Orato Is Starting to Pay For Stories!

A hundred bucks may not sound like much, but it’s a hundred per cent improvement over nothing, our current rate for citizen journalism. Starting now, we will pay $100 for “Orato Assignment” stories.

The first one, featured on the home page: eyewitness, first-person reports from people participating in public protests of the Beijing Olympics. Preference will be given to people protesting in Beijing or at torch lighting ceremonies, or reports from the protests in Tibet. I want to make it clear that you can still post whatever you want on any topic you wish, but if you want to be eligible for payment, you have to provide an eyewitness report on an editor-requested story or a story query that an editor agrees we’ll pay for.

In the next few days, watch for the Orato Assignment notice on the home page and let Heather Wallace know by following her contact links if you’re pitching a story for payment.

We are always looking for ways to compensate our correspondents. We have had the $100 a week prize for the best story and we recently sponsored the video contest. First-person, eyewitness reports are the core of the Orato site; we’re trying encourage more, so here we go!