Suggestions to Our Writers:
As a golf lifestyle publication The African American Golfer’s Digest is the nation’s leading publication for avid Black American golfers and itexpects the following from its writers:
- The length of the lead of the article varies but the shorter the lead, the better. It should reflect the news, instruction, or the most important element in the story.
- Every story should have a news peg, whether the lead is direct or delayed. Why should the readers be interested in reading your story? Example: “The Growth of Golf Among African Americans, the sport that is now being participated in by more than 1 million players each year. (The reader should be interested because: (a) the sport is growing at a phenomenal rate (b) It is attracting African Americans.
- We expect that the writing flows, and that it’s tight and grammatically sound.
- The facts are employed to support sweeping generalizations and casual inferences.
- A business story, whether a profile or not should be supported by some kind of statistics or data. Note: “Africa Americans organizations purchase over 12 million dollars of golf balls online each year,” may buttress our lead through a tangible number and thus give us further insight as to why their participation in the sport is good for business.If you’re covering a company, tell us how well it’s doing through numbers, its revenue, its earnings or its sales.If you’re covering an individual, tell us about their lifestyle, early golf interests, family members, professional and academic accomplishments, age, goals for the future, employment history and current employment status, entrepreneurial endeavors, golf tournament participation, trade show and membership activities, their favorite inspirational quote.
- Verify additions, percentages and computations. Make sure the terms relating to mathematical material such as mean, median and mode are explained.
- The African American Golfer’s Digest editors should be able to verify quotes from your interviewees should the quotes sound incredible or too much out of sync from what the author sets out to do.
- Fairness—if a person you’re interviewing accuses another. please give a chance to the person being accused to defend herself.
- Word count: The African American Golfer’s Digest stories vary from about 75-2,500 words, depending on the assigning editor.
- PHOTOS: If you plan to submit images with your story please also attach the photo release for the photographer. We are unable to accept images with out a signed photo release by the photographer.
