Newsies Team: News Cycle

Newsies Team
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Our goal is to post at least one item on our Community News each day of the month. To that end, we have a list of items which we post each month, which are standard news items about what's happening our community. It's important for each member of the Newsies Team to understand how our news cycle works so that each member can contribute to it, and ensure that we maintain a consistent flow of news.

Standard Items

There are four categories of "standard news items" that are posted each month, and each category has multiple items.

• Automatic: items in this category are automatically submitted each month by the ships, and are posted automatically by editors of the team.
  • Ship reports: each ship's monthly plot summary is posted to the news.
  • Monthly promotions: the list of people promoted each month is posted.
• Events: to keep members of the fleet updated about what's happening, we routinely post about events happening in the fleet.
  • Chat reminders: x2 each month
  • Writing Challenge reminders: x2 each month
  • Top Sims Contest reminders: x2 each month
  • Poll of the Week reminders: x4 each month
• Team: items in this category are "report-ins" from teams around the fleet
  • Monthly app count: a chart showing how many apps we've received each month, by the Publicity Team.
  • Monthly graduate count: a chart showing how many people have graduated from the Academy each month, by the Training Team.
  • Species close-up: a feature article about a species from our Intelligent Lifeform Index, by the ILI Development Team.
• Other: Miscellaneous posts seen each month
  • Writers Workshop: x4 each month
  • Monthly post totals: a chart showing how each ship stacked up against each other in post count over the last month.

News Cycle Spreadsheet

We keep a spreadsheet in a Google Doc showing each item that's supposed to be posted each month. Every member of the Newsies Team has access to this spreadsheet. If you are new, or do not have access, e-mail the Newsies Yahoo! Group with your Google Login (whatever username/e-mail address you use to log in to Google) and request access to the spreadsheet.

This sheet shows how many of each item in the cycle is supposed to be posted, and who is responsible for it. There is no particular order, as we generally just post news in whatever order is appropriate and convenient.

We expect that members of the Newsies Team will help to "fill the sheet" each month and ensure that each item is accounted for. Even if you are not the responsible party, you can still help to get the items completed by either reaching out to the responsible party to ask for it to be completed, ask if they need any help, or ask if you can write it yourself.

Feature Articles

Each month, members of the Newsies Team are expected to submit one feature length article per month in addition to assisting with the regular news cycle. If you need ideas on what to write, check out the Posting Ideas page. This tutorial explains how to write a Great Feature Article.