Protect This Place
The Revelator publishes a recurring feature called “Protect This Place,” designed to call attention to areas in plight. We’re inviting scientists, activists and other experts to contribute and write about a place that matters to them.
“Protest This Place” has a simple, template-driven format, which should make it easier to write, read, and inspire action. We’ll distribute these under a Creative Commons license, allowing our reprint partners around the world to republish them.
What kind of place do we want to showcase? That’s up to you. It could be a neighborhood threatened by a corporate polluter, a forest at risk from logging, a river that’s drying up, or a mountain facing a potential mine. Or anything else, big or small.
Regardless of the threat — and whether it’s a danger that’s already here or one that’s on its way — we want to use this feature to celebrate these places and issue a call to protect them before it’s too late.
Interested in contributing? Our template and a few related notes appear below, and you can read the examples we’ve already published here. If you have photos of the place that we can use, please let us know. And feel free to reach out if you have any questions!
John R. Platt
Editor, The Revelator, jplatt@therevelator.org
[Headline:]
Protect This Place: [Place name, + something about it or the threat it faces.]
[Subhead. A teaser in sentence format, giving readers a bit more about what they’re going to read.]
By [your preferred byline]
The Place:
[As specific as it needs to be. A town name, a park name and its country, whatever will put us there.]
[We may be able to create or embed a map here.]
Why it matters:
[This could be about who or what lives there, the cultural values, the unique elements of the habitat…]
The threat:
[A couple of sentences or paragraphs about what’s going to happen / already happening.]
My place in this place:
[The soul of the piece, so feel free to put your heart into it. Share your personal experience and make this place come alive through your story.]
Who’s protecting it now:
[Optional: A few lines about any people or organizations standing up for this region — if anyone!]
What this place needs:
[What would it take to protect this site? Legislation, science, volunteerism, data… The only thing we can’t include here is crowdfunding links.]
Lessons from the fight:
[Optional: What can others learn from existing efforts to protect this location and what lives there?]
Follow the fight / Learn more / Your place in this place / Multimedia:
[The exact heading here will vary, but this is a great good to add some links to follow (and why) — perhaps a Facebook page that’s publishing updates about this location or the struggle to preserve it — or a call for the readers to participate in some way. It could even be a video, or a few scientific papers about a region to reinforce its uniqueness or risk. Again, we can’t link directly to crowdfunding sites or other donor systems, but we can link to broader sites.]
Author bio: [Starts with your name, then any details you’d like to mention. We can include a web link and/or social media account, too. If possible, please send a headshot that works in a square format.]