The Digital 50.50, introduced by Network of Women Journalists for Digital Rights, is a feminist magazine for womxn and non-binary journalists and writers. It aims to serve as a tool for providing our audiences with insights and experiences from the digital as well as the offline world, for an educated and fun/engaging discourse on human rights in the digital era.
We are especially looking for pitches from diverse writers who can bring a variety of experiences and perspectives to the magazine and focus on issues from an intersectional, feminist perspective. Being a feminst magazine, we prefer sources, interviewees and experts consulted for the submissions to be womxn and non-binary to amplify their otherwise silenced/subdued voices.
Our magazine focuses on including unique and impactful visuals to break the monotone, evoke emotional connection and make engagement more inclusive for our audiences.
Digital 50.50 is a monthly e-magazine, which opens a call for article submissions at the start of the month. Once the call is shared on our social media and in different WhatsApp groups, if you are interested in making a contribution, you are welcome to share your pitch based on the theme at [email protected].
Submission guidelines
Written content
Features:
This category includes investigations, long-form narrative, deep-dive explainers, or big-idea essays and profiles.
- Features should have a title, introduction, body, conclusion, and where appropriate, references.
- Word limit of features should be from 2000 – 2500. If the author believes the article needs to be of a different length, then they should communicate with us prior to submission. Your topic needs to be comprehensively covered, and if more words are required it is usually not a concern so we can discuss our ability to adjust it within the magazine.
Essays and research reports:
Word limit for essays and reports should be up to 2500 words including references, notes and captions. The report must present important findings of research results, on areas of broad significance. Reports and essays should include an abstract.
Literary writings:
This category includes short stories and non-fiction. We are not accepting poetry currently. We do reserve the right to edit submitted works for length and clarity if necessary.
Short stories and nonfiction are limited to one submission per person at a time and may not be longer than 3,500 words (can be an excerpt from a longer work).
We want stories we can treasure, words that show the love and sweat and effort of strong storytellers. These are the works we get excited about polishing so they shine to brilliance in our publication.
NOTE: We HIGHLY RECOMMEND all written content to be supported by external website links, social media links, screenshots, photos, graphs, charts, infographics, or videos. If you want to embed any of these in the article, please show where they should be positioned with the proper title of the content — you also have to submit them as separate files with the same titles.
Submitting digital content with your written submission:
Photos/screenshots/images/graphs and charts:
- A photo, image or screenshot must be high quality (300 dpi)
- Formats accepted include Photoshop .tif, .jpg, or .eps; or Illustrator .eps or .ai, preferably saved as .png or .jg
- Do not submit .gif files, and if you embed pictures in Word files, they must also be sent as separate files in order to reproduce correctly.
- Please send all items via email or we transfer, if your graphic documents are too large to email.
- Be sure to identify what is being illustrated or shown in each file. Include captions for charts, graphs and photos with the submission.
- For photos, please provide details for attribution (full name of the photographer and year the picture was taken).
- For screenshots of social media websites, please also provide links for us to see if we can include these as per privacy policies or not.
Videos:
We encourage authors to submit videos with their written submissions as these cater to the short attention spans of readers and audiences.
- Video embedded in articles should be short, preferably not more than 2 minutes.
- General Video Specs:
- Make sure the resolution is high
- Choose a location with bright, even lighting
- Selfie videos are perfectly acceptable, but if possible use a tripod to keep your shots steady
- If you have an HD camera, record in high-definition video
- Avoid background noise
3. Send us your videos separately in MP4 format.
4. All video content will be uploaded on DRF’s YouTube Channel.
NOTE: Include relevant Facebook URL’s and Twitter handles and hashtags, so we can give credit where credit is due.
Visual content
Visual story/essay:
- This includes a sequence of photographs, illustrations, GIFs originally taken and/or created by yourself.
- To be equivalent to a 2000-2500 word written essay, a visual essay should comprise 10-12 images, with around 700-1000 words of text.
Posters
- This includes all forms of digital illustrations and paintings.
- One artwork will be accepted per month.
- All digitally submitted photos should be a minimum of 5 x 7 inches, 300 dpi, preferably saved as a .jpg (quality high). Formats accepted include Photoshop .tif, .jpg, or .eps; or Illustrator .eps or .ai.
- This should be accompanied by a 200 word abstract to allow the audience to understand the significance of the artwork.
Video story:
- Feature stories should be five-eight minute videos that have a strong story and focus on more than one interviewee, commentator or expert. We are not accepting scholarly video articles.
- A video story should include a descriptive abstract of no less than 300 words to allow authors to present information and basic ideas to the audience.
- Video stories should preferably be supported by slides of information including graphs and charts for it to be more engaging and more effective to communicate findings.
- We don’t provide help with editing or proofreading of video stories, so please make sure the transcript is proofread. At this time it is not feasible to transfer the video editing file and its associated resources to the editorial team.
- Subtitles can be used, but please keep in mind to keep the font readable.
- References and citations must be included within the video story if applicable.
- Up to eight keywords identifying the main themes and topics of the video story
How to Create a Video
- Presentation: Position/focus the video camera such that it records you at approximately waist level; no more, no less.
- Video should be horizontally shot.
- Delivery: Speak clearly, adequate volume and make good eye contact with the camera.
- Follow the General Video Specs:
- Make sure the resolution is high
- Choose a location with bright, even lighting
- Selfie videos are perfectly acceptable, but if possible use a tripod to keep your shots steady
- If you have an HD camera, record in high-definition video
- Avoid background noise
- Send us your videos separately in MP4 format.
- All video content will be uploaded on DRF’s YouTube Channel.
Guidelines for pitches:
Please keep pitches brief, between 200 and 300 words.
Tell us, in an engaging and jargon-free style, what the story is, its scope and what’s at stake, and why Digital 5050 is the best place to tell it.
Final submissions:
Please submit a brief biography of the author with present employment, title(s), designations, bank details (name and branch, IBAN, title of account), CNIC and a digital photograph if you want it uploaded with your writing.
Bank details and CNIC are only collected for contracts and payments.
Submission preparation checklist
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission’s compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines:
- Has your submission been previously published, or is it before another magazine for consideration?
- Does your submission include any plagiarised or self-plagiarised content?
- Have you met the word limit?
- Have you verified, re-verified and fact-checked your submission?
- Have third-party-owned materials used been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission obtained from the copyright holder?
- Has consent been taken from sources?
- Is your submission approached from an intersectional feminist perspective?
- Are you submitting digital content in the proper formats mentioned in the guidelines?
- Have you properly referenced the submission, if it is needed?
Ethical matters
Where applicable, authors should include a statement within the article detailing approval and consent for any quotes or names to be used in their submissions. We still reserve the right to not include names for safety and anonymity reasons.
Plagiarism or self-plagiarism:
Submissions must be original and not published or submitted for publication elsewhere.