Q. What is the Black Rock Beacon?
A. A daily newspaper for Black Rock City and an associated web site that provides information for the Burning Man community. Our newspaper generally appears on five or six days at Black Rock City. Each issue is two sides of a tabloid (11-inch by 17-inch) page.

Q. Who are you guys?
A. Mainly former staff members of the Black Rock Gazette.

Q. What happened to the Black Rock Gazette?
A. As of April 2005, the Burning Man organization has decided not to finance an on-Playa daily newspaper. You can read its announcement HERE.

Q. So you don’t get any Bmorg funding? Who pays for the Beacon?
A. We pay out of our own pockets and we accept (and encourage) donations. The paper is our gift to the community, and we can produce four or five issues of several thousand copies on our own. With outside funds, we can print more copies and possibly increase our frequency to six issues. If you would like to help us, please go HERE.

Q. Is my donation tax deductible?
A. YES. We have created a not-for-profit corporation, so your donations are deductible from U.S. taxes.

Q. What will the Beacon be like?
A. We aim to be a fun and informative publication to help you get the most out of your time in Black Rock City. We will tell you what’s going on in your municipality and the surrounding area, help you experience the art and events of Burning Man, and try to make you smile. Although we try to push the envelope in various ways, we are a traditional newspaper with traditional journalistic values. Other than the articles that are clearly meant as satire, we don’t make things up, we try to be fair, we check facts to the extent possible, and we are subject to and operate within U.S. libel law.

Q. Hey, I’d like to volunteer. Do you need me?
A. Absolutely. We’re looking for editors, reporters, photographers (with their own digital cameras), illustrators, proofreaders, production people, delivery people, assistants to our theme camp managers, and back massagers. Don’t wait for the Playa, either, we have lots of assignments in the default world, and some stuff you could do for our website right now. Click HERE to read about our submission guidelines and HERE if you would like to volunteer.

Q. Can I camp with you?
A. Possibly. We may be able to accommodate a few more people this year, but we require that anybody staying with us do some work for our paper or our camp. Be aware that most of the activities within our camp support the Beacon, it’s a fun place to stay but we work hard and the paper takes precedence over anything else.

Q. How do you produce the Black Rock Beacon?
A. We use a small collection of Macintosh computers to write our stories and create our pages, and then we print them on a duplicator made by a company called Riso. The duplicator is a cross between a printing press and a photocopier.

Q. Do you accept advertising?
A. Never on the Playa, but we will gladly take ads on our website. Send us an email at questions[at]blackrockbeacon.org for more information.

Q. Will you list my band/event/art exhibit?
A. We offer limited listings in our newspaper. We will NOT list anything that appears in the What Where When guide or any other materials provided to citizens at the Gate. There is no charge for listings, but we require real-world identification (driver's license or passport) for those offering submissions.

Q. Is the Black Rock Beacon copyrighted?
A. Yes and no. We are copyLEFTING our material. Anything you see in our publication or on our website may be reused or incorporated into other works as long as you give us credit and distribute the resulting materials under a license identical to this one. See the bottom of our webpages for detail and go to http://creativecommons.org for more information.