There are two ways you can contribute to this site.
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Tell your personal story
We always love to hear personal stories about the accidents and/or near misses that have impacted your family. If you have a personal story that might educate other parents, please share! Tell us the what, when, where, and how, describing the incident so that our readers get an understanding of how it all occurred. It can be a couple paragraphs or several pages, just try to keep it detailed yet concise. Stories submitted may be edited for content and clarity, and identifying details may be changed. (If you don’t want to be identified, simply sign the story Anna A. or Anonymous.) Also, be aware that we are an organization that promotes PROSOCIAL solutions to community problems, with an emphasis on compassion and understanding. So if you send us a story about abuse that dramatizes your victim status while condemning all the “evil monsters” in the world or attacking another person or group of people, we’re not going to publish it.
To submit a story, type or paste it into the form box at the bottom of this page.
[contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Website’ type=’url’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]
Reporting An Injury to the CPSP
If your story involves a safety incident that happened because of a commercial product, even if it was a near miss that didn’t result in an actual injury, we strongly urge you to report the incident to www.saferproducts.gov, a website that allows consumers to self report stories of injuries. Your tip may help alert regulators and manufactures to a flaw in their product that needs correcting.
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Become a Contributor
We monitor dozens of different news and media outlets to bring you these stories, but we can always use help from others to alert us as to what’s going on in their own neck of the woods. So if you’re a parent who wants to get involved with safety education, or if you’re a professional who would like to contribute as a means of gaining more exposure, drop us a line.
We do allow our contributors to help themselves while helping us. So if you are a website owner that would like to serve as a contributor, we do allow you to include a simple author byline with a non-advertorial link to your site with each submission. For example:
Submitted by Jane Smith www.Atlantachildproofing.com
We would need to check out and approve your site ahead of time, but so long as you’re not promoting hatred or puppy torture it should be fine.
If you’re interested in becoming a contributor, please read our contributor guidelines to make sure this is something that would suit you. Then use the form below to send us an email with the following:
I would like to become a TrueChildSafety contributor. Please send my invitation to (your email). In my byline, I would like to link the following site: (Include only if you want to promote your own site.)
We will then send you an invitation form to fill out. Once you complete the form and your contributor account is activated, you will be able to compose and submit posts directly from the site. They then go to a moderator for approval before being published.
Contributor Guidelines
- We’re interested in unique and compelling stories. We don’t need to hear that a child died in a car accident at the corner of Wadsworth and Simms. Sadly, children die in car accidents every day, and if we covered everyone of them, it would quickly clutter our site with boring, depressing content. Nor do we need to catalog every incident of alleged abuse that hits the news. We’re looking for stories that have either a unique angle or educational value when it comes to safety. For example, a story about a drunk driver plowing into a storefront and injuring a child has a unique angle, and a story about a child dying in a car because he was playing with the power windows has educational value. So don’t submit 5 stories each day about everyday events pulled from the news. It’s fine to submit something if you’re unsure about its relevance. But if it feels like you’re constantly spamming us with poor quality material, we may drop you as a contributor.
- Don’t take it personally if we choose not to publish a particular post you submit. It doesn’t mean we hate you. If you’re following these guidelines, most of what you submit should make it through. But part of being an editor involves sometimes being selective about what to publish. Sometimes we may simply be working on that story ourselves or-have had it submitted by someone else.
- primarily what we’re looking for is current stories submitted in a timely manner. But we’re also fine with well-written expose pieces on past events that are either high-profile or unique. If you want to do such a piece, be sure to include lots of sources. Try to make it a one-stop resource that would provide readers all they need to know to anyone researching that story.
- You may also submit well-written articles that pertain to the various subjects on this site. If we like them, we may publish them here or on our sister site.
- DO NOT submit previously published material. If you plan on submitting an article to article syndication websites, submit it here first.
Writing Guidelines
- Summarize what happened IN YOUR OWN WORDS. You can’t just copy a news story verbatim and submit it to us — this is a copyright violation. Weave the facts of the incident into a story that is written in your own words, including important details in a concise manner.
- Make sure you’re familiar with fair use copyright law.
- If you include quotes, be sure to cite the sources for any quotes within the body of the text. “It appears that the child was left unattended for around 2 hours,” says police chief Nunya Business. *1. Then follow step 4.
- List your sources in numbered form at the bottom of the article in size 8 font. For example, if you pulled your facts from the evening news:
- ABC News Denver, 7-2-2015, 5:00 PM broadcast
Or when citing a book or newspaper:
- Jack Smith, “Child eaten by squirrel,” The Denver Post, Jan. 2, 2010, p. 3B
- Avoid naming and shaming if it isn’t relevant to the story. If you do list names, be sure to use terms like allegedly when someone has merely been accused and arrested.