The QueerAF retrospective is a unique sub-editing and mini-mentoring session to skill up your journalism and strategic communication craft - this is what to expect and how to prepare
All of our commissions come with a 30-minute 'retro' sub-editing session, where together we'll reflect on:
- What works
- What we can improve
- What informed and inspired the piece
- Anything we learned, and can improve about the process
We run them so you can learn not only what we'd suggest changing, but why, so you can improve your journalism and strategic communication craft and better understand QueerAF's style, format, and approach to our output. Depending on the format you're creating in, they all have slightly different questions.
To get ready, you need to:
- When you get the calendar invite: Sign up for a free Miro account, the whiteboard tool we use
- An hour before the meeting: Send your first draft to the QueerAF editors running your session
- Just before the meeting: Make sure you're somewhere quiet, with a good internet connection, and open the Miro board in your calendar invite
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Find Miro or whiteboard tools overwhelming or difficult to use? No worries - let us know ahead of the meeting, and we'll work out an accessible way for you. E.g. you can write answers down with pen and paper.
What happens after the session?
We encourage you to screenshot the Miro, or the notes we took, so you have them to work on your second draft as they may not remain on the board. Then:
- Do the second draft, review any changes, and bring in suggestions from the retro
- Fill out our bio box, so we're ready to publish your piece
- Send over any photos we can use in the article, or an Instagram carousel version.
- Let us know what Instagram handle we can 'collab tag' if you'd like to do this. If you've written for the Queer Gaze, this will likely go out Sunday morning at 10 am on the week of publication, but we'll let you know if that changes.
- Once we've confirmed the date, please let your audiences know on the Friday before publication that you've written for us across your social networks, and where they can read your work. Best practice is to tell people what you've written about (so people know why to sign up), with a link to the newsletter: https://www.wearequeeraf.com/subscribe/
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Letting people know you've written for us and encouraging people to sign up for the newsletter makes a big difference to our unique approach to journalism. It creates a bigger ecosystem and impact for your work and that of all of our creatives.