How To Possibly Get Your Post Featured On The Jalopnik Front Page

Y'all have heard, and have now seen, that we can repub posts from your personal Kinja sites to the front page of Jalopnik. It's a good thing for everyone and we're having a lot of fun with it thus far. Here are a few tips on how to get us to notice your fine work.

If you've noticed, Jalopnik posts have a certain style. There's a snappy headline, a good picture, and a short paragraph that makes you want to read the rest of the post. Then there's the body, or meat, of the post. What's that? You don't want to call it the meat? Too bad. I already did.

Headlines: Gotta have one. Make it active, not passive (Ex: "Goes" sounds better than "is going"). Use some creative language, you don't want to sound like everyone else, make it stand out. Try not to use commas or other punctuation (except a question mark at times). Capitalize Every Word Like We Do. Most of all, have some fun with it.

Image: There has to be an image at the top of the post. No ifs, ands, or buts. That image should be 970 x 546, which is pretty close to the standard 16 x 9 aspect ratio. It's the size we edit images to. Also, make it interesting. A boring image won't make anyone want to read.

Lede: That first little bit before the first paragraph break that reels you in is called the lede. It should grab the reader's attention and give them a reason to read the story. If the first part of the post doesn't interest you, will the rest of the post interest you? I bet it won't.

Body: We all make mistakes, but try and make sure the copy of the post is clean. That means no typos, or at the very least a severe lack of typos. In the posts, additional images should still be in that landscape aspect ratio I mentioned above.

These are just a few tips. If you follow them, there is no guarantee that you will end up on the front page of Jalopnik. Likewise, we might see something so good that it doesn't adhere to any of these and put it on our front page.

When you're done with your story, let us know about it at and we'll take a look to see if it's worthy of the front page.

So far you all have found some awesome content we've been excited to feature. As the platform evolves, so will the style, but if you're interested in seeing your work shared on Jalopnik these steps are a good place to start. Go get 'em!