Orientation to APCNews

APCNews payments scheme

Requests are only made by APC’s designated editors. If you receive a request from anyone else, please check with us.

Payment conditions

We pay according to our writers payment scheme described below.

Payment is made upon submission of invoice/s.

In order to reduce bank charges on your side and APC’s, we suggest you wait until you can charge for at least $300 USD. However anyone who works for us in 2007 should submit any outstanding invoices by December 31 at the latest.

APC works with bank transfer and cheques (issued in USD by our bank in San Francisco), and with PayPal (recommended for small amount payments under USD300).

This payment scheme applies to all writers at all times.

APC’s payment scheme recognises the length and depth of an article, as well as the geographical location of the writer.

Important note: Becoming part of the APC writers pool does not guarantee that you will receive requests to write for APC. You may leave the pool at any time on submitting an email notice to the editor. APC reserves the right to stop using writers without notification.

Baseline

The starting point, which is referred to as ‘baseline’ is worth USD 30.

It is a simple and short article, which is a factual and straight-to-the point. This includes single-people interviews, single source accounts, light synthesis of reports. Note that this does not include copy-and-paste journalism, which can be used in no other than blogging. A simple & short article is around 500 words (more than 250 and less than 750).

Then, length, depth and geographical location are combined:

Length

APC recognises the length of an article (after editing).

For each 500 word bracket in excess, 10 USD are added.

Example: A 1,200 word article falls into the “up to 1,500 word” bracket. That means 30 USD + 10 + 10 = 50 USD

Depth

APC recognises three depth levels:

• Standard (1-2 sources) = no additional payment

All standard articles should cite at least one source and preferably two.

• Intermediate (3-4 sources) = 20 USD added.

Articles that demonstrate some research in terms of document investigation and/or interviews (three to four sources).

• In-depth (5 sources and more) = 30 USD are added.

Articles that demonstrate original and extensive research, interviewing and/or analysis based on at least 5 different sources. This includes book reviews, features and multi-people interviews. The level of complexity is that of a full feature article.

Example: 1,200 words article that includes 2 interviews and 1 document investigation would translated in length (50 USD) + Intermediate depth (20 USD) = 70 USD.

Geographical location

APC recognises a “post adjustment” (PA) multiplier: Depending on the writer’s main residence country, he/or she receives an amount based on monthly updated United Nations post adjustment grids.

Reference

Example: A 1,200 word article of intermediate depth from a writer based in Montreal, Canada would be: length + depth (70 USD) x 1,PA multiplier (Montreal Canada’s January 2007 multiplier factor is 43,8). So 70 × 1,438 = 100,66 USD

Intellectual property

All documents, materials or concepts developed under this agreement remain the sole property of the APC, which will distribute them under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

Other

Although we are not a news agency and usually don’t take up unsolicited coverage offers, however feel free to send a story pitch if you think we may be interested.

We’d be very happy if you’d be interested in blogging on the APC blog from time to time: http://blog.apc.org. Login: Blogger upper case B; password: trusted

Please refer also to the FAQ!