balochistan Voices, the premier online Newspaper of Balochistan, is going through a phase of rapid growth in terms of viewership and production of content. Balochistan Voices has already started a Data Journalism and Features section and it will soon start its Environment section.
With the passage of every day we are getting more and more writers who are contributing exceptional opinion and blog pieces for this growing online platform. These contributions are adding more value to the content and credibility of Balochistan Voices. Now, we are making a small effort to generate a debate about national and provincial issues that concerns the people of the province.
At the same time we are faced with the problem of filtering out a lot of articles which are sent to us for publication. Believe us, it’s very difficult for us to drop any article but we have to do it since we can only accommodate limited number of articles on our platform.
We wanted to share our updated rules of contribution to the contributors. It’s not possible for us to communicate to all the contributors individually therefore we are trying to share some basic rules that have to be followed if a contributor wants to get their article published on Balochistan Voices.
1) We will only accept or even read those articles which are exclusively sent to us for publication. If a contributor sends us an already published article or send the same article to multiple newspapers at the same time then we simply discard those articles. Therefore, please send your articles exclusively to us if you want us to read them for publication.
2) Once an article has been published in Balochistan Voices then it becomes our copy righted property and can’t be sent to other newspapers for publication. If some contributor sent their article to other newspapers, which was already published by us, then we have the right to black list that contributor. That will result in not publishing any articles of that author in the future.
3) Balochistan Voices mainly focuses on Balochistan and therefore we encourage writers to write on issues related to Balochistan. However we have recently started a National section in which we also accommodate articles which are about national level issues.
4) Please bear in mind that blogs and opinion pieces must not be more than 900 words and less than 500 words in length. In case of special articles we can make an exception and allow articles in greater length but this is the standard length that has to be followed.
5) All contributors sending blog and opinion pieces must clearly write down their name along with a short bio inside the article. All submissions must be typed in MS Word and send to our email addresses given here. We discourage articles which are pasted as text in body of email.
6) We will only publish those letters which are about a current issue and related to Balochistan. We will not publish any article which is based on a general topic. For Example, we will publish letters on topics like Lack of Doctors in Turbat or Electricity Load Shedding in Gwadar. However we will not publish any letter on topics such as problem of unemployment in Pakistan, importance of books and so on. So please keep this in mind.
7) If a contributor wants to contribute for Data Journalism or want to conduct an interview then we would be happy to receive any such ideas. Such ideas can be shared on the email addresses provided here.
8) Balochistan Voices is a volunteer-driven and community based online media outlet and therefore we don’t have sufficient financial resources. As a result we don’t pay to the contributors for the routine submissions. However, we do pay for the stories that we have commissioned to the writers. If any writer has a good idea then that can be shared with us and if we approved it then writer will be paid after its submission.
9) Lastly, Balochistan Voices also wants to create a new crop of writers who can then excel in their respective careers. Therefore, we will be more than happy to provide feedback and assist those contributors who are regular and want to learn.
Editor
Balochistan Voices
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