Question Consumption Stories Project: Submission Guidelines

New Dream wants to hear from you!

New Dream is accepting story ideas from young people about their personal experiences, opinions, and critiques of consumption—from the products we buy and the content we take in from screens, to the air we breathe and the food we eat. 

We welcome story submissions, artwork, short videos, interviews, and more for inclusion in the Question Consumption Stories Project, which could include publishing on multiple platforms, including our blog, Medium publication, newsletter, social media, and podcast, and for use in fundraising and other communications.

If we feel that your submission is a good fit, we offer compensation of $100 for an original blog post and $50 for a phone or online interview with New Dream during which you tell your story.

Stories we're looking for

The Question Consumption Stories Project wants to lift up stories not often told about the impacts of consumption on diverse communities. We encourage submissions that have a particular emphasis on the intersection of consumption and equity—how your experience of consumption is different based on your lived experience.

We appreciate personal stories related to our mission and focus, and are most likely to publish content that explicitly questions the systems that define our consumption choices and habits. Weaving your story with an analysis of the systems, while also providing a glimpse into the future where a better reality exists, is especially compelling to our audience.

We are eager to share perspectives and stories from under-represented youth voices: across political and religious beliefs, socioeconomic backgrounds, race, gender, and geographies, within North America. 

Examples of story ideas that would interest us (but please do not limit your ideas to these!):

• How junk food marketing targets kids of color
• Indigenous perspectives on overconsumption
• What it's like to live in a food desert
• Paying to play: inconspicuous consumption widens the divides
• We're all in this together: how your consumption habits impact the air I breathe 
• Minimalism as privilege: why consumer choices are not that simple
• On getting by and making do: lifelong values of growing up poor
• Shopping while black, Latinx, or native
• Duped: undoing the lies and recreating the American Dream
• The reality of becoming an adult in late-stage capitalism

Format

We welcome content that uses various media, including photography, audio, and video in addition to short- and long-form narrative. For example, blog submissions should be 1,000-2,500 words, with 2-4 accompanying relevant images and/or media.

Attribution

We provide compensation for stories ($100) and interviews ($50), as well as for other media, and also offer full recognition and attribution of authors. Please include a short bio of 60 words or fewer with your final submission, as well as a photo of yourself. You may include as many relevant links as you would like.

Please note that we are unlikely to post stories that are strictly self-promotional, or that promotes a specific business, course, workshop, or service. (Self-promotion for the purposes of context or identification can be included in your bio.) Note that any overly promotional links in the body of the post may be removed.

How to Submit

Simply fill out the form below.

If your story is a good fit, you will receive a response within two weeks. If you don’t receive a response, please feel free to try again with a different story. You may be asked to revise to make the content stronger or clearer, and your proposed title may be changed before publication. Your story will be edited for clarity, grammar, and overall style.

If there are significant revisions recommended, we will send a version for your review and approval.