Helpful YourHub.com posting hints
With a big thanks to
Joey Kirchmer, who posts one of these helpful posting hints columns once in a while, I decided I should review a few of the same.
The goal here is to let you know how easy it is to format you stories, events and columns on
YourHub.com, but what things mean a bit of editing for those who administer each of the Web sites.
I hope these suggestions help.
1. Stories
First and foremost, have your story or event prewritten (as in Microsoft Word or similar) so you can just cut and paste it into the text box when building your story. Plain text is best, and don't forget to break paragraphs, check punctuation and spelling.
A few ideas to consider about the text: YourHub.com style is to bold
people's names in the story and not much else. If you bold other things, such as parts of sentences (see a lot of that lately) some dates or times of titles, that generally means someone here must go into the text and edit it. That could mean a delay in seeing it online.
We also ask you for a headline - importantly, you don't need to capitalize every word in the headline, just the first word and proper names - never make headlines all capitals - someone here must go in and change it before it can be approved for online.
People sometimes ask about story length. The simple answer is online, it can be any length. If you think your item might be picked to go into a print edition, one tip I often give is that a lot of our user content goes on half-pages - physically, that means about 450 words or so, with a photo, a little more without. That may mean some judicious editing if is a lot longer than that online.
2. Photos
We love good photos on YourHub.com. One rule of thumb is to make them digitally high resolution enough that they'll easily transfer from online to print. About one megabyte is usually sufficient, and most digital cameras can do that. One tip is to have your digital photos out separately on your desktop before you begin to post your item - it makes it easier.
3. Events
Events, events and more events. We love to have events posted on YourHub.com - especially important to post that event in all the immediate surrounding areas and on the specific hub where it takes place - at least two weeks in advance. This has two big advantages. It gives you additional publicity about your upcoming event, and gives you additional chances to have that event selected for a print edition - calendar or other posting.
Timing is everything: Nothing hurts more than to see an event posted online too late for our deadlines. Our timetable for the print editions generally starts the day before that week's paper comes out. Preliminary budgets are drawn on that Wednesday, and the editors begin selecting which events will go into print. The serious page design happens Thursday, Friday and Monday, and calendars usually get done early. So if you event happens, say the day after the Thursday edition comes out, and you don't post it online until Monday - it may well miss our midday Tuesday deadline. Papers are printed on Wednesday and go into the household subscription Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post on Thursday.
4. Finding stories
You'll notice that we tease to online stories (or complete versions of edited stories) in print by giving you a six-digit number to put into the YourHub.com Content Finder. That Content Finder is located on the front page of our site, just above the contact information on the Web host. Type the number in the box, click the 'find' button and away you go. Call or e-mail your Web host with any questions.
In that same area of the page, you'll find links to learn how to register, see user profiles; find the police blotter, lottery numbers and a host of other useful information.
Of course, not all events, stories, blogs, letters to the editor can make the print edition - but we do our best.
-A couple of additions, after some thought on trying to deal with all the inflow of stories we receive: Most importantly, we find it very difficult with our small staff to handle stories sent to us via e-mail. We simply can't be an e-mail news service, while administering dozens of Web sites and designing 18 weekly papers.
-Second, we are not a site for free advertising, like CraigsList. If you try to get a free ad posted as an 'event' you may be disappointed. While we do run business stories, we try to stay away from straight advertising copy (like those advertising a sale at a particular store, for instance) in courtesy to our paid advertisers. We try to keep out product a true citizen journalism Web site and print editions.
I hope some of this is helpful - and thanks for being a part of YourHub.com.
If you have questions, just e-mail me at
smithd@yourhub.com.