WRITER'S GUIDELINES
Midwest Today 's Guidelines for Writers and Artists
		Midwest Today has been publishing for more than 19 years and has had a number of our articles reprinted or referenced by big-league media, including CBS-TV, ABC Radio News, Family Circle, Catholic Digest, the Christian Science Monitor and more. We are widely respected for our journalistic integrity, top-quality writing and forthright editorial comment. Our quarterly "general interest" magazine covers a variety of subjects, including news, sports, politics, entertainment, the arts, religion, poetry, fitness, outdoors, travel, exclusive interviews with Midwest-born celebrities, people profiles, the environment, nostalgia, economics, agriculture, humor, consumer issues and more. We always try to be as au courant with events as possible, and our lead stories are updated literally within hours of presstime. WE DO NOT HAVE AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR, preferring instead for our issues to reflect the current topics of the day. We also are now considering short fiction pieces or short true-life stories (2,000 words max.) -- particularly those that are uplifting or inspirational, with a positive outcome and a story line set in the Heartland. We are willing to consider original and reprint submissions.  Your brief query should outline your idea, explain why it's right for a Midwest audience, and tell us something about yourself. We like to see published samples of your work. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. If you send us something via the U.S. mail, please realize that SUBMISSIONS CANNOT BE RETURNED.  Be sure to give us your daytime and nighttime phone numbers, or other way to contact you. (We prefer email). The length of articles we publish varies widely -- from a few hundred words to 10,000. We do not accept simultaneous submissions. We require a three-month moratorium on all pieces we accept, even reprints. Midwest Today is a great venue for writers for whom exposure to a vast audience is more important than monetary compensation. The fact is, the costs of printing and distributing a magazine have skyrocketed in recent years, severely reducing our budget for freelancers. Most articles we run are written by a small handful of experienced writers who have worked with us for years. You have to come up with something really special, unique or compelling for us to even consider it.  If being published is more important than a big financial reward, we'd like to talk to you. Our magazine is seen by A LOT of people, in A LOT of places, not just here in the Midwest. Besides subscriptions across a multi-state area, thousands of copies are placed in the rooms of numerous upscale hotels/motels, thus reaching an affluent audience that travels. This democraphic tends to be well-educated, and we produce a highly literate magazine with well-written and well-researched pieces. Frankly, most of our articles are produced in-house, and we exhaust ourselves doing meticulous research and careful writing. We can't possibly afford to pay you to do the same, but in cases where you've produced something significant that you'd like to have appear in our magazine, we can sometimes come up with alternate ways of compensating you (such as freebie press junkets to wonderful locales that are all expenses paid). If we decide to run your article, we will pay a modest fee within 30 days of publication date. We NEVER pay "kill" fees.  Please don't keep pestering us with demands to know if we've reviewed your submission, or when it will run. The reality is that each issue of our magazine generates on average 300 submissions from freelancers. We have a small staff and are simply overwhelmed with work. We look at ALL submissions, whether they come by email or snail mail, but we cannot offer critiques of your work. To put this as politely as possible -- "don't call us, we'll call you." Address all correspondence to: P.O. Box 685, Panora, Iowa 50216. Or, send the editor an email: Here Attention Artists and Photographers Midwest Today invites artists and photographers to submit samples, but ONLY duplicate sets of your photos or art. DO NOT SEND ORIGINAL MATERIALS. No responsibility can be assumed for the safe return of such materials. We prefer you electronic samples of your photos, (as opposed to actual prints or slides), one per email. If you know anything about shooting pictures for publication, you know that a lot of digital cameras do not produce photos that are a high enough resolution for us to run. Only the more recent models are capable of capturing high res images.  If You Have a Story For Our Radio Show Our "Midwest Today Radio Edition" is a slickly-produced, 5-minute weekly show heard on stations all across the Heartland. It is based on the contents of our issues. As such, it reflects the diversity of our magazine. Some weeks we have serious segments to air, other weeks it's just for fun. We are always looking for people with good voices to do pieces for our radio show. You can really get us excited if you SEND US AUDIO SAMPLES (mp3s, for example). If you're currently on the air somewhere, or have some broadcast experience, and would love to get your voice on dozens of stations all over the Midwest, get in touch with us! We can make you famous! Email our editor: Here