Welcome aboard!
Dear freelancers:

Welcome to Zenger! We are the world's first digitally native wire service, and you are a part of it. The last time a global newswire was launched (in 1990), web browsers hadn’t been invented yet.

You’ll be helping us report in places where many news outlets don’t go. Together we’ll publish stories that disrupt, surprise, entertain and inform a diverse readership. I've been reading a lot of your work, and I'm confident we have the start of something world-shaping.

Our journalist enrollment has climbed more than 1,000% in the past five days. My team is working to keep up with a tremendous inflow of requests to join Zenger’s network of freelance reporters as word has spread about our ambitious plans.

A few of you have had problems with your usernames and passwords. Your username should be your email address. But if you haven’t been able to log in, please click here to email my teammate, Allison. We will get it sorted out.

What follows below will ultimately be part of a freelancer’s handbook, which we’ll be editing with input from many of you. Your critiques and insights will help make us all smarter and better. I hope you save this email and refer back to it from time to time.
Pitching Zenger
Once you log in successfully, the first thing you should notice is a button that says “Pitch A Story.” Please use it.

Our pitch form is based on research from the University of California, Berkeley and is designed to make reporters think about crafting stories that readers will find engaging. Please use it. It's a smart way to ensure a story idea is sufficiently developed for us to consider it thoughtfully and carefully. (If you're logged in, clicking on the yellow button above should take you there.)

If you try to save a story draft in our publishing system without first pitching it through our online form and receiving approval, we will not see it and it may be deleted. So here’s another link to that pitch form . Bookmark it. That's your way into our system.

There is no practical limit to the number of stories you can pitch, as long as you observe the deadlines we agree on if we accept one or more of them. I’m particularly excited to read ideas that come in from parts of the world most readers have never visited, so keep them coming. And Zenger is already one of America's largest distributors of content to African American and Hispanic news outlets, so stories that appeal to those audiences are always of great interest.

We have also assembled some useful tools for you, with a lot more to come. We want to make it easier for journalists to produce great stories with fewer hours wasted hunting for sources or contextual information.
Compensation
At this point, Zenger is offering flat fees when editors accept story pitches—and not before. The fees can vary widely based on a number of factors, just like they do at other news outlets. We aim to pay freelancers via digital bank transfers within five business days of publication. If you are a member of the paydesk service, that firm sets its own schedule. For others in the developing world, payments may take somewhat longer.

We will unveil a plan later this year to increase your earnings through a revenue-sharing model that will give reporters a share of advertising, subscription and other fees that news outlets usually spend on overhead. Given the scale of our planned distribution network, that should significantly increase earnings for our journalists. It could be quite soon.

When we make that transition, our reporters will have online dashboards where they can track their earnings and monitor when money is transferred to them. But all of this involves a tremendous amount of software development, and the cake isn't quite baked yet.

Our HR team sends out payment paperwork to everyone who has signed our standard freelancer agreement. That lets us take care of getting you paid after a story is published. And here's more good news: You don’t need to invoice Zenger.
Editorial Guidelines
Now for some rules of the road:

1. Zenger News does not “aggregate” stories published by other news outlets, so don't rewrite someone else's story. We only publish original reporting. Also, we don't cite other news outlets for quotes or facts. You should confirm everything yourself. Better yet, expand on what has previously been reported.

2. We never use anonymous or unnamed sources. If your source won’t go on the record, you may not use reporting from that person in your story. You can ask the source for a document and cite that if it's authentic, however.

3. Every submission to Zenger must include a minimum of three photographs, including one picture of every quoted source, and you must provide captions. Since in-person interviews can very difficult to arrange during the COVID-19 crisis, we recommend screen captures via Facetime, Skype, Zoom or another similar service. If you are reporting on a live event, please take many, many photographs so you have choices later on. And shoot video. If we like the footage, we'll pay extra for it.

4. Photo captions must include the date, the location, and the name(s) of people appearing in the photos. At the end should be a credit that takes this form, including the parentheses.

(Your Name Here/Zenger)

5. You’ll find we generally observe the Associated Press Stylebook, but I strongly recommend you become familiar with two additional documents. One is a set of rules for writing Zenger stories. The other is some guidance for composing headlines.

6. You should read and follow the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, or the equivalent in your home country.

We take ethical lapses very seriously. Any evidence of plagiarism, deception or dishonesty is grounds for immediate termination of our relationship, and you will not be permitted to work with Zenger again in the future.

This rule has no exceptions. If a Zenger editor asks you to support anything in your story with evidence, you should be prepared to offer it. We will help you with your stories, but we expect honesty and transparency.
A Little Housekeeping
There is one more thing I would like to bring to your attention: The agreement some of you signed contained clauses that, after thoughtful consideration, we believe may not fully protect journalists’ interests in the way we would have liked. One problem is that the contract incorrectly required journalists to indemnify the company in some situations, placing an undue burden on them. This was a drafting error.

As a result, we will be reissuing the contract. We will also provide you with an easier way to indicate your agreement with a simple online click. (If you haven't received a contract from us yet, it's coming very soon.)

Please be patient while we sort this out in the coming few days.

This is a lot to digest, but we would rather keep you informed than keep you guessing. You are our most important constituency other than our readers. (We all serve them first.)

Thanks for your interest and your professionalism. Now go commit a random act of journalism and tell us about it.

With Every Good Wish,
David Martosko
Executive Editor

p.s.: We sent you this message because you registered as a freelance reporter at www.zenger.news. If your friends registered as news editors or photographers, feel free to tell them they'll get their own welcome email very soon. If your friends haven't registered yet, send them here.
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