Some Guidelines on Writing Articles

As one of the editors for the Presslink News Aggregator, I have come across a few recurring issues that come up when reviewing submitted articles for posting. Since we want to streamline the article-writing process for everyone involved, I have made a short list of guidelines to keep in mind before submitting.

As with any list of guidelines, these are not set in stone. If you can pull off a quality article while ignoring any or all of these rules, more power to you; however, they are a good way to help us all in the creative process.

Part 1: Writing Serious Articles

In serious articles (such as the type you would see in a nationally-(or galactically)-syndicated newspaper), please make sure that the “Five W’s” (Who, What, When, Where, and Why) are supplied in the first sentence. This will grab the reader’s attention and tell them as much information as possible while they’re still interested.

Despite everything modern news channels tell us, the goal of a professional journalist is to inform the public of what happened in a news story. Tell us as objectively as possible what happened before attempting to speculate on people’s motivations. Save for the forums.

It’s a lot harder for people to call you out on bias if you report a Person of Interest stating your own opinion instead of saying it straight out. You’ll also catch less fire for being one-sided if you play Devil’s Advocate and quote at least one reasonable rebuttal.

It’s just as important, however, that your article isn’t simply one person ranting. Several articles (which will remain unnamed) have had individual voices truncated or simply spread across multiple people. Remember, people will only be interested in reading your article for so long before they skip reading and start arguing. Keep it punchy.

Remember that the old CDN articles were maybe 200 words each. We’re not holding you to that limit, but if your article is the length of a Retrospective, start pruning. Get the idea out, and make it clear. Don’t fluff – your article is competing among dozens of others, and it’s hard to keep a reader’s attention for more than five minutes.

If your article is still really long, consider breaking it up into multiple articles to release in a series. There’s nothing wrong with writing a follow-up.

Format your article correctly. While we appreciate all of them, some of the submissions have formats that just plain broken. Take the extra time to make sure your quotes are properly marked, to remove random punctuation and to make sure everything’s capitalized properly. The more a mod has to correct basic mechanical mistakes, the less inclined s/he’ll be to put it up.

Part 2: Writing “Tabloid” or “Joke” Articles

For articles in which the intent is merely to get a reaction from the reader, keep the article at least somewhat consistent. Don’t switch between a “responsible journalist” tone to TOTAL WACKYNESS in one sentence.

Speaking of wackyness, take a look at actual tabloid materials such as The Weekly World News and The Onion. Note the tone of a lot of the articles - ludicrous subject matter can often made even crazier by a determinedly objective reporting of the journalist in question. In other words, like necrophiliac jokes, tabloids are best executed when told in dead earnest.

Finally, avoid excessive profanity. This is something you probably shouldn’t follow The Onion on. If nothing else, remember Rule #8 of the forums: Keep things PG-13.

An additional note:

Generally, the mods will look at an article and edit it before posting. Depending on the article’s quality, these edits may range from minor capitalization and spelling changes to a complete rewrite of the article to avoid canon or codex issues. We will also usually post the edited version without contacting you.

Please understand that this is due to time constraints; sending revised drafts back and forth would drastically increase the amount of work involved for all of us. Please also understand that the moderators will do everything they can to maintain the information and the tone of your article, and that any change thereof is not done with malicious intent on our part.

That having been said, if you add a note to your submission requesting input before putting it on PNA, we will do everything in our power to let you have it. Realize, however, that doing so will immediately lower your article’s priority in posting. We will not sit on other people’s articles just because you want a final say.

I'd advise to ask to see the modified version though, unless the article is time sensitive. For my article, although I was happy at first with the rewrite, I noticed two key changes that changed the impact and the message significantly.

If the article is time-sensitive, then the onus is on the writer to submit it sufficiently far in advance that time is no longer an issue. If the article is not time-sensitive, then it is up to the writer to ask for review, not for the moderators to waste time with a rubber-stamp approval.

This is not negotiable; either include the request for review or don't.