Ok, so you want to write for us.

First of all, everything that goes in the Insider has to be useful. Or as I like to quote the journalism professor who coined the term service journalism, it must be “useful, usable and used.”

We’re big on specificity here, so these are some concrete examples, care of our editor:

An article on corruption in Argentina, no.

An article on corruption that you might encounter and how to deal with it, yes.

An article on Eva Peron’s obsession with hats, no.

An article about where to see Eva’s hat collection, other places to see kooky fashion collections, or a guide to buying hats in BA, yes.

“But, it’s interesting”,  protests the writer. Well, I presume the writer finds it interesting or wouldn’t have chosen to write about it. But that is no guarantee the reader would find it so. Interesting is largely in the mind of the beholder. However, we can better predict what the reader would find useful.

Interesting, therefore is not an end in itself, but a means. And we aim to make it so, in the Insider style, that is.

Next, know your audience. Our readers live here, they’re not tourists.This means a few things:

A good chance they may know more about a subject than you. Do your homework.

Watch the BA cliches.  If you write about mullets, Dog walkers, your first parillada… they’ll consider you’re just off the boat.

They don’t care about your daily travails, existential motives for coming here etc. Those can serve as an intro, but only if you harness them to find a solution to share.

That all said, we do look forward to your contributions.