NCV WRITERS' GUIDELINES

NEW CHRISTIAN VOICES is a new non-denominational Christian humor and lifestyle website. This is not your typical conservative Christian website. Yes, we're clean. Yes, we're Christian. But what we want is for our readers to be able to both laugh and stretch outside their comfort zones as they consider their Christian faith in everyday life. We want non-Christians to stop here because they'll laugh and find something interesting to read, and then wonder more about who we are, what we do and what we believe.

In your writing, be real, be vulnerable, and connect with readers in an honest way, warts and all. Strive to connect with readers who are not sitting in the church pew every Sunday or who do not live inside the Christian subculture. We should maintain the site's overall light and amusing tone and treat sensitive issues with the utmost care and tolerance for all of God’s children. One of the ways NCV promotes our website is through weekly email blasts to subscribers and registered visitors. Our audience demographics are very broad, with a roughly equal split between males and females, and a wide range of denominations, geographies, and age ranges represented.

AUG 21, 2008 UPDATE: Please, no pee, poop, potty training, diaper and toilet essays. We are innundated with those submissions and buy very few.

MARCH 3, 2009 UPDATE: We are not currently paying for published material, but promote our writers heavily through our weekly email newsletters – currently sent to more than 100,000 recipients – and through promotional outreach by our Public Relations firm, 5W PR, in New York. Many of our writers have been featured in radio, television, print and online publications representing Christian perpectives on issues of the day. All of our columnists and at least one of our bloggers are scheduled for interviews in April (2009) on FamilyNet radio, broadcast nationally over Sirius satellite radio.

In addition, published articles include links back to writers' personal websites and blogs and feature links from which readers can purchase their other works such as books, performance CDs and DVDs and artwork. All writers's work available through Amazon.com can be included in the New Christian Voices Clean Comedy Store.

COLUMNISTS

We are not currently looking for any new standing columnists.

CHANNELS

We are currently accepting funny essays, commentary, editorials and column-like material for our channels: Faith (in real life), Society (ex: political, current events, social issues), Entertainment (pop culture, movies, TV, books, music, etc.), Relationships (ex: romantic, spousal, parent-child, sibling, neighborhood, congregational, on the job), and General Humor. Material must be funny, original and previously unpublished. NCV seeks first-run rights with a 30- or 60-day exclusive, but writers maintain the copyright after any agreed upon exclusivity lapses, we just need non-exclusive rights to maintain the work in our archives indefinitely.

Submissions should range in words from 300-600 for channel pieces, and should be written to appeal to the online reader, with short paragraphs and few blocks of long text. The overarching goal of the channels is to amuse and entertain while offering valuable (or just interesting) spiritual insights.

Use personal anecdotes to highlight a larger truth. When possible, tie in a biblical or scriptural principle or insight, but don’t feel the need to hit the reader over the head with it. Make us laugh first, and then realize we’ve learned something later. If you can’t be hilarious, at least be interesting. If you can be hilarious, you’ll find steady work writing for this site.

AUG 21, 2008 UPDATE: Please, no pee, poop, potty training, diaper and toilet essays. We are innundated with those submissions and publish very few.

DEVOTIONALS

WE ARE NOT CURRENTLY PUBLISHING DEVOTIONALS AT THIS TIME

We are in need of short devotional pieces of 150-350 words (THIS WORD COUNT IS NEW: keep the devos short but you can make them a little longer than we'd originally asked for). These do not need to be laugh-out-loud funny but amusing items are strongly preferred, so do keep the tone light. Communicate a biblical insight or principle that the reader can apply to their daily life, but don’t sermonize. We buy all rights to devotionals. Please send up to 5 devotionals, and (this is new) please submit each in a separate email. 

BLOGS 

Blogs will fall into two categories: Humor and Commentary. Humor blogs must be at least amusing and at best funny. Commentary blogs do not need to be funny but should spark discussion about topics ranging from faith and Christianity to pop culture and current events. If you are an outside-the-box Christian, a commentary blog is a great place to share your thoughts on faith, society, current events, the church, and more.

Blogs do not pay but we may implement a pay-per-traffic system for blogs that generate a following. Blog material must be new and original; the blogger must own the copyright to any material posted to the blog. Bloggers retain all rights to their material and can post as often as they like, but are requested to post at least twice a month in order to retain blogging privileges. The more you blog, the more your name is seen on the site.

NCV reserves the right to monitor the blogs and/or cancel a blog for any reason, including copyright infringement, misuse of the blog, or inappropriate blog content.

To apply for a blog, send an email to Editor@NewChristianVoices.com and put BLOG QUERY in the subject line. Please let us know if you’re requesting a humor or commentary blog.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

For channels, send complete to Editor@NewChristianVoices.com. In the subject line, put “QUERY” and the channel you think your piece fits. (For example, Query: Faith Channel) Include the entire copy in the body of the email. For interviews or profiles please query first with idea and please be sure you can score an interview before you pitch the story. (Please, do not send examples of previously published material so we can “see your writing style.” Write something new and submit it, and we’ll see if we like your writing style that way.)

Please include your name, phone number, email address and website address if applicable. Response time is typically from one to four weeks. We reserve the right to refuse articles if they don’t meet editorial expectations.