Oregon Quarterly is the flagship magazine of the University of Oregon. Most of our readers, about 250,000 strong, are alumni of the university, and as such, our editorial focus is on the university’s connections to issues of state, regional, and national interest.
Starting in 2023, Oregon Quarterly will become an all-digital, online publication. Online, OQ will continue to publish the same in-depth articles, profiles, and campus news, and reach the broad, well-educated audience of UO alumni and friends who live in Oregon and beyond. Winner of many national awards, Oregon Quarterly seeks to be known for excellent writing, beautiful design, and compelling stories that highlight the connections between a great university and the larger world.
Guidelines for Contributors
Oregon Quarterly is the successor to Old Oregon, the University of Oregon's alumni magazine founded in 1919. Although our readers consist predominantly of UO alumni, we endeavor to be a regional magazine of ideas, even as we tell the stories of the university and its alumni, students, faculty and staff.
We welcome queries from freelance writers, photographers, and illustrators who are interested in working for the publication.
Writers may send query letters to Matt Cooper, managing editor, at mattc@uoregon.edu
Some thoughts on what we are looking for:
Stories of various lengths that demonstrate the positive impact of the university on the campus, state, and society. The UO benefits from its involvement in these stories, not necessarily as their primary subject matter. Our goal is to reach a broad, well-educated regional audience, whether or not they have ties to the UO.
We continue to be recognized for the quality of our writing, design, photography, and illustration. Photos should capture the personality of the subjects and offer a sense of the story they accompany. Illustrations should be both evocative of the subject matter and a delight to see. Good magazine features (for us, 1,500-3,000 words) should have shape and depth and are closer in conception and execution to a thoughtful essay than to a newspaper feature. They should involve the reader, awaken the imagination. They require some effort to write, but they are much more a pleasure to read. In shorter pieces (100-1000 words), we also seek to engage readers, but we welcome a variety of approaches to storytelling including those, like infographics, that invite collaboration between writer and designer. Linear, long-form journalism is not always required.
Much of the content in Oregon Quarterly is contributed by freelancers. If the topic has a contemporary regional interest, and if UO involvement can be demonstrated (through faculty or alumni participation), we'd like to hear about it. We prefer a brief query email that shows the flavor of the proposed article and your writing style. Submit clips that demonstrate your ability. If you don't have a story idea but would like to be considered for assignments, submit clips with a cover letter explaining your interests and experience. For photographers and illustrators, a brief query with a link to an online portfolio is appropriate.
Payment varies depending on the scope of the assignment. For contracted stories we do not accept, we pay a kill fee of 20 percent the contracted amount. We generally follow the Chicago Manual of Style.
STAFF
George Evano
Publisher
In a communications and marketing career spanning more than 30 years, George has directed record-setting sales campaigns for the Oregon Bach Festival, produced marketing materials that have won Telly, Summit, and International Graphics Competition awards, and led fundraising communications team for the University of Oregon. Following his own Oregon Trail, he grew up in New Jersey, attended college in West Virginia, adventured in New Mexico, and worked in the San Francisco area before answering the Duck call and coming to the UO in 1993. The Senior Director of Editorial Content for University Communications, he oversees Oregon Quarterly and Around the O.
Matt Cooper
Managing Editor
When Matt was a kid, Thursdays after school meant a furious bike ride to Gil’s variety store for the latest comics about Spider-Man, Superman and Batman—it was an introduction to the power of storytelling. A graduate of Wake Forest University, Matt spent 20 years as a reporter and feature writer with the weeklies in his hometown Cincinnati, the Yakima (Wash.) Herald-Republic and the Register-Guard, prior to his 2012 arrival at the UO as a writer. Throughout, Matt has striven to find uncommon stories that inform and entertain, and to tell them in a manner that keeps readers reading.