The North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate wel­comes sub­mis­sions from elect­ed offi­cials, activists, non­prof­it lead­ers, and oth­ers inter­est­ed in shar­ing their per­spec­tive on cur­rent events and impor­tant issues with our read­ers. Sub­mis­sions should take the form of a col­umn or essay that presents commentary.

History of the Cascadia Advocate

The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is one of the old­est con­tin­u­ous­ly-pub­lished blogs (or weblogs) in the Pacif­ic North­west. Found­ed March 29th, 2004, it is NPI’s pri­ma­ry pub­li­ca­tion, focus­ing on long-form advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism. Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell, Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Chair Shasti Con­rad, King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, and for­mer U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Don Bonker are among those who have con­tributed guest essays to the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate over the years.

NPI writ­ers have chron­i­cled many impor­tant events through the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate with first­hand eye­wit­ness report­ing, includ­ing the 2008 inau­gu­ra­tion of Barack Oba­ma, mul­ti­ple Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tions, over a dozen Net­roots Nation con­fer­ences, and count­less pub­lic meet­ings, includ­ing sev­er­al mem­o­rable FCC hear­ings and the only town hall that for­mer U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dave Reichert ever held. The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate’s grow­ing archive con­sists of over five thou­sand posts con­tributed by more than one hun­dred dif­fer­ent individuals.

Audience, reach, and recognition

More than 100,000 read­ers vis­it the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate every year (with over 200,000 in pres­i­den­tial elec­tion years), and most read more than one post.

Our read­ers include activists, jour­nal­ists, and high­ly engaged voters.

The most pop­u­lar posts get tens of thou­sands of views through­out the year. In addi­tion to serv­ing as the home for the orig­i­nal research poll find­ings that NPI pub­lish­es, the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is known for NPI’s Last Week In Con­gress vote report series, doc­u­men­tary and book reviews, and thought­ful guest essays.

In years past, the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been repeat­ed­ly named as one of The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Best State Polit­i­cal Blogs. It is indexed by Author­i­ta­tive Con­tent and major news search engines like Google News, ensur­ing that what we pub­lish is acces­si­ble to a large glob­al audi­ence. New posts are pro­mot­ed and dis­trib­uted through NPI’s accounts on Twit­ter, Face­book, Mastodon, Tum­blr, and LinkedIn.

Guidelines

Sub­mis­sions must meet the fol­low­ing criteria:

• Be at least five hun­dred words long, but not longer than 2,000 or so words.
• Address a cur­rent event, upcoming/past elec­tion, or pol­i­cy top­ic (exam­ples: attain­able hous­ing, nondis­crim­i­na­tion, net neu­tral­i­ty, or glob­al health). We also accept reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.
• Adhere to NPI’s Code of Ethics and Com­ment­ing Guide­lines. Sub­mis­sions that con­tain pro­fan­i­ty, inap­pro­pri­ate con­tent, or peo­ple’s pri­vate con­tact infor­ma­tion will be imme­di­ate­ly reject­ed and not con­sid­ered for pub­li­ca­tion.
• Align with our cher­ished pro­gres­sive val­ues of empa­thy, mutu­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, free­dom, pro­tec­tion, fair­ness, diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion. For an excel­lent dis­cus­sion of what pro­gres­sive val­ues are, we rec­om­mend read­ing Dr. George Lakof­f’s Don’t Think Of An Elephant. 
• Be orig­i­nal con­tent. We don’t pub­lish mate­r­i­al that has already appeared else­where. If you would like simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to cross-post a piece you’ve sub­mit­ted to your own website/newsletter, or anoth­er web­site, that is okay, as long that cross-post­ed piece men­tions it appeared on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate. Please advise us of your plans to cross-post when you sub­mit.
• Be authored under a Cre­ative Com­mons license (the same license we pub­lish under). NPI is a strong pro­po­nent of copy­left. We believe that soci­ety ben­e­fits from a robust exchange of ideas and access to knowl­edge, and we walk our talk by mak­ing posts on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate repro­ducible with attri­bu­tion. By sub­mit­ting a guest col­umn or essay to us, you agree to pub­lish that piece under this Cre­ative Com­mons license.

Note that NPI does not par­tic­i­pate in link exchange schemes or con­tent farm arrange­ments. Pieces that are over­ly self-pro­mo­tion­al won’t be con­sid­ered for pub­li­ca­tion. Your sub­mis­sion may men­tion and link to a book, film, or oth­er project that you’re involved with, but the piece should be pri­mar­i­ly about the sub­ject mat­ter per­tain­ing to an issue, event, or elec­tion that is like­ly to be of inter­est to peo­ple in the Pacif­ic North­west, the Unit­ed States, and Canada.

How to submit

Use the form below to sub­mit a guest post for consideration.

Questions?

Please get in touch with us!