Open Post: We've got a bunch of news.

By MAMAMIA TEAM

Hello there and welcome to Open Post. For the first-timers, this is a weekly tradition on Mamamia where we come together and have a chat about what’s been happening in our lives. We share stories, trade advice and it’s also a chance for us to update you on what’s happening on the site, the office and any changes we have planned.

And with that delightful segue: We have some changes to update you about.

1. Sport on Saturdays

We’ll be launching a new regular weekend post here on Mamamia called ‘Sport on Saturdays’ which will be led by our Health/Wellbeing blogger Natalia Hawk (formerly Natalia Jastrzab – she is now going with the Anglicised version of her name which she says is easier to spell and pronounce).

Studies (and also eyes and ears) show that the coverage of women’s sport in the Australian media is woefully low. In fact women’s sports coverage makes up less than 10 per cent of all coverage. Horse racing gets more airtime that women’s sport.

So instead of simply complaining about it, Mamamia has decided to be part of the solution. Every Saturday we’ll be bringing you the highlights of women’s sport from the previous week. We’ll be publishing match results, interviews with athletes, feature stories on some of our favourite teams and even sending Nat along to try a few new sports herself.

Australia has so many outstanding women athletes and Mamamia is proud to be one of the only media outlets in the country that is bringing you dedicated and regular coverage of their achievements.

2. Mamamia is going Rogue

We’re excited to finally be able to tell you about something we’ve been working on for a few months now. This week we’re launching a new section the website: Mamamia Rogue.

In the spirit of Kevin Rudd, let us begin by asking ourselves a question about Mamamia Rogue. What the hell does it mean? Glad you asked.

Mamamia Rogue will be home to younger, cheekier and more viral style editorial content. It’s irreverant, edgy and raw. We’ll have videos, funny infographics, awesome photographs, silly twitter musings and our working tagline is: consider your boundaries pushed. Yes, there will be some rude bits.

This section of the site will be run by former editorial assistant Rosie Waterland (who first came to Mamamia as an intern), who we’re thrilled to be welcoming to the office in a full time capacity starting this week as editor of Mamamia Rogue.

Some of the stories from MM Rogue will also appear on the main site, running through the timeline with our regular mix of posts. Or you can go straight to Mamamia Rogue via the purple button at the top right of our homepage here:

But the BEST way to stay across what we’re publishing on Mamamia Rogue is to like us on Facebook.

GO HERE TO DO THAT.

3. A brand new regular columnist

We’re thrilled to announce that Wendy Squires will be joining Mamamia as a regular columnist starting this week. Wendy’s background in magazines, newspapers and television have made her one of Australia’s most respected, gutsy and talented writers.

Her insights into life and news are the ones you want to share with all your friends because she says exactly what so many of us are thinking but haven’t managed to articulate out loud.

Wendy’s first column will appear this evening. You can follow her on Facebook here so you never miss out on anything she writes.

4. Our contributors

Many of you will be aware that newspapers and magazines have traditionally not paid writers of opinion content. Consequently, Mamamia has always followed that same rule. Of course all of our on staff writers and regular columnists – who create 80 per cent of our content – are paid.

There has been much discussion about this, particularly on social media with many people feeling it’s unfair not to offer all contributors some payment, given this is a commercial website.

From next week we will be paying for original contributions. Financially, as a small, independent start-up, we’re not in the same ballpark as big media corporations like News Limited or Yahoo or Fairfax but we want to do our bit to value the work of aspiring writers, amateur bloggers and students who are studying to be journalists.

We’ll be paying our one-off contributors a base rate of $50 for a post. This is comparable to other small business publishers (most of whom don’t pay contributors at all). Contributors will also continue to get the tangible benefits through our network of reaching almost one million people each month and widespread publicity on our social media accounts, which reach around 220,000 people.

Well that’s it from us. What’s been happening in your world?