Our content
The Northwest Indiana Business Magazine publishes stories about people and ideas that inform, inspire, challenge and educate our readers, helping them improve the economy and quality of life in our Region. We focus on covering the local business community using local sources and writers. Our articles use a storytelling writing style that emphasizes the positives while recognizing the negatives without sensationalizing the challenges we face as a Region. Read our current issue here.
Each bi-monthly issue contains between four and five feature articles, plus four to five rotating departments or columns. Features are about 2,000 words and departments/columns are 600 to 700 words. Several times a year, we publish special sections about a specific topic that include one to two stories. In April each year, we publish the results of our annual Best of Business survey.
Our magazine is mailed to more than 12,000 company presidents, CEOs, business owners, top managers and supervisors, and read by more than 40,000 people each issue.
Our coverage area
Magazine
Northwest Indiana Business Magazine serves a 10-county region of Northwest and North Central Indiana — home to 1.36 million Hoosiers and a fifth of all Indiana businesses. Indiana counties we consider our coverage area include Lake, Porter, Newton, Jasper, La Porte, Starke, Pulaski, St. Joseph, Marshall and Elkhart.
Websites
We have two websites where we report important business news summaries.
- NWIndianaBusiness.com covers the counties of Jasper, Lake, La Porte, Newton, Porter, Pulaski and Starke.
- MichianaBusinessNews.com covers La Porte, Starke, St. Joseph, Marshall and Elkhart counties in Indiana, and Berrien and Cass counties in Michigan. Read more about the Michiana region here.
How to freelance
Writers
Freelance writers who are interested in writing for Northwest Indiana Business Magazine, should contact Executive Editor Heather Pfundstein at hpundstein@linkermediagroup.com. Please submit a resume and three writing clips of recent work that are not self published or blogs.
While we consider pitches, generally our freelance writers are assigned stories, according to our yearly editorial calendar. Articles are assigned about three weeks in advance of the story’s deadline. Articles must be submitted as Microsoft Word documents. We also require photos acquired from sources in the articles.
We purchase all rights to articles, allowing us the option to make reprints of articles, republish them or use them on our website. We typically do not deny requests from authors who want to republished elsewhere, as long as the article is published by Northwest Indiana Business Magazine first.
Fees range in accordance with the number of sources and length of stories. Here is a list of current freelance writers.
Photographers
Our covers
The covers of our magazine reflect business leadership, and feature people from the organizations and companies that are integral to economic development in Northern Indiana. We hire freelance photographers to take portraits of our most important sources for the cover of the magazine.
Photographers provide all equipment, lighting and backdrops needed for the photoshoot. They also coordinate with our subjects on a time and place to take the photos. Photos must be submitted as jpeg files at 300 dpi and meet editorial standards of the magazine. Photographers retain the copyright, but the magazine retains the right to print, publish, reproduce or distribute the work, including electronic format, and to market or sell the work as it sees fit.
Submitted photos
Community
Professional and amateur photographers are encouraged to submit photos they have taken that reflect the vibrant business community in the Region. We offer photo credit in print and on our websites. We do not pay a fee for submitted photos published in our magazine or on our websites.
Sources
We also accept submitted photos from sources and organizations that are featured in our stories. We are looking for photos that sources might already have on file or by someone handy with a smartphone camera. We want photos that help tell the story and are visually interesting.
Guidelines
We do have some photo guidelines, but they are pretty simple:
- The digital file must be big enough to print in high quality. (The large setting on a phone should be good enough, but medium might work as well.) Please send JPG files.
- If you take a photo of yourself (a selfie), make sure to get your full face (and hair) from the mid-chest and above). We call this a head-and-shoulders shot.
- The setting should be interesting, well-lit and in focus — suggested backgrounds are in front of your building, lobby, conference room, etc.
- We need to know a little about the photo (think who, where, why, when) and who took it.
Not sure your photo will work? Send it to us at hpfundstein@linkermediagroup.com. We are happy to review to see if we might consider using it. Many factors determine whether a photo ultimately is used in the print issue.
The file size of the photo should be a minimum 400KB, though a file size of 1 or 2MB is preferred for optimum print reproduction. If you copy a photo from a website, it usually is too small to run in print.
Here is a PDF of our guidelines.
How to contribute a column
We also consider columns from business leaders and experts who live or work in our coverage area as our editor's time allows. To guarantee publication, companies are encouraged to purchase advertising.
Requirements
- We require columns be written either from a professional advice or opinion point of view. Columns must have a specific reason or perspective to be considered. Writers must focus on solutions to problems or provide some service for the community. We do not accept submissions that promote products or trends of an associated company's vested interest.
- Columnists must have some connection to Northwest or North Central Indiana. For example, either live or do business here.
- We do not accept columns generated by AI.
- Columnists are not paid.
- Submissions are copy edited but should be submitted in a readable and professional writing style. We follow AP style.
- Submissions must be no longer than 700 words, include a photo and short biography of the author, and websites and social media links to be considered along with the author's byline.
Submit your draft to Executive Editor Heather Pfundstein at hpfundstein@linkermediagroup.com as a Word attachment. Send her clean copy. Read it out loud, put it through spellcheck, fact check. The easier it is for her to read, the more quickly we'll decide to post it to our website.
Submissions most likely will not be published in our glossy magazine. However, we do offer advertorial options for paid inclusion in our print issue.
Here are some examples.
Republishing guidelines
The Northwest Indiana Business Magazine publishes its written content under a Creative Commons — Attribution/No derivatives license. This means you have permission to republish our articles for free, both online and in print. Actually, we hope you will share our content with others.
We do ask that, when you do reprint our content, you follow these guidelines:
- Do not edit our pieces other than making minor changes to adhere to your publication’s preferred style guide. It’s OK to add Oxford commas — if that’s your style. But please ask for permission to make major changes. Please address questions and requests to Heather Pfundstein at hpfundstein@linkermediagroup.com.
- You do not have to include the subheads, but we think they make the story easier to read.
- If you republish one of our stories on your website, please link back to the original piece and include all hyperlinks from the one posted on our website.
- Please include the author’s byline and an attribution line mentioning that the article was originally published in the Northwest Indiana Business Magazine.
- Photos published with our stories often are submitted by our sources or taken by a freelance photographer. Please credit them like you would if you had obtained the photo. We encourage you to use your own images.
- You do not have our permission to sell our stories. But you may publish our articles on websites that require paywall access or on pages with advertisements.
- Also, if you share them on social media, include a mention as @NWIndianabiz on Twitter and Facebook.
As always, thank you for supporting The Northwest Indiana Business Magazine. Learn more about our mission here. Read our current issue here.