Who can write for the blog?
All members of the Murphy community can submit articles, events or opportunities to the blog. Submissions should be emailed to submissions<at>murphyinstituteblog<dot>org. Please refrain from emailing submissions to individuals. Faculty and staff can write directly for the blog, while entries from students and guests will be approved by professors, guest curators, or the editorial committee before being posted. All contributions will be scanned for light edits and clarifications by the guest editor, or someone from the editorial committee.

How do I submit?
There are two ways that faculty and staff can submit to the blog:

1. ALL FACULTY AND STAFF ARE INVITED TO ACT AS GUEST CURATORS FOR TWO WEEK SESSIONS. If you work at the Murphy Institute, you can sign up to have primary responsibility for the blog for a couple of weeks each year. As a guest curator, you are responsible for making sure that there are at least 2 new posts per week (so, 4 in total). You can write these posts yourself, or they can be posts curated from your network.
2. ALL FACULTY AND STAFF ARE INVITED TO CONTRIBUTE AT ANY TIME. If you’re not working as a curator, you can send your post to submissions<at>murphyinstituteblog<dot>org.

What can I submit?
A good-sized blog entry runs from 250-500 words, though you might want to go longer or shorter, depending on the piece. We strongly encourage that you include pictures (photo, graph, illustration, etc.) or video clips, or excerpts from other news or texts that you’re commenting on. If you are editing the blog, you can solicit contributions from students, as well as other professionals and activists in the fields of labor and urban studies. You can also inquire about cross-posting entries from other blogs that you think are relevant to our audience. Consider including additional links for further reading with your submission.

How should I encourage student participation?
Tell your students about the blog, and encourage them to submit their ideas to you, or to the editorial committee. After reviewing their work for your class, you can also encourage them to submit particular pieces. You can also make assignments that could give them practice for writing blog entries—blackboard assignments, short current events pieces, etc.

Will there be comments on the blog?
In the beginning, we will not have a comment space on the blog, as we don’t have the staff to monitor the comments. We will, however, cross post some entries on our Facebook page, where anyone is free to comment. In time, we hope to have moderated comments as well.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR WRITERS AND CURATORS: The Murphy blog is a public representation of the Murphy Institute. No blog entry should ever disparage or malign members or friends of the Murphy community, and all entries should maintain a professional and respectful tone. Contributors will be welcome to share their opinions, but must do so in a way that is mindful of our public presence and respectful of the Murphy mission and community.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT STUDENT WORK: All student work on the blog must be approved and voluntary – posting to the blog cannot be a mandatory assignment for credit. For credit assignments can become blog entries, and professors can encourage blog writing by offering extra credit or voluntary blog options for writing assignments. But as this is a public, signed blog, all entries must be voluntary, non-compulsory.