By default, these are also the guidelines for contributing articles to the main English and Hindi websites of OpIndia. Broadly, your contributions should meet the following criteria:
1. The article should be original and not published anywhere at the time of submission, except on your personal blog. If we find that the idea was lifted from any other place, we will credit the original author and put your contacts out in public.
2. The article shouldn’t be too short, say less than 300 words, or too long, say over 1500 words (we might relax the upper limit in rare cases, but don’t take that chance!).
3. If the article is a curated news report, it should cite original sources. Don’t copy-paste sentences even if you are curating. Your curation should add value to the original reports. Ideally it should give a new insight or analysis by combining information from different sources.
4. We will prefer articles that deal with current events that are making headlines at that point of time.
5. You will be entirely liable for opinion pieces. So please research well for data and information before making claims and conclusions.
6. The opinion pieces could be about individuals or entities, but it should not contain ad-hominem attacks. You can talk about someone’s personal life only if it’s directly related to the topic you are touching in your opinion piece.
7. No defamatory or abusive content will be allowed, no matter how strong or justified your emotions or arguments are.
8. We won’t entertain the usual left-liberal narrative. We are for free speech, but we are not obliged to carry such articles. Internet is a free space and you will get lot many platforms to voice your opinion. The mainstream media in India loves the left-liberal narrative, and we don’t want to mirror the mainstream media. We will stick to a right-liberal narrative.
9. We are not averse to touching politically incorrect themes, but the final decision regarding the tone and tenor of the article rests with our editorial team. You may push boundaries, but we will stick to some limits as set by the laws of the land and our own editorial policies.
The submitted articles will be reviewed and moderated, and published by our editorial team if they meet the aforementioned criteria. A few selected ones that further meet our editorial preferences and requirements will be transferred from “MyVoice” to the main website.