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Have You Found a Story?

You do not need a grand title, an expedition vehicle, or a heroic photograph taken on a mountaintop to become a Rogue Journalist.

You need curiosity.

Something worth investigating.

And the willingness to tell the story honestly.

Rogue & Journal is always interested in hearing from writers, explorers, researchers, photographers, historians, archaeologists, travellers, artists, adventurers, and people who simply stumbled across something fascinating and decided to look a little closer.

If you have a story worth telling, we would like to hear about it.

What Are We Looking For?

Rogue & Journal covers exploration in the broadest possible sense.

We are interested in stories from the field, journeys into unusual places, historical investigations, local legends, forgotten events, archaeological questions, strange discoveries, practical knowledge, research projects, cultural stories, personal adventures, and ideas that do not fit comfortably into neat categories.

A story does not have to involve crossing an ocean.

It might begin with an old photograph.

A name on a map.

A ruined building at the edge of town.

A rumour you have heard since childhood.

A forgotten newspaper article.

A strange object sitting in a museum cabinet.

Or simply a question you cannot stop thinking about.

Curiosity is usually a good place to begin.

What Can You Contribute?

Here I would make this visually lighter — almost like a little contents page rather than another enormous paragraph.

Articles & Essays

Long-form stories, investigations, experiences, opinions, and observations connected to exploration, history, adventure, culture, and discovery.

Field Reports

Accounts from expeditions, journeys, research trips, excavations, searches, surveys, or days spent following something interesting.

Photography

Images that document places, people, journeys, objects, discoveries, landscapes, or the strange little moments encountered along the way.

Research & History

Historical investigations, archival discoveries, archaeological questions, forgotten stories, legends, and research presented for curious readers rather than hidden behind unnecessary academic language.

Artwork & Illustration

Maps, sketches, field drawings, reconstruction art, cartoons, diagrams, and other visual ways of telling a story.

Something Else Entirely

If it is interesting, curious, adventurous, strange, thoughtful, or difficult to categorise, send it anyway.

Some of the best stories rarely arrive in the correct box.

You Don't Need to Be an Expert

This section is important because it carries one of the strongest parts of Rogue & Journal's philosophy.

Credentials can be valuable.

Experience can be valuable.

Expertise can be enormously valuable.

But none of them are prerequisites for curiosity.

Rogue & Journal welcomes established professionals and first-time writers alike.

What matters is that you care about the subject, make an honest attempt to understand it, distinguish evidence from speculation, and treat the people, places, cultures, and histories involved with respect.

We would rather read a thoughtful story from somebody genuinely fascinated by a subject than an impressive list of qualifications followed by nothing worth saying.

Good stories earn their place here through the work behind them — not the title beneath the author's name.

Tell Us What Really Happened

Rogue & Journal is not interested only in polished victories.

If the expedition failed, tell us.

If you followed the wrong theory for three weeks before discovering why it was wrong, tell us.

If the weather destroyed the plan, the trail disappeared, the archive contained absolutely nothing useful, or the great discovery turned out to be an old drainpipe, that may very well be part of the story.

Adventure becomes less interesting when all the awkward bits are removed.

We want the uncertainty, humour, mistakes, small victories, unexpected encounters, and moments that made the journey memorable.

Do not make yourself sound more heroic. Make the story more human.

I especially like that last line for Rogue & Journal.

A Few Things Matter

We give contributors freedom in how they tell their stories, but there are a few principles we take seriously.

Be honest about what you know and what you do not know.

Treat cultures, communities, places, people, and history with respect.

Do not manufacture certainty where none exists.

Do not steal somebody else's work.

And never be frightened to say:

“We don't know.”

Sometimes that is where the most interesting story begins.

From Your Notebook to the Journal

For this section, we should eventually explain the actual submission process once you've decided precisely how you want it to work.

For now, I would keep it deliberately simple:

Have something you think belongs in Rogue & Journal?

Send us an introduction to yourself and tell us about the story you would like to contribute.

It does not need to arrive as a perfect finished article.

Tell us what you have found, what makes it interesting, and why you think Rogue & Journal might be the right home for it.

From there, we can decide together whether the story fits the magazine and what form it should take.

Button: Pitch Your Story

Then once you've decided whether this links to email, a form, or a dedicated submission page, we simply attach the correct destination.

Become a Rogue Journalist

I would finish considerably shorter:

Rogue & Journal exists because people go looking.

They follow roads, records, rumours, rivers, ruins, maps, memories, and questions.

Then they come back and share what they found.

If you have done the same, perhaps you are already closer to being a Rogue Journalist than you thought.

There is always room for another story.

Button: Join Rogue & Journal