Contact
If you have questions about workshops please email workshops@bellingcat.com
For other questions please email contact@bellingcat.com
Bellingcat Article Submission Guidelines
Submissions can be sent to submissions@bellingcat.com
We are happy to take volunteer article submissions on our site, and many of our favorite investigations we’ve published come to us this way. Here are general guidelines and suggestions we have, if you are interested in submitting an article to us.
Please do not send us unsolicited attachments with your initial email.
Digital, Online Focus
We publish articles on a large spectrum of themes and geographic locations, but the unifying theme of Bellingcat is that we focus on online materials. We strive to have as much transparency as possible with the digital evidence we use in our investigations, and require the same in our article submissions. We are not a traditional news or research site, in the sense that we do not publish “breaking news” or much big-picture, geopolitical analysis — instead, we focus on granular, online details around stories.
What is a piece we would love to publish, and what isn’t? Here are some stories that may be published on a “traditional” news site, and the angle we may focus on instead:
Them: Large Demonstrations Surge Throughout London
Us: How did civil activists use social networks to organize a series of protests in London?
Them: Hurricane Rips Through Houston
Us: What can a comparison of satellite imagery tell us about the damage from a hurricane in Houston?
Them: Airstrike in Yemen Kills 18, Local Group Reports
Us: Find, verify, and analyze visual materials from the site of an airstrike in Yemen, and compare various casualty reports from local reports and activists.
Them: Alexander Dugin Is A Dangerous Ideologue — an op-ed
Us: How does Alexander Dugin’s message get amplified online and who are the people who follow him? Here are specific online communities, social media profiles, and the overlapping spheres of interest his supporters have, as per their online activities.
Reader Involvement
This is not a requirement for an article, but we would encourage our submissions to include an element of crowdsourcing or audience participation to further the progress of an investigation. Some of our most important investigations have made progress due to resources added by our readers, or through larger crowdsourcing efforts. If there are any loose threads to your research, don’t hesitate in asking your readers to lend a hand!
Stress the Evidence, Minimise the Editorial
It is sometimes impossible to divorce the ideological or political baggage from many topics — the spelling one uses for many cities alone carries much historical and political weight, for example. Nevertheless, we encourage our writers to focus as much as possible on presenting open, transparent evidence, and let our readers judge for themselves what the larger conclusions are.