A church choir concert. A library book sale. A Saturday morning cleanup at the pocket park. None of it lands on the calendar by itself. Someone has to type it up and send it in, and most weeks that someone is a neighbor with a full inbox and a flyer taped to the fridge.

Getting an event onto Borough Press takes about ten minutes. Most submissions that don't make it aren't turned down — they're held, usually because a start time is missing, the description says "see flyer," or the photo arrived sideways. A held listing goes up as soon as the gap is filled, but that can cost you a week you didn't have.

Here's what we need, why we ask for it, and how to send it so your event goes live the first time.

What Belongs on the Borough Press Calendar

We publish anything a resident could reasonably show up to: fundraisers, classes, talks, festivals, food drives, open meetings of neighborhood groups, youth sports tryouts, health clinics, poetry readings in the back of a bookshop, a seed swap in someone's side yard.

We don't publish private parties, invitations-only gatherings, or a retail sale dressed up as an event. Partisan campaign events go to a different desk — send those to the newsroom rather than the calendar.

A useful test before you write anything: if a neighbor you'd never met read your listing, would they know whether they were welcome? If the answer is no, keep rewriting until it's yes. That single question fixes most weak submissions.

The Details Every Listing Needs

Have all of this in front of you before you open the form. Hunting for a venue address mid-submission is how details get dropped.

  • Event name — the way you want it to read, not in all caps.
  • One-line summary — fifteen words or fewer, for the calendar grid.
  • Full description — two or three short paragraphs, written for someone who has never heard of your group.
  • Date, start time and end time — including the day of the week.
  • Venue name and street address — plus the room, entrance or gate if it matters.
  • Cost — the actual number, or the word "Free."
  • Registration — whether people need to sign up, and how.
  • A contact — an email or phone number someone checks. This is for us, not for publication.

Say the cost plainly

"Suggested donation," "pay what you can," "free, but bring a canned good" — all fine. Just put it near the top of the description instead of the last line, where readers stop reading. Nothing makes people skip an event faster than not knowing whether they'll be asked for money at the door.

Location and access

Give the street address, not just "the community hall." If your venue is hard to find, add a landmark: "the side door off Maple, behind the post office." Details that help readers also reduce the phone calls and emails your organizers field on the day.

Accessibility information matters more than most organizers assume. Note the step-free entrance, accessible restroom, hearing loop, ASL interpretation if it's booked, or whether there's a quiet room. If you don't know the answers, ask the venue. Readers do ask us, and we'd rather have the information than guess.

Dates, Times, and Recurring Events

Be precise about arrival. If doors open at 6:30 and the music starts at 7, list 7 as the start time and mention doors in the description. People plan around the number in the grid, and a mismatch there is the most common reason we get complaint emails.

For anything that repeats, send one submission with the pattern spelled out: "Second Thursday of the month, March through November." Note the exceptions — "except July, when we take a break." Weekly events should be one listing with a pattern, not fifty-two separate entries, and certainly not a fresh submission each Monday.

If your event is outdoors, tell us the rain plan in the description and tell us whether you want the listing updated if you postpone. Give us a contact who will actually know by Friday morning whether the field is flooded.

Photos: What Helps and What Gets Cut

One good photo beats five mediocre ones. We crop images to fit the calendar grid, so horizontal shots work best — aim for at least 1200 pixels wide. A candid from last year's event, with people doing the thing, will outperform a logo or a posed handshake every time.

These tend to get cut or replaced:

  • Vertical phone photos of a printed flyer taped to a window.
  • Screenshots of other photos, which lose quality and often carry a timestamp from years ago.
  • Images with heavy text, which becomes unreadable at thumbnail size.
  • Anything you don't have permission to use. If you took the picture, say so. If someone else did, get their OK first.

Skip stock images of strangers in conference rooms. Readers spot them instantly, and they make a local event feel like a form letter.

How to Submit, Step by Step

  1. Open the event submission form linked from the Community page.
  2. Enter the event name and the one-line summary first. Those two fields shape everything else.
  3. Add the date, start time and end time. Double-check the day of the week.
  4. Paste in the description. Keep paragraphs short.
  5. Upload one photo.
  6. Add your contact details and a short note to the editor if anything needs explaining.
  7. Submit, and keep the confirmation email. That's your reference number if you need a change later.

If the form doesn't fit your event — a multi-day festival, a series that moves between venues — email the community desk instead, with "Event submission" in the subject line. Send the same information in the same order. It saves everyone a round of questions.

Why Submissions Get Held Up

A short list of the things that slow listings down, in rough order of frequency:

  • Dates that don't match between the description and the date fields.
  • "See flyer" instead of actual details. The photo isn't searchable and readers on phones won't zoom in.
  • No contact information, so we can't ask a single clarifying question.
  • Cost and registration left blank.
  • An event announcement sent to the newsroom inbox, where it can sit for days before someone forwards it.

We fix what we can quietly — a typo, a missing postal code, a stray capital letter. Everything else waits for you. So the faster you answer, the faster your listing appears.

Five Minutes Before You Hit Send

Read the description out loud. Check that a stranger knows where to go, when to arrive, what it costs, and whether they need to sign up in advance. Confirm the date against a real calendar, day of the week included.

Then send it, and let it go. If something changes after publication, reply to your confirmation email and we'll update the listing. Corrections are routine here, not an imposition.

The calendar is only as good as what residents send us. If your block party, your choir, your library sale isn't on it, it's usually not because anyone said no. It's because nobody told us yet.

Photo: Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels