Welcome to the Quintessential Barrington Media Center. If you are a public relations professional, publicity contact, a writer, or someone looking to inform us about area events of interest, human interest stories, or to pitch a story, please review the information below. Thank you for your interest in QB. If you have any additional questions, please drop us a line at or give us a call at 847-381-3860.
Advertising
If you’re an advertiser looking to receive information about our publication or to access a media kit, visit our Advertise page.
Editorial
Our goal is to provide you with the information you need to submit stories, news and
calendar items to us so that we may better inform our readers of what’s happening around
town and with local organizations. You may also submit feature story ideas to us for consideration, or contact us regarding your professional photography services.
The following items are covered below:
- Calendar items.
- Local news and events.
- Press release format: tips for crafting an effective press release.
- Photography dos and don’ts: info for photographers.
- Feature stories.
Please note that for consideration, calendar items need to be for events that are open to the public. Submission does not guarantee acceptance for print. To submit an item to our Calendar of Events, please send an e-mail to our Editor. To be considered, the calendar item must include the information below in the following order and format:
- Date of the event.
- Name of the event.
- Location of the event.
- Time of the event.
- Name of the organization sponsoring the event.
- A brief paragraph describing the event, it’s purpose, and why it is relevant to our Barrington-area readers. Include cost and other requirements if applicable.
- One point of contact for the event, including a phone number.
- Contact information regarding your press release if different from the event’s point of contact.
- Event or event sponsor web site (if applicable).
Submission deadlines: Calendar items must be submitted six weeks before the issue date, which is the first day of the issue. For example: Items for the May/June issue would need to be submitted six weeks before May 1 of that calendar year, or earlier.
If you would like Quintessential Barrington to consider your event as content for our About Town or Community sections, you must submit a press release in the format described below. Please e-mail it as a Microsoft Word attachment to All submissions are subject to editorial review and may or may not be used depending on the appropriateness for our publication and the current status of our editorial. Event coverage may be pre-event or post-event depending on when the event falls into our bimonthly schedule. We may not be able to respond to all press releases and submissions personally.
Press release format:
Press releases must contain the following information:
- A contact person with phone number and e-mail.
- A headline.
- A succinctly written “story” that includes who, what, where, when, why, and how.
- A news hook to the Barrington market.
- Brief background information on your organization.
- One or two quotes from the organization’s leaders or officers.
- A high-quality photograph in JPEG format at 300 dpi (5x7 size), with a caption that names all people shown in the proper order.
Correct spelling: It is your responsibility to ensure that all names are spelled correctly. It is also your responsibility to ensure that no information is plagiarized from other sources. Please double-check names and sources before submitting your release to QB.
Tips for crafting a press release that will have optimal chance of receiving our attention:
- First and foremost, you must have a Barrington angle to your story. Why do our readers care about your organization or event?
- Your story must have a legitimate “news hook.”
- Be sure to include all the information described above as our editors cannot respond to incomplete submissions.
- Create a catchy headline that has the Barrington market in mind.
- Tell a great story. If you ask the questions, “Why should Barrington-area readers want to know about this?” and “What makes my event unique?” will help in telling a great story.
- Include a high-quality, interesting photograph along with an informative caption, including correctly-spelled names when there are people in the photo.
Photography do and don’ts:
We do not use photo prints, or photos from a web site, (which at 72 dpi are too low a resolution for our print production.) Please forward only one photo per e-mail, not to exceed 4mg in file size, or, send us a CD or DVD with your photo(s). Sending multiple photos in one e-mail, or large file size photos by e-mail, will cause technical problems for both sender and receiver. Photos must be the property of the sender or the sender’s organization. Please indicate any photo credits.
For local organizations, we recommend maintaining a library of digital photos, complete with dates and a listing of who is in the photo for use with your current and future press releases.
Photographers: If interested in working with QB, please send us a link to your web site or other work found online, or contact us for a review of your portfolio. Please send any such links to
If you have a story idea for our magazine that you would like to pitch to us, you must send a query letter to Query letters should contain the following information:
- A catchy opening sentence that describes the essence of your story in a succinct manner or draws us immediately into the subject matter. If there is a news hook to your story, include that here.
- A paragraph explaining your story in detail. You must include why this story is relevant to the Barrington-area reader. You must have a hook and an appropriate angle to the story. Keep in mind that we are a bimonthly publication with specific issue dates (Jan/Feb, Mar/Apr, May/June, July/Aug, Sept/Oct, and Nov/Dec). Your story should fit into the “seasons” of our publication schedule, and if appropriate, you should propose a specific issue date. Two months or more prior to issue date is generally what is required for consideration.
- A paragraph explaining who the sources for the story are, and any background information that we would need to know. Include here any potential for photography (this is critical for getting us interested in stories).
- A paragraph detailing your credentials as a writer and how you would like to approach the story (or, if you are not a writer, please tell us that as well, so we will be able to determine if we can assign the story to someone else). If you are a writer, please include publication credits, clips, and/or links to web sites where your stories have been published.
- Your contact information, including a phone number and e-mail. You may also include links to a web site if you have one.
We are sorry, but we cannot acknowledge all query submissions. We will contact you if we have interest in the story; you should feel free to pitch your story elsewhere if you do not hear from us within six weeks.