Submissions

We welcome your submissions! Submissions should be of interest to the New Gloucester community and meet our editorial guidelines. Please see our Policies page for details about our editorial standards and values.

Events
Our calendar includes local events and occasional regional events that may be of interest to New Gloucester residents. Please send events to events@ngxchange.org. Caitlyn Davison is our events editor.

Articles, Opinion Pieces, Election Season
Email editor@ngxchange.org to submit or inquire about an article or opinion you’d like to share.  Timely, newsworthy pieces and perspectives with specific relevance to New Gloucester, in keeping with our policies, are our focus. There are many other outlets for articles and opinions on general matters; NGX is by, for and about New Gloucester and its people, and that’s our priority.

Send your article or opinion piece as a word.doc attachment to your email. We may ask you for additional contact information for verification or if we have questions or concerns.

With submissions, we may engage in a back-and-forth conversation and revision process with writers to clarify the focus of a piece and for conformity with our policies and values. For articles, we strongly encourage you to include photos, in jpeg format, to help bring your piece to life. See the Photos section below for details. If you are interested in writing a regular report or column, we’d love to talk with you. Joanne Cole and Debra Smith make up the editorial team.

As a community resource, the New Gloucester Xchange welcomes your opinions. You can see our general policies on submissions here. We publish residents’ signed letters to the editor and ask that they generally not exceed 500 words, although we may make exceptions. We also publish “In My Opinion” pieces that take a more in-depth and extended look.

We do not publish letters or opinion pieces that have already been published elsewhere but may make an exception when warranted in our judgment. If their content pertains directly to New Gloucester, we may in our discretion publish letters or opinion pieces from non-residents. Opinions we do publish are solely those of their authors; publication does not reflect endorsement by the NGXchange or its volunteers.

At election season, a few more ground rules apply, in addition to our values and guidelines. We welcome residents’ local candidate endorsement and local referendum issue letters but ask that they not exceed 300 words. Endorsement and ballot issue letters with a unique local or personal angle are encouraged, and we particularly welcome positive letters in support of candidates, given our values.

With other avenues available for candidates to share their views, NGX prioritizes hearing from voters about the races and issues. We do, however, develop questions for candidates and publish our own candidate profiles at election season, in order to best serve local voters.

From those running to represent New Gloucester in the Maine Legislature, NGX will accept a brief candidate announcement, up to 500 words, before absentee voting begins. In an effort to maintain a level playing field for newcomers and incumbents alike, we do not accept press releases or election-related materials from legislative candidates, campaigns or parties.  

Endorsement letters may be submitted no earlier than 60 days before election day, and endorsement and referendum issue letters will not be accepted after 8 pm one week before election day. Once absentee voting begins, we will not accept press releases, letters, articles or other material from candidates for any office or from campaigns or parties.

In the week before the election, we may publish residents’ endorsement letters that were received under the deadline above as well as editorials and articles of our own. In our discretion, we may also publish or share articles at any time that we deem newsworthy that involve or mention individuals who are running for office.

Email your letters to us at editor@ngxchange.org. As always, we reserve the right to edit for length, clarity, and accuracy, and for conformity with our policies and values.

Photos
We welcome your original photos of interest to the community. Email photos (in the highest resolution possible) to photo@ngxchange.org. Decisions to publish are made at editors’ discretion, and we reserve the right to modify and reformat photos for use on the site. We urge submitters to ensure they have permission to share photos of individuals, especially children, in non-public settings. Fred Brusseau is our photo editor.

Notices, Press Releases, or Promotions for Local Businesses or Organizations
For announcements, press releases, and other information about your business or organization that you’d like us to consider, send to editor@ngxchange.org. To share an event, send to events@ngxchange.org.