For writers

Writer’s Guidelines

Updated October 13, 2026

Str8 Up Publishing licenses columns written with Black independent newspapers and community publications in mind. Editors choose a column after reading a preview on our site, then run it in print and online under your byline. These guidelines explain what we look for, how to submit, and what happens next.

How it works

1. You submit your column through our Submit a Column page. New to Str8 Up? Email editor@thestr8up.com to request the link and password.
2. We review it and reply within 10 business days.
3. If we accept it and you’re new to Str8 Up, you agree to our Writer Agreement and fill out a short onboarding form.
4. We set up your column: a preview page on our site with your byline and bio, and the full column as a download for editors who license it.
5. You earn a share of every sale of your column.

What we’re looking for

Columns in 12 categories. Pick the best fit when you submit; we may add a second category.

• Politics: No-fuzz analysis of the policies, elections and issues that matter to readers.
• Money: Practical, plain-language columns on personal finance, saving and everyday money decisions.
• Business: Practical perspectives on business, entrepreneurship and the local economy.
• Health & Wellness: Plain-language columns on physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.
• Faith & Community: Testaments and testimonials that strengthen congregations and communities.
• Opinion: Sharp, insightful commentary on the issues affecting readers’ communities.
• Lifestyle: Art, food, style and the stories that shape everyday life.
• Education & Youth: Teaching, learning and empowering the next generation.
• AI & I: What is AI? How can we use it? What should we worry about? Plain-language answers.
• History: What the past can teach us about the present and the future.
• Travel: Helping readers see the world the way others see it.
• Technology: Plain-language columns on the tech that shapes daily life.

Write for the editor who’s deciding

• Your opening sells the column. Editors decide from a preview of the first few paragraphs, usually less than a third of the piece. Lead with the topic, your argument and why it matters now. The preview shows only one image, Image 1, above the text. Your other images come only with the full column, so make Image 1 the one that best sells it.
• Use an honest headline that matches what your column is about. An editor who feels misled won’t buy from us again. Keep it short: it has to fit on two lines in our listings.
• Name the date or event instead of “this week” or “yesterday.” Papers may run your column weeks after we publish it.
• Tell us the word count when you submit.

Length: columns should run 500 to 900 words; about 750 is ideal. We rarely accept columns outside this range.

Timing: if your column responds to news or current events, send it promptly. Editors are more likely to license a column while the story is still fresh. Columns that look back at past events, or aren’t tied to the news at all, are welcome anytime. If your column shouldn’t run after a certain date, tell us in “Notes for the editor.”

Content standards

We welcome harsh criticism of public figures and institutions, strong opinions, satire and parody that readers can recognize as such, and controversial topics.

We will not publish:

• threats of violence or calls for violence
• hate speech that attacks people for who they are, such as race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability
• harassment of private individuals
• defamation: false statements of fact that damage a real person’s reputation. Opinion is fine; invented facts are not.
• plagiarism: using someone else’s words or ideas without credit

We will not publish material that violates our policy.

Accuracy is your responsibility. We don’t fact-check columns or verify sources, so check your facts before you submit. We may still decline a column that appears to contain false statements about real people.

Our AI rules

• Write it yourself. No AI-written text: when your name is on the column, the words must be yours. AI spell-check, grammar tools and research help are okay.
• AI illustrations are welcome in any illustration style (drawn, painted, sketched), including of public figures, as long as each one is credited “AI-generated image.”
• No photorealistic AI images: nothing a reader could mistake for a real photograph, whether it shows people, places, nature or events. Use a real photo you have the rights to, or a labeled AI illustration instead.
• No video or audio. We accept text and still images only.

Images

• Up to 3 images per column: JPG or PNG, full resolution (300 dpi preferred). Upload each image as its own file with its caption and credit.
• In the column itself, mark the spot where each image belongs: [IMAGE 1], [IMAGE 2] or [IMAGE 3]. If you don’t mark where an image goes, we’ll decide.

Image rights are your responsibility. You must own every image you send, or have permission that lets publications run it with your column in print and online. That includes stock photos (check that the license allows use by other publications) and photos someone else took (get the photographer’s permission). We don’t check image rights. If you aren’t sure you have them, don’t send the image.

Preparing your file

• One file: Word (.docx) or plain text (.txt).
• Headline at the top, then “By [your name],” then the column.
• Pen names: Pen names are welcome. We need your legal name for your Writer Agreement and tax forms, but readers see only your byline. Your pen name can’t be the name of a public figure or of anyone readers could mistake for the author; borrow credibility you don’t have (such as a name suggesting you’re an expert, an official or a spokesperson); include a title or credential you don’t hold (Dr., Rev., Judge, and so on); be a brand or organization name; or be offensive. We approve every pen name before your first column runs. You may use more than one pen name. Your byline is the name your column runs under: your legal name or a pen name. In each category, you may write under no more than two bylines: one of your own (your legal name or a pen name, not both), which covers everything you write for us in that category, paid or donated, and the Guest Columnist byline, which is for donated columns only. If you write under more than one byline, including Guest Columnist, your columns under one byline may not quote, respond to or promote your own columns under another. To use a new pen name, enter it as the byline when you submit a column and check “This is a new pen name.” Give us a bio for that pen name and, if you like, a photo. Your new pen name’s bio may not name or point to any other byline you write under. Each pen name may have its own website and social media accounts.
• Keep formatting simple: regular paragraphs only, with no columns, text boxes, tables or special fonts. Editors paste your text into their own layout.
• Link only to your sources. Web addresses in your column are only for sources or references. Your own website and social media go in the boxes on the Submit a Column form, not in your column.
• Don’t add a bio to your column. We use the bio from your onboarding form or, for a new pen name, the bio you give when you submit its first column (up to 600 characters). It’s placed at the end of your columns and on your author page, and it doesn’t count toward the word count.

