How to write for Catholic Gators
Submit a post to share it with all of the Catholic Gators community!
Hi there! I’m Michael “MCP” Chan-Pong, and I was the Director of Internal Campaigns for Restless Heart Communications for the 2018–2019 academic year. I was largely responsible for having migrated our blog to Medium, and I’ll be showing you how to submit a blog post for our Medium publication. I’m glad that you want to write for us!
First, we need to get you set up with Medium
(Of course, skip this step if you already have an account)
1. Open https://medium.com/.
2. Click on “Get Started”.
3. Sign up for an account using Google or Facebook.
4. Once you’ve logged in through Google or Facebook, you’ll be prompted to select your interests. Pick three things that interest you and hit “Start Reading”.
5. You’ll be presented with your homepage at this point.
You’re now set up with Medium!
Next, you need to be added as a writer to our publication
Email us at rhc@catholicgators.org requesting to be added as a writer to our publication. Include the following in your email:
- Write “Medium writer request” in the subject of your email
- Send us your Medium profile link
- Give us a short bio about yourself in the body of the email. We want to know what you like to write about!
To find your Medium profile link, go to https://medium.com/me/, and the URL will change to your profile address in the address bar. Copy that, and paste it into your email.
While you wait for us to add you as a writer, why not get started with writing?
The next step is to write something for us!
The guidelines are the following:
- Must be at least 500 words
- Must be free of grammatical errors
- Must be original work
- Must be respectful
- Must uphold Catholic values
- Must contain at least one photo. Any photo you include must be copyright-free, public domain, or original (tip: Medium has a feature for inserting photos from Unsplash)
- If there is a specific date you would like your article to be posted, please write “TK: Post on [date]” at the top of your post, and submit it at least one week prior to the specific date.
- If you are writing about a saint, make sure to tag your post with “Saint”. If you are writing a student gospel reflection, make sure you tag your post with “Gospel Reflection”.
- Note that all submissions undergo review by Catholic Gators leaders, and your submission may not be published. If your post is not approved, we will notify you on why.
To write a post:
1. Click on your profile picture in the top right, then click on “New Story”.
2. Write your post in Medium’s editor. The editor will automatically save your post as a draft as you type.
For the following steps, you’ll need to have been added as a writer to the Catholic Gators publication.
3. Once you’re done, click on the three dots in the top-right corner, then hit “Add to publication”.
4. Select the Catholic Gators publication and hit “Save”
5. Hit “Ready to submit?”
6. Edit your story preview if you wish, add tags to your story, and hit “Submit to Publication”! Don’t forget to add your respective tag if you’re either writing about a saint or submitting a student gospel reflection.
If you would like to make an anonymous post, email your work to rhc@catholicgators.org with a subject line of “Anonymous Blog Post: [Title]”, your name in the email body, and your work sent as a document (.doc or .docx). We’ll post for you under the “Restless Heart Communications” name.
You’re all done! At this point, we’ll be notified that you’ve written for us, and we’ll begin reviewing your post. If you don’t see anything happen for a week or more, you may want to shoot us a follow-up email or to bug one of the RHC officers in-person. Sometimes things slip past us.
If you’ve made it this far, congrats! You’re on your way to having a post of yours published for Catholic Gators! You should be notified by Medium once your post is published. To continue writing for Catholic Gators, just keep writing more stories and submitting them to our publication. I’m looking forward to seeing what you have in store for us!
Also, pro tip: if you like writing on-the-go, Medium has a mobile app too! Get it for iOS or Android, and maybe write for us while you wait at a bus stop or in line for Dunkin’. Your articles are stored on Medium as you write, so you can always switch between your phone and computer.
