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Our goal is to post at least one item on our Community News each day of the month. To help facilitate that goal, we have a list of items that 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 post totals: A chart showing how each ship stacked up against each other in post count over the last month.
- 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
- Featured Bio Contest 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 applications and Academy graduates count: A chart showing how many apps we've received each month, with how many people have graduated from the Academy each month by the Academy Statisticians.
- Publicity Project: A monthly publicity task that members of the fleet can help with.
- Team recruiter: An explanation of what one of our teams does, and a request for people to join that team.
- Federation News Service cross-post: Non-ship report articles from the FNS, posted to our news so that people know more about our spinoff site.
- 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
- Training Team interview: An interview with a member of the Training Ops or Training Admin team so members of the fleet can better understand our Academy and its participants.
- Lower Decks interview: An interview with a newer member of the fleet.
- Captain or First Officer interview: An interview with a CO or FO in the fleet.
- Writer's Workshop: Tips and tricks for better writing.
- Wiki Tips: Tips and tricks for using the wiki.
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, request the link on the team email list.
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
Members of the Newsies Team are expected to submit one feature length article per month. If you need ideas on what to write, check out the Posting Ideas page. This tutorial explains how to write a great feature article.
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