Cohousing-L Mailing List: Call for articles, Communities magazine Summer '07 issue

[Communities Magazine (communities]

January 21, 2007
Hello,

              This is a Call for Articles for our Summer 2007,  
issue, "Are You Growing Much of Your Own Food Yet?," out in June, 2007.



1. Theme articles:

Does your community or organized urban or suburban neighborhood grow  
vegetables or fruit during the growing season? Are you and your  
community, or neighbors, considering, or preparing for, Peak Oil  
issues and potentially escalating food costs? Are you participating  
in community gardens, CSA farms, or local food bartering systems? Is  
your group storing food with low-tech means (canning, fermenting,  
etc.?)  If your group is growing produce, how will you also meet your  
nutritional needs for fat, protein, and carbohydrates?

We are also seeking articles about:

• Creating community in your neighborhood            • Starting a new  
community

• Process & communication issues in community            • Seeking  
community to join

The deadline for finished articles is February 23,  2007.

Please let me know your article idea soon, ideally by February 2, 2007.

 (If you would like to be removed from this Call for Articles email  
list, please let me know.)

            Word length is from 900 to 2500 words. We're seeking  
articles written in a reader-friendly popular-magazine style, rather  
than in academic style.

            If you'd like to submit an article let us know and we'll  
send you Writers Guidelines. Contact Diana Christian at  
communities [at] ic.org or 828-669-9702.

If you'd like to submit photos let us know and we'll send you Photo  
Guidelines.



I. WHAT "SUBMITTING AN ARTICLE" MEANS. We will promise to read your  
article, but we may respectfully decline it and not publish it, or  
save it and publish it in a future issue. We also reserve the right  
to edit, shorten, or revise your article. Most of the time we contact  
authors about this ahead of time and get their comments, corrections,  
etc.



II. GETTING PERMISSION AHEAD OF TIME. Please send the article only  
when you have permission from anyone you need it from, such as fellow  
community members. It’s difficult for us to get all set to run an  
article only to find that the author’s fellow community members say  
No at the last minute.



III. PUBLICATION RIGHTS. Once your article appears in Communities  
magazine, we own first North American Publishing Rights. This means  
your article appears in Communities magazine the first time it  
appears in North America. After that, you own it again. If you'd like  
to use it elsewhere, you can, and, we would appreciate your using an  
attribution line saying "This article first appeared in Communities  
magazine, (date); for further information on Communities magazine:  
www.ic.org."



IV. PHOTOS. We will also want high-resolution digital photos or hard- 
copy photos (including snapshots) of people and/or communities to  
illustrate your story.



            Please do not send photos to me directly, but to our  
photo editor Jan Steinman at photos [at] ic.org.



            We will assume that any people in your photos have  
already given you permission to appear in Communities magazine—or you  
already know they will be fine with it.  If you think this will be a  
problem, please take care of it before sending us photos. Thanks very  
much.



            We're seeking high-contrast photos of people, either  
engaged in doing things or smiling at the camera. We also use photos  
of community buildings or scenes from a neighborhood, but preferably  
with people in them. (We publish photos in black and white, though we  
can use color photo originals.)

            For digital images, we're seeking photos taken on at  
least a 3 to 4 megapixel camera (higher megapixels is better!) at the  
highest-resolution setting, so that we get photos which are at least  
300 to 360 dots per inch at 5" x 7" size. (By the way, photos from a  
website or a blog aren't high enough resolution to be used in a print  
publication.)

         Our most preferred format for photos is tiff but if the  
images are already jpegs then jpegs are fine. Please send them at the  
highest resolution possible which might mean sending only one photo  
per email (depending on your email service provider's limits). Some  
email programs automatically reduce the size of images being emailed  
so you might check to make sure yours is not doing so.

            If you have prints you can either scan them (we can give  
you more details if you plan to do this) or you can send them to the  
Communities magazine office and we will have them scanned. We will  
return them in good condition.



            If you would like to submit an article but cannot supply  
photos, that's fine, however, you must let me know in advance. Then  
if we use your article we'll get an illustrator, but we need plenty  
of notice ahead of time for this. Thank you.



V. COLOR COVER PHOTOS. We are also seeking vertically oriented, color  
photos  for our front cover. We pay $150 for a cover photo we publish.

            For a cover photo—which "sells" the magazine to  
newsstand browsers—we're looking for five features:

             (1) A vertical  photo of one or two people (or even  
three) in the foreground or mid-foreground, engaged in doing  
something, or looking at the camera. Other people can be in the  
background, or not.

            (2) At least one person in the foreground or middle  
ground should look right into the camera (so they can bridge to the  
newsstand browser), with expressions we might call "warm and  
connected"—happy, contented, thoughtful, or engaged, etc. Or, they  
don’t have to have expressions like these, as long as they don't look  
unhappy, upset, frustrated, bored, etc. We're also open to publishing  
cover photos which one might call "compelling" rather than "warm and  
connected."

            (3) The people are wearing clothes in colors that look  
good together (ideally bright, clear colors), and which don’t clash.  
(i.e. one person isn't wearing purple and another orange, for example.)

            (4) A community-type "scene" or neighborhood scene is  
visible behind them.

            (5) Something kind of blank, or relatively low-contrast  
is in the upper right or upper left corner, where we can put the  
issue name and article titles.

            Again, cover photos don't go to me, but to Jan Steinman  
at photos [at] ic.org. He will contact you with further details,  
instructions, or requests.



Thank you very much! We look forward to hearing from you if you are  
inspired by any of these topics.



            Diana Leafe Christian

            Editor, Communities Magazine,
communities [at] ic.org