Contribute/Submit Content
We welcome submissions from several sources; however, there are some basic guidelines that we ask all contributors to follow. All potential contributors must follow the "General" guidelines presented below; however, depending on the content and substance of your submission, there might be additional guidelines. After you look through the general guidelines, we ask that you choose the set of additional guidelines from the directory below that best describes your contribution. If you'd like to become a permanent part of our organization, please visit the Join Us page.
Because of limited bandwidth, we ask that you contact us via e-mail before sending any files, including in the body a basic description of what you want to submit: if the file is large, we may ask you to upload it to a private file retrieval service that permits you to upload at no cost, such as Rapidshare [rapidshare.com]. Even with relatively small files, correspondence is the best way to start any relationship. Visit the "Contact" page to direct your query to the correct individual.
If your submission is approved, we recommend using the following filetypes for uploading, depending on the content. If you need software to help create the file, we would be happy to direct you to an open source application that is suitable for your needs. (List Key: Content - filetype (.extension), filetype (.extension), etc.):
- Blog Entry - Rich-Text-Format (.rtf), Microsoft Word (.doc), Plain Text (.txt)
- Document for Download (essay, article, etc.) - Portable Document Format (.pdf), Microsoft Word (.doc), Hypertext document (.html, .htm)
- Audio Commentary - MPEG-4 Audio (.m4a), MPEG-3 (.mp3), Windows Media Audio (.wma) - important: for spoken audio commentary, please record at no less than 16kbps and no more than 44kbps, mono
- Music - MPEG-4 Audio (.m4a), MPEG-3 (.mp3) - important: for music files, please make sure that the encoding is at no less than 96kbps and no more than 164kbps, and is no longer than seven minutes in length. Artists - see the Artist Guidelines for more detail.
- Video - QuickTime (.mov, .mp4, .mpg, .mpeg), Windows Media Video (.wmv) - please make sure that resolution is set to 320x240 and that your file is no longer than five minutes.
- All others - Please contact us.
For legal reasons and licensing purposes, we ask that all submissions conform to the following, which we will confirm:
- That the commentary and views in the submission are entirely your work.
- That reviews be willing to submit to a "fair-use" check.
- That critical writing or discussion be entirely your work.
- That you own the copyright to all artistic material (poetry, music, video, photography, etc.) that you submit; and;
- That by submitting your work, you are agreeing to allow us to post that work in compliance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NC-NoDerivs 3.0 (or sharealike) License to which we subscribe.
- That you allow us to edit (within reason) audiovisual material for optimum bandwidth use.
Thanks again for your interest. Remember, there are a few additional guidelines for most posters. Please check those out as well.
Reviews
We welcome your reviews of artistic works such as fiction, poetry, film, music, and visual art. There are two media formats in which we share reviews and recommendations: the podcasts and the weblog. Before submitting, we ask that you send a brief abstract of your review, including the type of art you plan to review and a short description (@200 words, or one fair-sized paragraph). When reviewing, we ask that you keep the following in mind:
- Be courteous to the artist and respectful of the work, even if you disagree with it.
- Refrain from vulgarity unless quoting the work (this is f*&$ awesome is not a valuable contribution)
- Tell us why the work is deserving of consumption (or not).
- Make sure that you provide the full title, creator, year, and publisher (if applicable) in the review, as well as a way for our readers/listeners to access the content.
- Try to keep audio reviews to between three and five minutes.
- Try to keep textual reviews to between 250 and 700 words.
Guest-Casting
If you think you have something to add to the cultural conversation about a particular topic, please feel free to contact us about adding a post to the weblog or providing a segment for the podcast. We ask that you adhere to the standards of academic honesty (don't lie, don't plagiarize) and that you try to make your commentary or discussion as insightful and interesting as possible. Before submitting, we ask that you send a brief abstract (300-500 words) of your proposed segment, including the subject of your discussion and a few key points you'd like to address, as well as what you feel is most significant about your contribution. When guest-casting, we ask that you keep the following in mind:
- Try to avoid slander and libel. We cannot afford a lawsuit.
- Try to be as clear and concise as possible: don't ramble for three minutes about one subject and then change topics suddenly. Get to the point.
- Try to avoid copyright abuse: we'll look for fair-use, but again, we cannot afford a lawsuit.
- Be as courteous and respectful as possible: strong criticism does not equal personal attack.
- Try to keep audio segments to less than ten minutes (unless we give you the go-ahead for a longer segment).
- Try to keep blog posts to less than 750 words. If you go much longer, we'll ask you to submit a document for download instead, and publish the abstract and a link to the document on the blog.
- Make sure you credit sources whenever applicable.
Rebuttals
Commentary, discussion, and criticism should be expressions of logically developed ideas concerning a particular topic. In all cases of free speech and inquiry, there will be a few (sometimes a great many) who disagree. In the spirit of open dialogue, we welcome rebuttals to any content posted or published by Culture-Cast.org. We will include intelligent rebuttals (time and space permitting), as long as you try to comply with the following guidelines:
- Be polite and respectful. Disagreement does not give you license to rant.
- Don't invent facts to bolster an opinion.
- Try to provide thoughtful commentary: why do you disagree? You don't need an alternative, but you do need to provide substance.
- Try to keep textual rebuttals to 500 words or so.
- Try to keep audio rebuttals to around 3-5 minutes.
Artist Submission
Before sending anything for our consideration, please inquire. It won't do you any good to hope we find your gem if we're already reviewing seven other pieces. Make sure that you are legally allowed to distribute the content: while we recognize "mashups" as art, certain corporate entities with lots of money do not. Before submitting, we ask you to contact us and provide the following information:
- Title, artist (presumably yourself), genre, and medium (photograph, scanned painting or sketch, fiction, poetry, music, film, etc.) in which the work appears.
- A brief description of the work: What is its subject? How long is it? Is it part of a collection?
- A little about yourself as an artist.
- Who holds the copyright (if you write a poem, and it is unpublished, you automatically own the copyright, even if you don't register it).
- Has the work been made available elsewhere? We ask not just so that we can preview it without placing any additional burden on you, but also so that we can find out if we are allowed to make it available.
- Why this particular piece?
After receiving your submission, we will acknowledge our receipt, and give you a timeframe as to when we might respond to it. If it is accepted, we will notify you as to when it will be reviewed and/or made available. Because our work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NC-No Derivatives 3.0 License, we require that all artistic work that we include for download share that license. We will be happy to submit all of the licensing material (if needed) on your behalf. If you have any further questions, we will answer them via correspondence.
