Articles for the Emu Park Lions Website News Feed
It takes a lot of work to gather and present news. Just ask any old news hound. We have a couple of local guys in our coastal area. Big shout out to John and Suzie as well as Jack. They are tireless promoters of the Capricorn coast region and have spent more years reporting the news than they would care to remember. Times move on though and in today’s fast fix, social media the news comes from the entire world. The risk now though is whether you can believe the news you hear or not.
The old reporters would personally witness the news as it happened and then spend more hours researching and making sure all the facts were correct. Today the news is “Snapflashed” into your news feeds and served up with a huge salt pill.
For community groups, generally the best people to collect news are the ones actually involved. If you are part of the news then it can be part of your involvement to tell the community what is happening. To make this easier, our club is opening the web site news feed page to any community member who has a story to tell. Please follow the guidelines below and we look forward to hearing your news articles and stories.
– Articles generally can be a maximum of 300 words. Longer articles may be considered or presented as a multiple report at the entire discretion of the news editor.
– Every article may be edited by our people before it is published.
– Certain types of article may be considered unsuitable depending on the content. For example if the article rants or violates good taste etc. it probably wont be used
– Photos are a great way to illustrate your story. Make sure the photos are your own or ensure the owner has agreed to their use. All photos should be credited even if that information is not published. Photos of several people should be named and they should agree to its use. At this time verbal assertion is OK if the photo is taken in public space. Generally photos of minors will not be used unless we have a press release. We will conside 1 or 2 photos per article.
– Photo specifics. Preferably not larger than 2000 pixels on the long side with an aspect ration of 4×3 or 5×3. Panorama photos are generally not suitable. File size maximum is 6mb.
Hints for writing your article.
– Make sure you stay on topic. One thought for your story. Submit another story if you have something else to say, even if it is related to your current story.
– Keep your story concise and to the point. Avoid unnecessary descriptive padding.
– Keep your story under about essay length. 200 – 500 words.
– Start your story with an introduction. In our news page this will run into a “Continue reading —->” tag. You need to be able to convince in a few words why the visitor should turn the page.
– Write your article in a few paragraphs. Ensure you keep your style concise and informative.
– Conclude your article. Here you can add credits to people and perhaps include links to further reading. If your article was for an upcoming event you would remind the place, date and time. This is known as a top and tail since you should have already mentioned those details just after your first lead in.
Editorial hints.
1 or 2 photos at most. First paragraph as a teaser then a read more part way through a sentence that needs to be finished reading. Thus gets reader to click more. Once they open the article in a new page they are more likely to read the entire article.
Please use the contact information to send your article and Photos via Email to the relevant recipient.