The Community Bag’s best work happens in collaboration with local independent bloggers, journalists, activists, and other community members. We’re looking to work with more professionals to share Oakland’s visions, serve local information needs, and amplify important stories from across our city.

Stories and formats we’re interested in: We love hearing from community members about important issues happening in specific Oakland communities and neighborhoods that might not be on everyone else’s radars. We love stories that help Oaklanders learn about resources that would benefit them and their communities, or teach people how to navigate complicated systems. Stories don’t have to be traditional narrative reports: we like FAQs, “how-to” guides, personal essays, short videos, and more. We welcome photojournalism and will consider photo essays and other visual ideas.

We are interested in first-person storytelling about how communities in Oakland are impacted by local, state, and national policy and resource gaps. Whether you’re interested in sharing your own story, or collaborating with someone else in Oakland to share their story, we’d love to hear about it. Please note that we only publish stories that are closely tied to people and issues in Oakland. We don’t publish stories on regional, state, or national issues that aren’t rooted in our city. If you want to write about such an issue, and have a compelling way to tie it to people, places, or happenings in Oakland, we’d love to hear about it.

If your pitch resonates with our mission, doesn’t overlap with a story we already have in progress, and we’re able to properly support your pitch with editing bandwidth and funding at the time you submit it, here’s how we’ll work with you:

• Compensation: We pay $75 for stories that take about two days of reporting and writing, and up to $200 for in-depth features and investigative reports that take much longer to produce. We’ll work with you to figure out how long your report is likely to take, and offer you a clear rate ahead of time.

• Story planning: If you’re new to working with us, a Community Bag editor will talk to you about your reporting process before you get started, and you’ll work together to roadmap a plan.

• Editing: We’re proud to offer hands-on editing from a Community Bag editor for every story we publish. We strive for clear communication, timely responses, and a supportive working experience.

• We take your feedback to heart: After your first story for The Community Bag publishes, we’ll ask you to fill out a quick survey letting us know how we can better support freelance writers and reporters in the future.

Put together a simple pitch and a Community Bag representative will get back to you within one week. Email all pitches to: Info@TheCommunityBag.com.