Join our Editorial Board

Smile Politely is committed to providing passionate, trustworthy, and informed points of view on a variety of topics that are important to our community. We rely on contributions from community members to write about how they experience all that C-U has to offer. While we regularly solicit writers to add to our various sections, we are now looking for community members who might be interested in digging a little deeper into relevant local issues.

Currently, our Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Patrick Singer, Editor-in-Chief Jessica Hammie, Managing Editor Julie McClure, and contributor Mara Thacker. As a board, we take positions on local happenings through a weekly article — from elections to schools to city politics to more niche topics like outdoor cats in C-U. It’s part of how we establish who we are as a magazine, but we are not representative of our community as a whole. We recognize that’s a problem and we are eager to diversify the voices on our Editorial Board.

Do you have a unique voice to add to the discourse? Are you invested in making Champaign-Urbana a great place to live for all kinds of people, and therefore willing to examine it with a critical eye? Are you comfortable with expressing yourself in writing, and editing the work of other members of the board? If so, we’d like to hear from you and see if this role would be a good fit.

The Editorial Board position requires the member to participate in writing, editing, and meeting to discuss topics of interest. This position is compensated with a financial honorarium. It also offers an opportunity to share your voice with a wide audience of readers, and affect change in our community.

Interested? Email us at [email protected] and we’ll talk more.