How to Submit and the Rules of the Game

Are you an occasional writer that doesn’t have the time nor inclination to run your own blog, but would like to speak to a highly politically literate audience when you have something that needs to be said?

Are you a new political blogger that would like to expose your capabilities to a new, wider audience?

Then The Possum Box might be for you.

This is a non-commercial blog that I donate my own time to administer as a thankyou to the Australian political blogosphere for supporting my work on Possum’s Pollytics – so please keep in mind that this is a voluntary effort.

There are 4 simple rules for submission.

Rule Number 1

The work must relate somehow to politics – psephology, strategy, policy, media coverage, general commentary or really anything that has a basis in politics. The subject matter can be broad, but it must be anchored to politics in some way. You can use your imagination here.

Australian or international politics is fine.

Rule Number 2.

The work must be of high quality and insightful.

The audience that will be reading the articles published here will be a spin off of my own readership, so there will be everything from politicians to political staffers, bureaucrats to academics, lobbyists to journalists, other bloggers through to political junkies perusing your wares.

Keep that in mind – this isn’t an ordinary readership where you will only be seen by a handful of the general population.

This brings with it two consequences:

Firstly, you will effectively be arguing with and against something approaching the sum total of human knowledge. It’s a simple function of having a readership that is not only wide and deep in terms of its demographics, but which contains people that know more than just about everyone else on any given topic, and certainly your articles will be read by people that know more than you do about the topic you’re writing about.

As a result, if you get your facts wrong, the comments on your post will let you know pretty much straight away. Mistakes will be parodied and poorly constructed arguments will be torn asunder by a readership that knows its shit. It might not be for the faint hearted, but that is what being a quality writer is all about – taking the plunge into a high quality audience and being able to swim.

Secondly, the readers will have heard most things before. Decrying the usual suspects as neocons or communists, as Tories or socialists or simply banging on about how some journalist is biased, is tedious. Readers know that already – the aim here is to expose insightful work to a wider audience. That’s not to say that a particularly amusing takedown of a journalist, or a stinging critique of the usual suspects will never be published – but it must be good, or funny, or contain value in some other way.

Rule Number 3

No defamation. There are ways to poke, prod, stir or otherwise verbally kneecap and belittle your targets without me, or you, ending up in court. Use your head – the best verbal attacks are the legal ones.

Rule Number 4

When it comes to choosing what articles get published – what I say goes.

That might sound like I’m being an authoritarian prick, but it can be no other way.

If your article gets rejected, please don’t take it personally – many will inevitably be rejected for various reasons, including simple timing (there might have been 4 articles this week just like the one you are submitting). But I’ll tell you why it’s been rejected and if you wish, you can submit it again once you’ve fixed it up.

There’s no political bias here – articles won’t be judged on their politics, but on their content. However, if you think I’m showing some bias, you can always submit an article about it

How to Submit:

To submit articles for publication on The Possum Box, simply mail them to possum_comitatus@yahoo.com.au with “Possum Box Submission” in the Subject line.

Submissions can be in either doc format, or a simple cut and paste into your email will be fine.

If your article contains images, also send those images as attachments to your email as it makes it easier for me to publish articles with wordpress that way.

There are no rules on length, just use your head. A 50 thousand word tome will probably be rejected, likewise a 100 word ditty unless it’s extremely poignant.

You will also need to provide:

– The Title or Headline you want the article to have

– A name you want it published under (pseudonyms are fine but not necessary)

– An email address that will be published on the site for personal feedback from readers. This can be as simple as a made up hotmail account or your real email address, but it must be an active account. I’ll test it and require an answer from that account before an article will be published.

The mail address will also be munged when it’s published on your article to avoid spam harvesters, so my email address would be published as:

Possum_comitatus IatI yahoo dots com dots au

Finally, there’s a blogroll on the sidebar of the site. If your submission is published here and you run a blogsite, you’ll get a blogroll entry. That’s the criteria for the blogroll.

But at the end of the day – please remember that I voluntarily administer this site so there may be delays in responding to your submissions as I have a real life too.