Most of Oklahoma has nobody in the room.
Seventy-seven counties. Commission meetings, school boards, zoning hearings and district court dockets running every week with no reporter present and no record of what happened except the minutes, which are written by the people who were being watched.
If you were in one of those rooms, you know something we do not. That is the qualification.
Things we would run tomorrow
Not a wish list. These are actual holes in our coverage, and any one of them could be your first piece.
Who showed up, what got voted on and what the vote was. Nobody has covered most of these rooms in years, which is a thing the people in them are aware of.
Family court, eviction docket, a Friday morning arraignment calendar. What was scheduled, what actually happened and how long anyone got to speak. Bring the case number.
A rezoning, a tax abatement, a water rate, a contract that went to one bidder. Send the agenda packet and tell us what the room felt like when it passed.
The denial is the story. Send us the request, the response and the date, and we will tell you whether the answer was legal.
Small-town football, wrestling, a state qualifier nobody drove out for. Scores, names spelled right, one good paragraph about the fourth quarter.
A festival, a band, a gallery opening, a rodeo, a fish fry. If it is worth the drive, say why it is worth the drive.
Where it would run
Pick whichever fits. If you cannot tell, send it anyway and we will sort it.
Who writes for us
The regular beats are covered. Everything around them is open, and that is most of the state.
- People with one storyYou have exactly one thing to say and you can prove it. That is a contribution and it runs under your name or, if the situation calls for it, under no name at all.
- Court watchersYou sit in a courtroom for reasons of your own. You already have the hardest part, which is the attendance.
- People in a county we cover badlyIf you live somewhere we get wrong or skip entirely, say so. That conversation goes differently.
- StudentsJournalism, pre-law, anyone who needs a clip and is willing to do the reading. We have run people who had never had a byline.
- Retired reportersOklahoma has a lot of you and the papers that employed you have a lot fewer pages than they used to.
What we ask
- Bring the paperAn order, a transcript, an agenda packet, a denial letter, a docket number. We report from documents. An account without a record is where the work starts, not where it ends.
- It is yoursYou wrote it and the photographs are yours to send.
- Names are spelled rightCheck with the person. It is the error readers remember longest and the one lawyers open with.
- Say what you do not knowIf a gap exists, mark it. We would rather print the edge of what is verified than write around it and find out later.
- Tell us your stakeIf you are a party, a relative, a former employee or a candidate, say so up front. It rarely disqualifies a piece. Finding out afterward does.
- We will edit itEverything gets read before it runs and nothing publishes that you have not seen.
Length is whatever the story needs. Four hundred words with a document attached beats two thousand without one.
Rights
Plain terms, so nobody has to guess.
- What you send becomes oursBy submitting text, photographs, video, audio or documents, you assign to The Oklahoma Post LLC all rights in that material, worldwide and in perpetuity, in every medium now existing or later invented. We may publish, edit, reproduce, distribute, archive, syndicate, license and promote it without further permission and without additional payment.
- You confirm it is yours to giveThat you created it or hold the rights to it, that it does not infringe anyone else’s copyright, trademark or privacy, and that nothing in it is knowingly false.
- You cover us if that turns out to be wrongYou agree to indemnify The Oklahoma Post LLC against any claim arising from material you submitted, including costs and attorney fees.
- We editFor length, clarity, accuracy and style. Nothing publishes that you have not seen.
- Published work stays publishedIt lives in the archive. We do not pull accurate reporting on request, including from the person who wrote it.
- Unsolicited materialAnything you send unsolicited is subject to these same terms and we are under no obligation to publish it, return it or keep it confidential.
These terms sit alongside our Terms and Conditions. Where the two differ, the Terms and Conditions control.
Send it
Pitch it first or send the whole thing. Either is fine. Choose Write For Us from the list and tell us what you have and what backs it up.
Still thinking about it
Most people who end up writing for us started by sending a tip and mentioning, near the end, that they used to write a little. If that is closer to where you are, start there instead.