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New column every Thursday from 7:00 in The Springfield Ledger (sample)

(555) 014-3300

[email protected]

I report on rent, buses and city hall in Springfield.

Ines Calder (sample): reporter for The Springfield Ledger, columnist every Thursday, and the person who reads the council appendix so you do not have to.

Read this week's column
Commission a piece

October on paper

1,000 words

2,000

3,000

14 bus

Ledger
Thu 2 Oct
860 words

Night buses 1

Lakeside Review
Mon 6 Oct
2,150 words

Appendix

Ledger
Thu 9 Oct
840 words

River path

Ledger
Sat 11 Oct
410 words

Rent files 3

Ledger
Tue 14 Oct
3,050 words

Rent report

Ledger
Thu 16 Oct
850 words

October so far, cut out and labelled with the newsroom slug. Each strip is as long as the piece: one ruler mark for every 1,000 words. The red corner is this week’s column (sample).

The Thursday column

850 words on page 12 of The Springfield Ledger every Thursday, online from 7:00 (sample). One question about the city, answered with documents and the people who were there.

Thu 16 Oct

Eleven months in a drawer: the rent report

Springfield Ledger, column

850 words

Read

Thu 9 Oct

Read the appendix, not the press release

Springfield Ledger, column

840 words

Read

Thu 2 Oct

Why the 14 bus leaves before the late shift ends

Springfield Ledger, column

860 words

Read

Thu 25 Sep

Three questions for the new head of housing

Springfield Ledger, column

870 words

Read

Columns (sample). Headlines open on the paper’s site.

All columns

What I cover

Four beats, the same ones since 2014 (sample). If your story touches one of them, I want to hear it.

Housing and rent

Who owns the flats, what the council spends on emergency housing, how long repairs take.

Most weeks

Buses and getting home

Timetables against shift patterns, fares, and the stops that were quietly cut.

Twice a month

City hall

Budgets, contracts and the papers attached to the agenda, read to the last appendix.

Every council meeting

The river

Who owns the banks, what goes into the water, and the path the city keeps promising.

A long read each spring

An old apartment block with rows of small balconies, seen from the street below

The rent files

An investigation in three parts (sample): four months, 212 tenancy records and 38 interviews about who owns the flats on one street, and why nobody fixes them.

Part 1

The flats nobody repairs

Tue 30 Sep

2,400 words

Part 2

Six companies, one address

Tue 7 Oct

2,700 words

Part 3

Who owns Mill Road

Tue 14 Oct

3,050 words

Read the series
All investigations

The Thursday letter

One email on Thursday at 6:30, half an hour before the column goes online: the column itself, the documents behind it and the questions I could not answer yet. Free, about six minutes to read (sample).

  • This week's column, a day ahead of the paper's site
  • Every document I used, linked
  • Readers' replies, printed only with permission
  • One thing to watch at city hall next week
Join the Thursday letter

4,100 readers (sample). Reply to any letter to leave.

An open notebook with a blue pen on a wooden table

Lengths and rates for editors

Every length on the same ruler as the cuttings: what 400 words looks like next to 4,000. Rates are per piece, with research, interviews and one round of edits included.

Example prices. Photos, data graphics and syndication are quoted separately.

Commission a piece

1,000 words

2,000

3,000

4,000

News story

400 words
$180
within 24 hours

Column

850 words
$320
three days

Feature

2,000 words
$900
two weeks

Long read

4,000 words
from $2,400
six weeks

Hands writing in notebooks at a meeting table, a coffee cup beside them

Ten years on the same streets

I started on the council beat at the Ledger in 2014, covering every planning meeting nobody else wanted (sample). The column came in 2021, when readers kept asking what the decisions meant for them.

I correct mistakes in public: every correction is listed with its date and what changed.

About me
Standards and corrections

From the notebook

All notes

Know something Springfield should know?

Tell me what happened and how you know. I read every message myself and never name a source without asking first.

Send a tip
How I protect sources
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New column every Thursday from 7:00 in The Springfield Ledger (sample)

(555) 014-3300

[email protected]

Join the Thursday letter