Dive Zero is a free Internet based publication, the dream-child of its editor and Director of Operations, Luke Boychuk. To give you a flavour of what they are about go to the About Us section.
A week ago I wrote in to ask for their Contributor Guidelines, Luke replied within 24 hours with:
Thanks for your email. We are looking for article contributors for the virtual magazine, and video submitters for Dive Zero TV. The article must be unique. Contributors would send a write up and photos, then we do the layout, credit, etc… Do you have any ideas in mind? If so, please let me know.
Which tells me that they don't really have anything specific in mind - if you write to the style of the magazine you are likely to get published. I did ask about payment but this subject was left out in Luke's reply - I suspect they don't pay.
I decided to use a recent article as a case study to find out what they were looking for and settled on: Diving in the Okinawa Ruins by Lisa Slater and Lee J Cowan.
By comparing this with other articles I came to the conclusion that there is no real house style - if it's 'kind of like the stuff' published previously then your copy will probably work for them.
What I did find interesting about Lisa Slater's article was the dive travel company mentioned in the article - Open Coast Travel.
If you go to the About Us page of Open Coast Travel's site guess who you bump into?
That's right - Lisa Slater, the author of the article about diving in the Okinawa ruins - all about diving with her own company!
What a great piece of marketing - no need to fly a journalist from another country and pay for all of their accommodation, food and diving, just write the article yourself.
And it gets better - go to the Press part of their site and you'll find more articles where Lisa has either written them or been featured as a central character.
A stunning bit of marketing, especially when you see how she has taken what amounts to 50 pieces of a journalistic 'jigsaw puzzle' about diving and travelling in the area and placed 20 or so of them in each article. Just enough to make each one different - an outstanding example of 'product placement.'
Anyway - back to Dive Zero and my analysis. Quite simply, a good place to get your first article published.
Keep writing...
Brendan
Recent Comments