We welcome contributions to The Sedona Citizen. Please review our guidelines below so you know what we do and do not publish. (Read our About page.)
The Sedona Citizen is:
- a news journal about issues relevant to people who care about Sedona, Arizona
- fact-based and well-documented in its reporting
- unbiased in its choice of facts to present; though, not necessarily without opinion in their presentation
The Sedona Citizen is not:
- an events calendar
- a bulletin board for press releases
- a place for your rants unrelated to previous articles (letters to the editor unrelated to published articles)
Letters to the Editor
Please add your remarks in the Comments box at the bottom of the article you are commenting on. (If replying to another comment, note there is a specific-to-this-comment Reply link in addition to the general Reply link for the article.) The more discussion, the better!
We do not publish Letters to the Editor that have nothing to do with editorial practices. In other words, if your letter addresses a specific person, like the Mayor, or is a general comment on Sedona or an announcement such as “Please pick up after your dog,” this is not the place to submit it. There are other outlets for announcements and observations unrelated to anything we’ve published.
Articles
- in-depth
- factual
- linked to sources
If you have news of a new angle on any topic of interest to Sedonans, write it up as an article of any length. If you want to make sure we’ll publish your hard work, send a query email first with a sample paragraph.
In your article, include documentation for factual assertions, preferably links to online materials. It’s all right to express opinionated interpretations of those facts. It is not all right to present only one-sided facts. For example:
| A. City Hall grants $12,000,000 to the Chamber of Commerce for destination marketing. | The Chamber of Commerce accepts the grant and begins a massive marketing campaign in the Far East. |
| WRONG: You write a tirade about excessive city spending to the Chamber of Commerce, citing low tourist numbers and falling sales tax dollars in spite of the expenditure. | |
| B. The money is a combination of grants and direct donations for an experiment in unlimited and widespread destination marketing. None of the funds come from the city budget or sales tax. | Failing to report all of the facts is falsifying information, not legitimate, and not acceptable. A ‘sin of omission’ is as hurtful as a ‘sin of commission.’ |
| RIGHT: You write a tirade about excessive |
|
Compensation
Currently, The Sedona Citizen is not paying contributors, nor are we selling advertising to create a revenue stream from which we could pay you something. However, you may include a short note at the end of your article (we’ll link it to your PayPal account, so give us that email address), asking the public to support the author of the article with a donation. (We may offer a ‘support-this-author’ button .)
Priceless
Because we publish online, we enjoy pages of adequate (any) length to cover the subject, without requiring readers to go from page to page to get a complete story.
We also like photos, graphs, charts and illustrations, because they entice and engage readers.
Use lots of subheads and bullets. People reading online are usually going super fast and may look only for the high points—subheadings and bullets or numbered lists.
Errata
When a factual error is pointed out, we correct the copy by striking out the inaccuracy and adding in a contrasting color the new copy. The date of the editing is included.
Thank you for your interest in writing for The Sedona Citizen!
