Write for Nightingale
Everything you need to get started
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Nightingale is the journal of the Data Visualization Society (DVS). We bring you high-quality articles covering many of the applications of data visualization — including education, entertainment, history, sports, best practices, new techniques, and any other aspect or implementation of visual information design we find compelling. We’ll host interviews with thought leaders and interesting people from the Data Visualization Society community and beyond. Like adventurers, we want to explore the unexplored, to look to the past and dream of the future.
We always intended for the DVS Medium publication to share the incredible wealth of knowledge from our community. By partnering with Medium, our articles get premium promotion through Medium’s content-sharing algorithms and channels. This allows us to support the Data Visualization Society’s mission to “support the growth, refinement, and expansion of data visualization knowledge regardless of the expertise level of our members” by getting our members more exposure.
We highly encourage any of our members to use Nightingale to further their ideas and spark discussion both within the Data Visualization Society and outside it among the general community. We are here to help you!
What you should write about
Honestly, that’s up to you! We are interested in stories about all aspects of data visualization and information design for any industry, discipline or mindset! We have an expansive view of what data visualization encompasses and how we use it in our world. We currently have featured sections for Topics in Data Visualization, Data Humanism, Historic Dataviz, Sports Viz, Career Advice, and How To articles. We also intend to expand more into industry news, culture, reported features, and dataviz journalism. But please consider our publication a platform for any subject that you have in mind.
We pay all our writers
We are pleased to announce that, starting July 15, 2019, our partnership with Medium allows Nightingale to pay all our writers, editors, and illustrators. Please note that in order to be compensated for your work, you need to be part of the Medium Partner Program. To enroll, sign up here:
Here’s more information about the process of getting registered. It outlines the exact steps and forms you will need to fill out.
After you are registered, Medium will deposit your earnings directly into your bank account on the last Wednesday of every calendar month. If you want to donate your author’s fee back to the Data Visualization Society, let us know.
How to get started
If you are interested in writing for Nightingale, please send your Medium Profile name and your pitch to any of the editors on the DVS Slack or email us at nightingale@datavisualizationsociety.org. For other inquiries and general questions about the DVS, you can email us at admin@datavisualizationsociety.com.
Once your pitch has been accepted and you’ve been made a writer, you can submit your unpublished draft to us when you’re ready. Once we receive it, we’ll connect you with an editor to prepare it for publication — it’s pretty easy!
Here’s how you add a Draft to our publication once we have made you a writer:
Please note that we are happy to publish articles in multiple languages, but may not be able to provide editorial support at this time for all languages.
We are here to support you
We read all articles before publishing and try to help each one succeed by providing editorial support. You need to proofread your articles several times before submitting, but you should also expect that we will suggest some edits to your work before publishing. Our editors often try to spark a friendly dialogue in order to take your piece to the next level.
We also reserve the right to not publish articles for any reason.
We work in a visual medium so more pictures = more good
Medium is a digital-native image + text platform. We want to provide our readers with the most beautiful articles that we can publish, so please consider images to be an integral part of your story. If for some reason you’re having a hard time, you can always look at the free-image services like Pixabay or Unsplash or discuss it with your editor. Please be sure to add alt-text for all of your images.
Please add no more than 4 tags
Tags allow Medium to route your article to readers who might be interested in your subject matter. Medium allows for 5 tags, but in order to organize our articles, we need to use one of them, so if you include 5, we might need to change one to get it to appear in the right section.
Just be cool to everyone
We’re nice, friendly people. Your article should represent your own voice and consider the reader to be an informed friend. Make sure your language is inclusive and respectful.
Give your colleagues a voice
Always give credit where credit is due to other DVS members for their ideas. It is important to realize that some members may not want their names or direct quotes to appear in a Medium article or even online. So make sure to reach out to DVS members (or anyone within reason) before quoting them or naming them to make sure you have their permission. If not, then paraphrase their ideas and make sure it is clear that they are not your own.
An evolving list of good ideas to keep in mind:
- Have something new to say. Make sure your article has a point, with a beginning middle and end.
- Tell a story. It’s more fun to write and more fun to read.
- Think big or think small. We want to help you communicate your big ideas and we’re also interested in your hyper-granular, laser-focused articles, too. Basically, have a point and stay focused.
- Be sure to give the “so what.” You need to tell people why your ideas matter to them. After all, this is a platform for discussion.
- Make it something people want to share. If your work is inspiring or informative people will want to share it. Consider this before you start writing the piece.
- Only include what is necessary. We all have a lot to read so try to streamline your language and focus on what’s needed for your central point/argument. If you have a lot to cover, that’s cool, but you can also break it up into a series.
You need to be a member of the Data Visualization Society in order to write for Nightingale. It’s free to join and you can sign up here:
