How to Become a Patch Blogger!

San Marino Patch began as primarily a news operation, written by our staff and freelancers. But on May 4 we added the voices of locals and hope to add another voice to the site: Yours.

Patch blogs--found under the Local Voices section on the homepage--are written by locals about a variety of subjects such as real estate, schools, philanthropic events, growing up in San Marino and more.

There are already plenty of ways to contribute to Patch—by leaving comments on our articles, by posting to our events calendar, by posting announcements and by taking part in our Q&A forum, among them. But now you can express yourself even more through a community blog.

Got something to say about life in San Marino or news to spread? Need a forum for your community group? Just eager to share your views? Then read on and see if a San Marino Patch blog is right for you. You can begin blogging on Patch or contribute an already-existing blog that you write.

You Need to Know What It Takes To Be Relevant: We don't have a lot of hard requirements around what we're looking for in a blog outside of this: it's got to be interesting and relevant to San Marino residents. Maybe you're talking about our local politics. Maybe you're spreading news about community projects. Maybe you're the local authority on a given topic, with the bona fides to back it up. All of those sound great. If your blog would make as much sense on a site about Timbuktu as it does about San Marino, it's not quite what we have in mind. But if San Marino residents feel more plugged into their community after reading it, you've hit the nail on the head.

You Need to Know What Kind of Blogs We're Looking For: Well, just about anything, if there's a local hook. Got perspective on how the community's changed over the years? Want a place to showcase your cool photos from around town? Have real estate tips? Need a de-facto online newsletter for your community group? Got favorite recipes to share, or books to recommend? All of those sound like contenders to us.

You Need to Know What We Consider Responsible: Opinions are fantastic, particularly well-thought-out ones, backed up with facts. But personal insults, unfounded claims and defamation aren't what we're looking for. When opinions get strong and contentious, it's not always clear where the fine lines are drawn, but we're more than happy to help guide you through those murky waters. And as long as your intention is to keep things above-board, we're happy to have you on the site.

You Need to Know We're Paying in Gratitude: Sorry, you might get fame, but not fortune, from your San Marino Patch blog. So here's the deal: We get the privilege of hosting your valuable views. You get to put them on a site that's increasingly serving as a community hub, where more and more people will have the opportunity to discover them all the time. And since we're part of the Huffington Post Media Group, we may occasionally be able to put your submission in front of a huge audience. You can write as often (or as infrequently) as you'd like, though we'd love it if you can come back again and again.

You Need to Know You'll Have a Lot of Freedom: We see our blogs as a bit different than our staff- and freelancer-produced content—which is to say, we don't expect to do a lot of heavy editing. We'll be keeping an eye out for anything inappropriate, and trying to cultivate an atmosphere that's constructive, with a lot of diverse views aired in useful ways—but we're not planning to do a lot of line-by-line tweaking of your material. If we've got a serious concern with a submission, we'll let you know—but other than that, it's your words coming through, not ours.

If that sounds good to you, e-mail San Marino Patch editor Jessica Hamlin at jessica.hamlin@patch.com today, and we'll get talking about how to make it happen. If you've got a sample of the type of writing you'd like to do send it along as well but it's not required.