Editorial Tips

When we post new con­tent to Open Cul­ture, here are some ques­tions that we gen­er­al­ly ask our­selves.

1) Will the mate­r­i­al be inter­est­ing to a broad intel­li­gent audi­ence? Is it live­ly and engag­ing? (Or is it a lit­tle too esoteric/ponderous?)

2) Is there a piece of media (video, audio, text, etc) that can be fea­tured in the post? That’s some­thing that we gen­er­al­ly try to include.

3) Is the media free? Can it be accessed at no cost (or at least very min­i­mal cost)?

4) Can the media be accessed in all geo­graph­ic loca­tions? (Some­times con­tent will only be avail­able, for exam­ple, to a US audi­ence. We try to avoid that. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly an issue with movies. If you have ques­tions, feel free to ask.)

When we gath­er mate­r­i­al for the site, here are sev­er­al things we keep our eyes open for…

  • Audio/video clips deal­ing with icon­ic cul­tur­al fig­ures. See exam­ple or this one.
  • Audio/video clips fea­tur­ing important/well known con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al fig­ures. See exam­ple.
  • Awe inspir­ing sci­ence videos. See exam­ple. Or this one.
  • Great cul­tur­al resource col­lec­tions avail­able on the web. This includes music, film, lit­er­a­ture archives with free con­tent. etc. See exam­ple. Here’s anoth­er. And yet anoth­er. And final­ly anoth­er.
  • Posts that tell peo­ple where they can find new books, songs, movies, etc. released in free for­mats. See exam­ple, this one, or this one.
  • Audio/video that does a good job of mak­ing qual­i­ty cul­ture rel­e­vant to a broad­er pub­lic. See exam­ple.
  • Online aca­d­e­m­ic cours­es (usu­al­ly from lib­er­al arts or sci­ences) that will gen­er­ate broad inter­est. See exam­ple.
  • New tech­nol­o­gy (Kin­dle, iPad, Google soft­ware, iPhone apps) that changes the way that we read and learn, or engage with cul­ture. See exam­ple. Or this exam­ple. Or this one.

These are just a few items that we gen­er­al­ly look out for. But we can always move in new direc­tions. If you have any ques­tions or con­tri­bu­tions, feel free to con­tact us here.

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Quantcast