If you're getting into the wilderness yourself, then you can be on the wilderness news beat.

It doesn't matter if you're a first-timer with your own modest experiences, or an experienced wilderness traveler.

We encourage text and audio reports sent by e-mail. Or you can call-in your report on our listener comment line. Please read the guidelines, below, for more about the kind of news and reports we're likely to use.

What We're Looking For

Locations

The producer of The WildeBeat is based in Northern California. In the earliest editions of the show, the majority of reports will focus on this region.

We're seeking to establish volunteer correspondents in these regions:

• Pacific, South
• Pacific, North
• Rockies/CDT, South
• Rockies/CDT, North
• Great Lakes
• Gulf & Plains
• Atlantic/Appalachia, South
• Atlantic/Appalachia, North

Topics

Our stories fit into one of the following categories:

• Gear
  These are gear reviews provided exclusively by volunteer reviewers for the non-profit BackpackGearTest.ORG. Backpack Gear Test has more gear to review than reviewers. You can start out by reviewing gear you already own, and then you might be able to get other free gear to review. Read: How to become a tester.
• Skills
  Usually, these are interviews with experts about some skill useful to people in their wilderness travels. Sometimes it's an educational piece assembled from sound bytes from a number of disparate experts. We include the perspective of the Leave No Trace Center for their input on skills shows when appropriate.
• Outings
  These are trip reports from an outing or adventure. Usually they're related to some non-profit organization, some event or activity organized by a land management agency, or some major festival of some sort. We like to highlight opportunities for public service volunteerism when possible.
• Wild Places
  Originally conceived to be what public radio reporters and producers call "Audio Postcards". These might be profiles of some protected wilderness area, or some threatened prospective wilderness area. This category has also become a catch-all for hard-journalism stories about park and wilderness area issues.

The producer of the WildeBeat is active in backpacking, non-technical mountaineering, and backcountry (cross-country & telemark) ski touring. But there are other permitted modes of travel and activities in protected wilderness.

We're seeking contributors who are active in these wilderness activities:

• Equestrian travel and trips with pack stock
• Rafting, canoeing, kayaking
• Rock & ice climbing
• Photography and sound-seeing
• ...and more.

Compensation

Thanks! Really.

We're a small, fledgeling non-profit trying to provide a useful public service; a service that helps people discover wilderness and helps our wild places remain politically viable. By contributing content you're helping us with that cause.

We're working toward a future in which we'll have funding to pay a license fee for contributed audio content. Please watch this space and our blog entries for updates.

Production Schedule

The WildeBeat

Stories for The WildeBeat are typically planned, researched, and prepared between two and eight weeks ahead of time. Sometimes, interviews are saved even longer until a story comes together. So please don't be surprised if your submission doesn't appear right away.

Vox WildeBeat

We'll post a Vox WildeBeat show whenever we have content for one. There won't be a regular schedule. Phoned-in comments may take between 1 and 7 days to appear on the web site and in the podcast feed.

Contributors Group

We maintain a Google Group for regular contributors to our efforts. If you've contributed news leads or constructive story feedback in the past, you can be invited to join the group.

	Subscribe to WildeBeat-Contributors
	Email:

Contact

Telephone

When you call our toll-free listener comment line, please give us the following information first:

1. Your first and last name.
2. How to spell your last name.
3. Where you live.
4. Whether this is a comment or a story submission.
5. If it's a comment, whether it's just for us, or you want us to include it in a show.

If you're submitting a report for the show, please speak slowly and clearly. Talking slower than you normally would actually sounds much better on the show. Don't worry about stumbling in your speech; if you want to say something again, or differently, just pause for a breath and then speak again (that makes it easier for us to edit your speech). Along with your phone message, if you have any supporting information, such as web links, a text script, or pictures, please send them by e-mail.

Please leave a way for us to contact you, either a phone number or an e-mail address. While anonymous tips can provide helpful pointers for us to research a story, if we can't contact you about your submission, we won't use the story.

A note about wireless phones: Most wireless phones exhibit poor audio quality compared to a wired phone. This may not always be obvious in conversation, but once we record that audio and convert it to MP3, it often becomes unintelligible. We'll try to use interesting content that comes from wireless phones, but we might not be able to.

Listener comment line:

1-866-590-7373

E-Mail

In e-mail, you can send text reports, audio files, and images. We won't look at files provided in proprietary formats such as Microsoft Office (.doc, .xls, etc.). Before you send a big file, please contact us in advance by e-mail, and tell us what you'd like to submit. In particular, we'll send you our specifications for audio files.

Address:

comments(AT)wildebeat.net