Our Audience
Our primary audience is the over 50,000 LGBTQ+ community members residing in Western North Carolina. We also serve the allies, businesses, and organizations that seek to support, employ, and serve them.
Our Mission
Our tagline is “Building a Community Together”.
- Relevance. We seek to provide information and resources that are relevant to the WNC LGBTQ+ Community.
- Reach. We seek to make it easier for services, businesses, and organizations that seek to support, serve, employ, and welcome us to reach out.
- Respect. We seek to provide information in a format that is easy for people to find when they want it, without feeling chased or dissected.
What We Want
We welcome contributions of that are relevant to and supportive of our community. This includes:
- Announcements, News, Events, Resources. These are our bread and butter. Think of us as the community bulletin board. The community provides the content. We keep the bulletin board organized.
- Reposts. We welcome organizations and groups to repost relevant content, so long as they respect all copyrights. In most cases, they should provide a brief synopsis, and include links and credits to the source.
- Information-Focused Editorial & Analysis: We welcome editorials and news analysis that focus on providing information that will help people to make more informed decisions.
- Informative Profiles. We welcome profiles of people, groups, and organizations that bring attention to the breadth and diversity within our community. They should either be uplifting or bring attention to unique challenges faced by the subject of the article.
- Informative Reviews. We welcome reviews of books, movies, artists, and performers that are directly relevant to the local LGBTQ+ experience and community.
- Other. If it serves the community, pitch us on it! Send an email to VCtrNews@BlueRidgePride.org.
What We Don’t Want
- Attack Editorials. We do not accept content that seeks to characterize, demonize, or judge individuals, organizations, groups, or classes.
- Self-Aggrandizement | Click-Baiting | Gossip. Post things that will serve the LGBTQ+ community.
Style & Tone
- Brief Title & Summary: This is what most people will see. Titles should be 7-12 words; Summaries 20-30 words.
- Feature Picture: We recommend an aspect ratio of 3w:2h with a minimum size of 200 pixels on either side and a maximum of 1200 on either size. Include any photo credits at the bottom or top of the article.
- Length: In most instances, short is sweet: 150 to 300 words. Focus on the essentials and provide links for more detail. Articles that include new analysis will likely run longer, 400 to 1,000 words.
- Family-Friendly: We will not post language or pictures which we think might be offensive or triggering to our broad audience.
- Inclusive / Ally-Friendly: We seek to serve the LGBTQ+ community. But we welcome everyone to the site who comes in good will. We seek to join the broader community, not to segregate ourselves or any of them.
- Informative / Unique / Locally Relevant:
- Categories / Tags:
Submission & Review Process
- Get Permission. Contributors must complete the online profile form before gaining permission to submit post and event content. (This does not apply to directory listings.)
- Submit. We operate on a triage basis. Announcements, News, Events & Resources that are clearly within the guidelines above get a light review. We try to get them posted quickly, ideally within the same day.
- In-depth Review & Editing. Submissions that are nor so clear-cut may require lengthy review. We don’t have the staff to provide in-depth editing. If an article is too full of errors or poses too many issues, we will not publish it. We reserve the right to conduct light editing for grammar and clarity.