Join us as a creator
This page is about how you can contribute content for Lok Sujag as a freelance journalist. If you are interested, please, go through the following points carefully and then fill the form at the bottom of this page.
Freelance work does not mean free work
Lok Sujag pays every contributor – feature writers, videographers, voice artists, short multimedia post creators all included.
The amount of payment depends on level of effort invested in creation of content which is assessed by the regional coordinators and the editorial team working with the freelance contributors.
And of course, the amount we pay is also determined by our financial health.
We do not re-publish
If a contributor sends us something that he/she has already shared with or got published at another platform, we will not publish it. If a contributor attempts to sneak in such content, we may mark the contributor as ‘unethical’ and stop accepting content from him/her.
It’s a multimedia, multilingual platform
Digital content means you shall not limit yourself to words or visuals alone. You better know how to play with both as the most effective content mixes them in a creative way.
So a contributor shall preferably have both writing and camera skills. For our daily content, it is simply not practical for us to accept written content from one contributor and then hire someone else to produce associated pictures or video clips.
We currently publish content in English and Urdu. You can submit content in any of the two and we will decide if it has to be translated in the other too.
Editorial processes require passion and patience
Sharing a content idea or submitting draft content does not guarantee its publication. It goes through a rigorous and tedious editorial process. The contributor shall have both passion and patience.
This means the editorial staff may revert to the contributor time and again for confirming or re-confirming some facts, for finding and adding some missing information, or for supplementing content with some pictures or video clips etc. The editorial team may also hold the content for publishing at a later date that it considers appropriate.
The content may be dropped/killed at any stage, if it fails to meet certain standards. In some cases, the editorial team may decide to pay the contributor a ‘kill fee’ for the content that was commissioned, worked on but killed for some foreseen reason.
We do not publish views based content
We do not publish content like opinion columns, blogs, vlogs etc. It is not that we do not value such views based content but it is a matter of choice. Lok Sujag cannot do everything that falls within the ambit of a media platform so we have chosen what to do and what to avoid in order to get the best value out of the resources that we have.
We do not cover events
Our motto is ‘Voices from the margins of power’. So when a minister holds a press conference announcing some policies, we will not cover the presser as an event and instead investigate the announced policy’s impact on people and develop content on that.
Here again, we do not belittle the news value of the event of press conference but our approach is determined by the fact that it is already being covered by scores, if not hundreds, of platforms so we better focus on what is not drawing the due attention.
What topics do we cover?
We carry no list of topics that we shall or shall not cover but we generally avoid focusing on what is already being covered by others. In fact, we define our work as the one that is intentionally or unintentionally not done or is overlooked by other media platforms.
We focus on topics from ignored geographic areas, voiceless or silenced communities and not-so-popular and unconventional ideas.
So if you are interested in pitching something, look for what is not being covered by other media platforms?
Published content is property of Lok Sujag
The content produce by the contributors and published by Lok Sujag is the sole property of Lok Sujag, implying that the contributors cannot republish it or share it with any other publisher unless expressly permitted by Lok Sujag.
We have a Code of Conduct
Importantly, we have a Code of Conduct and you must go through it before engaging with us and shall strictly follow it while working with us. Here it is.
If you want to work with Lok Sujag as a freelance contributor and agree with above points and our Code of Conduct, please, fill in the following and hit submit.
We will take it forward from here.