How To Submit Your 2006 Citizen Journalism...

2006 Gather
Citizen Journalism
Scholarship Contest

Submission Guidelines

Submission Guidelines:

For contest consideration, articles must be submitted in three steps:

1. Email additional copy(ies) to judges

The first step in the entry process is sending a copy of your entry to the judges via email.
Please email a copy of your article in the body of your email or as a word attachment to citizenjournalism@gatherinc.com.
The subject of your email should be Citizen Journalism 2006 Undergrad if you are an undergraduate student or Citizen Journalism 2006 Grad if you are a graduate student.
All submissions for consideration must come from a .edu email address.
In your email please add your word count, first name, last name, and school.
We will email all entrants in batches to confirm their entries, as submissions are received. If you have entered the contest and do not receive notice of your submission by Wednesday, May 5, 2006 email citizenjournalism@gatherinc.com.

2. Register for Gather.com and the Citizen Journalism Scholarship Contest

If you are NOT a registered member of Gather.com:

Click the link provided to Join the Citizen Journalism Scholarship group on Gather.
Once you have landed on the Citizen Journalism Scholarship invitation page, click Join Now.
Fill in all registration information. Asteriks indicate required fields.
You must use your real name and a .edu email address when you register.
When you have finished filling out the registration fields and accepted the terms of service, click Register.
After registering, you will land on the Just one more step page explaining that in order to complete your registration, you will need to open the email sent to the account you used to register with Gather and complete the email instructions.
Go to your email inbox and open the email from Gather.com with the subject line Confirm Your Gather Registration.
Follow the email instructions and copy the link in the email into an internet browser
You are now a confirmed member of Gather and of the Citizen Journalism. Scholarship group on Gather.com. On this group page: journalism.gather.com you can read other entrant submissions and keep up with the latest contest news.
If you have any trouble registering for the site and the contest group using the link provided, please email citizenjournalism@gatherinc.com for help.

If you are ALREADY a registered member of Gather.com follow the instructions below to register for the contest:

If you are already a confirmed, registered member of Gather.com, go to journalism.gather.com.
On the left side of the screen, click on the link + Join this group.
Click the Join button to confirm your membership.

3. Published Contest Entry(ies) on Gather.com

Once registered for Gather and the Citizen Journalism Contest, entrants must also publish their stories on the Gather.com by Monday, May 1, 2006, 11:59EST.
Go to Gather.com and sign in. The member sign in field is on the right side of the homepage.
Click on the green Publish button at the top of the Gather page, select Article from the drop down menu.
In the title field, type in your entry's title.
You can either type directly into the field for the body of your story or simply paste your story from a word document or email.
If you want to add a photo/image to your entry, click the Browse button under "Add Images to Your Article" on the right side of the screen.
Browse your files and select the jpeg image you have already saved.
Click the Upload button. You can add a caption to your image (optional) as well as keywords (optional). Click the Save button.
You can leave the photo/image next to your story or you can drag the image into your story.
In the Tags field, add tag citizen journalism 2006 undergrad if you are an undergraduate student or citizen journalism 2006 grad if you are a graduate student.If there are additional keywords you want people to be able to use to search for your article, enter those as well separated by commas.
Under Who Can View My Article you will need to select two groups. Firstselect Everyone AND when prompted to "Publish this article to the selected group(s)" also select Citizen Journalism Scholarship.
Click Publish.
Do not publish your piece on Gather.com more than once. The occasional typo will be overlooked, so don't panic if you find one in your story later. You can also edit any problems you find by clicking the Edit My Article link next to your submission.
Now that your article is published on Gather and entered into the scholarship contest, invite your friends and family to read your submission at journalism.gather.com. To invite your network of friends, family, and colleagues, click on the Connect button at the top of any page on Gather.com and select Invite People from the drop down menu. Enter email addresses into the field and send your invitees a short note telling them about your entry in the scholarship contest.

Entry Guidelines:

The competition is open to non-fiction pieces between 500 – 1,500 words. Please type the word count at the end of your entry. Entries outside the word limitation will not be considered.
Submissions should portray a real life, eyewitness account or personally researched story about a current event (news, politics, sports etc.).
Multiple entries are permitted.
Photos are encouraged.
All articles must be tagged with either: "citizen journalism 2006 undergrad" or "citizen journalism 2006 grad", depending on entrants' undergraduate or graduate student status.
All submissions for consideration must come from a .edu email address and entrants must use their real names to register. Only US journalism students are eligible.
All entries must be in original, unpublished works written in English, and not submitted elsewhere until the winners are announced. Articles should not contain pornography, sexual or racial slurs, offensive language or obscenities.
Gather reserves the one-time publication rights of all entries. Entrants retain reprint rights to their work.