Write for GroundUp and make a difference

GroundUp went live in April 2012. Since then we’ve been the first to run stories on the farm strife in De Doorns, the broken street lights of Lansdowne Road and Khayelitsha’s first coffee shop. We’ve broken stories on corruption in Home Affairs and the failure of that department to implement a ruling by the Public Protector. We’ve described the violence of child gangsters in Cape Town’s townships. We’ve run features on the transport system, interviewed ward councillors, described the complexity of providing RDP houses, exposed the illegal sale of state formula milk - and much, much more. Our trainee-journalists are learning their trade but at the same time they’re covering news that’s relevant to poor and vulnerable communities.

But we need more high-quality original content. And we will pay if we publish you.

What articles are we looking for?

We want reports on social justice from vulnerable communities. GroundUp will pay R800 for articles we publish. Articles should be 500 to 1000 words and must include a publishable photograph. Before we publish we usually fact check, so you need to provide us with a means to confirm all the facts you report. Articles that are well-structured and have few typos have a much better chance of being published.

Opinion pieces

Opinion pieces can make wonderful reading. But we’re fussy. If you decide to submit an opinion piece for us, please make sure you are writing from a position of intimate knowledge. Maybe you work on the ground in a township or immigrant community and you have an interesting perspective? Maybe you have expert knowledge or years of experience in the field you are writing about?

Also, please only send us material that has not been published elsewhere yet. We publish under a Creative Commons license, so other media are welcome to reproduce material published on our site. When we really like an article, we try to get it published in other media. We have had some success doing this.

Getting published in GroundUp benefits you because your article can still be published elsewhere and you get paid. Our readership is growing; your article has an excellent chance of being widely read. You will also be contributing to an exciting project that can help improve social justice and the quality of South African journalism.

Send articles for us to consider publishing to info [at] groundup.org.za. We are understaffed, but will try to reply accepting or rejecting your piece within 48 hours.