How to submit

• Submit online through the Submit a Column page. We’ll send you the link and password once we approve your application. We don’t accept columns by email.
• Having trouble with the form? Email editor@thestr8up.com and we’ll help.
• Every submission includes this confirmation: “I wrote this column myself. There is no AI-written text (AI spell-check, grammar tools and research help are okay). I own the rights to this column and haven’t given anyone exclusive rights to it. Any AI-generated image is labeled, and I have the rights to every other image. I have read the Str8 Up Writer’s Guidelines.” If you choose to print your website or social media with a column, you also confirm: “The website and social media accounts I’ve entered above are my own, and they don’t promote any other byline I write under for Str8 Up.”

After you submit

We review every column against these guidelines and will reply within 10 business days, whether or not we accept it. We may decline any submission that doesn’t meet our professional standards or violates our content policy. Our decision is final and we don’t have to give a reason for our decision. We don’t rewrite columns: we may format yours for our house style or ask you for changes, but we won’t change your words without your OK. Your summary is different. We may edit or rewrite it to fit our house style and to make sure it matches your column. Typos are your responsibility, so proofread before you submit. If we decline your column, you keep all rights to it, and we don’t publish it or use it for anything else. Nothing is published until you’ve agreed to our Writer Agreement.

Your rights

Your column is not exclusive to Str8 Up. You keep ownership of your work. You’re free to publish it on your own site or newsletter, sell it to a publication directly, or syndicate it elsewhere, before or after it appears with us. You grant Str8 Up a non-exclusive license to offer your column to publications, and each publication that buys it may run it under the terms of its license.

How long we offer your column: there’s no fixed term. You may ask us to take any column off sale at any time, for any reason or no reason, by emailing editor@thestr8up.com, and we’ll do it within 2 business days. We may take any column off sale, move it to our archive or remove it at any time, at our discretion. An archived column comes off its category page but stays on our site: publications can find it through search or your author page and can still buy it. You earn the same on every archive column sold as you do for an active column sale. Either of us may also end our relationship with 30 days’ notice, as described below. Papers that already bought a column keep their license, including the right to keep the column in their print and online archives.

What papers may do with your column

• Run it once: each purchase lets a paper run your column in one print edition and post it once on its website, and keep it in its archive.
• Run your byline: papers must credit you with the byline in the file they downloaded and may never present your column as their own or anyone else’s.
• Fit it to their page: papers may rewrite the headline to fit their layout as long as the change does not alter the intent or meaning of the headline in the file they downloaded, fix typos, fix clear grammatical errors and fit your column to their layout. They may not cut or shorten your column, or otherwise change, add to or rearrange your words.
• No reselling: papers may not resell your column or share it with other publications.
• No selling to AI companies: papers may not sell or license your column to AI companies, or use it to train their own AI tools.

Getting paid

• Under our current Writer Agreement, for every paper that licenses your column, whether it buys the column on its own or through a subscription plan, you earn 65% of that column’s single-column price at the time. Subscription discounts never reduce your share. Your share is set by the Writer Agreement you agree to.
• We charge one flat price per column, whatever its length within the 500–900-word range, and may change it at any time. See Pricing on our home page.
• We pay monthly, once your earnings reach $50. Smaller balances carry over to the next month, so nothing is lost.
• If a sale is refunded or disputed, your share of that sale comes out of your next payment.
• We pay by PayPal, Zelle, Cash App or check.
• You’re an independent contractor. Before your first payment, you’ll get an email from our tax service, TaxZerone, with a secure link to fill out and submit a W-9 form online. Never send your Social Security number or bank details by email.
• Each January you’ll receive a Form 1099-MISC for the royalties we paid you the year before ($10 or more).

Your Writer Agreement comes first. These guidelines explain how we work, but if anything here ever conflicts with your Writer Agreement, the Agreement controls. Your share of each sale changes only if you agree to an updated Agreement.

If you or we end the relationship

Either of us can end the relationship with 30 days’ notice, and neither of us has to give a reason. Here is exactly what happens.

If we end it

• We give you 30 days’ notice, or end it immediately for a serious violation of our policies, such as plagiarism, defamation or AI-written text.
• We take your columns off sale by the end of the notice period and remove your preview pages and author page.
• Papers that already bought your column keep their license. They may still run it once and keep it in their archive.
• We pay you everything you’ve earned through the end date, even if it’s under the payout minimum, less any refunds on those sales.

If you end it

• Give us 30 days’ notice by email. We take your columns off sale and remove your author page by the end of the notice period.
• You can’t cancel licenses already sold. Papers that bought your column keep their rights.
• Your promises still stand for columns already sold: that each is your own original work, free of defamation, and that you have the rights to its images.
• We pay you everything you’ve earned through the end date, as above.

Either way

• We keep order and payment records for tax and accounting. We don’t keep your columns for any other use.
• We send your final payment with our next regular monthly payment after the end date.

Questions

Email editor@thestr8up.com.