Regional magazines sometimes feel like an exclusive club that you can’t get into unless you’re a local. But for the Chicago edition of Time Out, writers from beyond the Windy City are welcome to send in their stories, including music and concert reviews for its TOC website.

At over 3 million page views a month, the site isn’t a bad place for a beginner or a journalist passionate about his or her craft — not the money. And photo galleries are also a big deal on TimeOutChicago.com, so editor-in-chief Frank Sennett encourages budding photographers to look to the website to build up some credits.

Get editor contacts and advice on pitching features in How To Pitch: Time Out Chicago.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55 a year and get access to these articles, discounts on seminars and workshops, and more.

Author and journalist Susan Orlean (left) has written two nonfiction pieces that have been turned into films. She’ll discuss her new book, Rin Tin Tin, in Mediabistro’s first online Literary Festival & Workshops starting July 16. Other speakers include Rebecca Skloot, Jason Boog, and Jason Allen Ashlock. Register now.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Imagine then an image tagged with YouTube videos, audio from SoundCloud, tweets, photos from Flickr, songs from iTunes, Wikipedia pages and even links to e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay.

In just a few, painless clicks, ThingLink lets users do just that. After creating an account and logging in, the site lets you easily upload images from Facebook, Flickr, a website or your computer and then tag the pictures with rich media content. You don’t have to leave the page you’re on — all the content is embedded within the photo.

See how news organizations could have used ThingLink with this well-known photograph. (Just hover your mouse over the dots.)

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Did you know that infographics are 30 to 40 times more likely to be viewed and shared vs. text? At least that’s the claim that Easel.ly makes on its homepage. The new site, a project in beta, makes it super easy to use drag-n-drop templates to create beautiful infographics for free.  A demo video is embedded below:

For newsrooms, this site poses huge opportunity in terms of shareability of information across social media. Newspapers are the worst offenders when it comes to forgetting about graphics that make sense for the web. They’ll often repurpose something that ran in print, and often that graphic isn’t compelling enough to share on social networks — a space where visuals are constantly competing for users’ attention. But easel.ly is so easy to use that resources don’t have to pulled away from graphic designers; it’s a site that social media editors can use.

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The key to piquing editors’ interest is understanding their audience. For Afar, it’s globetrotting adventurers who spend an average of $4,100 annually on vacation and personal travel. But don’t think this is the Hawaiian-shirt-and-fanny-pack wearing group. Though they enjoy all of the earmarks of luxury, these folks like a real-life experience with their vacationing.

“We really feel like we bring more heart to travel and make it more meaningful and personal. There’s a real emphasis on giving readers a deeper dive, a sort of street-level view of a place,” editor-in-chief Julia Cosgrove explained.

Get contact info for editors and more guidelines in How To Pitch: Afar.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55 a year and get access to these articles, discounts on seminars and workshops, and more.

In the latest episode of mediabistroTV’s “My First Big Break,” we hear from radio personality, author, former Fox News host and GBTV founder Glenn Beck. While he has found tremendous success across many different forms of media, did you know that he almost left the business to go to cooking school? If it wasn’t for a heart-to-heart conversation with his father, he may never have found his professional voice.

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV