Editing and publishing Charting the Music articles
Contents
Overview
Charting the Music (also known as CTM) is a weekly article that focuses on a new album that has been performing well on one or more of the KDHX music charts. These articles are written by interns in the Music Department. The goal in editing these pieces is to make the information as clear, well-written and consistent with AP Style as possible.
This is no small task. Do your best with it but don't get bogged down.
Refer to this Wiki page to help you with AP style:
http://wiki.kdhx.org/wiki/KDHX_online_writing_style
The goal is to end up with an article that is clean and well-formatted, and which looks essentially like this article (refer to it as a model):
http://kdhx.org/music/news/charting-the-music-quilt-held-in-splendor
Preparation
You must use Firefox for this process.
You will receive the CTM articles by email, shared in a Google Doc. These articles usually are completed and shared by the intern on Thursday or Friday. Sometimes they are delayed and some weeks there will be no article. Check your email a few times on Thursday and/or Friday for the submission.
Use multiple tabs in Firefox to work between the Google Doc, the converter, and other pages that you need to consult. Never hit the back arrow on your browser when you are in the content editor in Joomla. Always open new pages in new tabs in Firefox.
Editing
Open the article in Google Docs and begin editing.
Make sure the first sentence or sentences are effective as a lede. The lede should be concise, 30-50 words max. Do light editing to make the sentences grammatically correct and clear in a stand-alone/first paragraph context. Edit for style. If the writer says something horribly cliched or nonsensical, try to improve or ask editor for assistance.
Edit all entries for clarity and accuracy. Double-check spellings of names or any other facts that you may have doubts about.
Edit for AP Style: Writers struggle with these areas:
- Avoiding Oxford comma
- Putting album names in quotation marks
- Putting KDHX show names in quotation marks
- Including state names with cities (when city is not obvious, like Chicago or St. Louis)
- Using figures for 10 and above
- Single space between sentences
- Lowercasing the "t" in "the" when part of a band name in the middle of a sentence
- Using singular pronouns and verbs for singular band names
- Putting periods and commas inside quotation marks
Leave the links embedded as is for now.
Once editing is complete, copy the text from the Google doc and convert using the curly quote stripper:
http://jhy.io/tools/convert-word-to-plain-text
Copy the converted text. You are now ready to add it to the "content editor" in the KDHX.org Joomla back end.
Working with the content editor in KDHX.org back end
Log in to back end of KDHX.org as a manager/admin. You will see the Control Panel.
Click on "Items." Sort by choosing from the Category drop-down "Music News."
Locate and then duplicate an existing Charting the Music article (in Music News category) by checking the box next to it and clicking the Copy icon in the upper right.
Open the article you just copied by clicking on it in the items list.
Once open, delete the words "Copy of" in the title and delete the title alias. Change the title to reflect the album and artist featured in the article.
Make sure Featured and Published are both checked as NO.
Paste the text you copied from the converter into the Full Text window (it's the second big window on the screen) using the Insert as Plain Text icon (it's the one to the left of the little icon with a W on it) in the WYSIWYG. You should now see your text nice and cleanly displayed in the Full Text window.
Once inserted, cut the lede from that Full Text window and paste into the IntroText window.
Returning to the Full Text window, put the entry names (88.1 KDHX chart position:, Record label, release date and producer: etc.) in bold by highlighting them (up to and including the colon) and clicking the B icon in the WYSIWYG.
Adding Links
Add links as indicated in the Google Doc. Click on the link you want to reveal it, launch it in another tab, and copy it. Then, if it is an internal kdhx.org link, use the reverse URL look up tool to convert it from an SEF URL to the raw URL.
http://wiki.kdhx.org/wiki/URLs_for_frequently_used_pages
Insert the raw URL for internal links by highlighting the text in the content editor, clicking the chain icon in the WYSIWYG and pasting it in.
For the artist name, which should be in the lede, highlight the text of the name and insert the raw URL for the KDHX tag of the name using the same link icon. Use this URL as the template:
index.php?option=com_k2&lang=en&tag=name&task=tag&view=itemlist
Simply replace "name" with the artist name; if name has more than one word, separate the words with + symbols: the+rolling+stones rodney+crowell etc.
IMPORTANT: When copying and then pasting in this (or any) raw URL, do NOT include http:// in front of it. You also must make sure there's no extra space at the end of the URL after inserting it with the link tool.
Adding tags and MetaData
Add relevant tags. Keep Charting the Music as a tag for all of these articles. Add Artist Name, Album Name, Label, Genre as tags. If the artist is local to the St. Louis metro region, include the tag: local music
Complete the MetaData Information on the right side. For Description, simply copy the lede text and paste in. After pasting in, delete any quotation marks from the sentences. The MetaData can't process quotation marks so you need to delete them form the album name etc. in this window.
For Keywords, leave the following in place: Charting the Music,KDHX,charts,album review,cd review Then, change the artist name to the correct artist and change the genre keywords to reflect the artist.
Add the image
Go to an official page for the artist (Facebook, official website, publicist or label site) and find a good quality image that will crop well horizontally. Your final image will be exactly 600x400. If choosing an image from Facebook, be sure to choose one from the Profile or Cover album on the artist Facebook page. Download the image. You may also try searching KDHX.org for photos of the artist which were taken by a KDHX photographer. Those are also acceptable, if they are recent (three years or less old).
In a new tab, go to http://pixlr.com/editor/
Click on "Open Image From Computer." Open the image.
Under the Image menu, adjust size to get close to 600x400, which is what you want for the final image. If you can't get it exactly 600x400, leave a little larger than that, and then use Canvas Size under the Image menu. Click the middle box in the grid and then adjust to 600x400. This will crop it down to the right size. Make sure you don't crop out any faces and that your final image looks good and well-cropped.
Under File menu, click Save. Give it a new name: name-600.jpg. Save it. Close the Pixlr tab on your browser.
Go back to the Content Editor. Click Image tab. Browse for your image. Add in a credit, which should be the short version of the URL for the website where you found the image: facebook.com/theskatingparty or theskatingparty.com If there is a photographer credited on the page where you found the image, format credit like this: theskatingparty.com / John Smith
Add the media embed code
For the embed code that is included at the end of the Google doc for either the YouTube video or the Soundcloud, make sure it previews properly. If not, make adjustments to the code. If you are still having trouble with it, locate the video or the Soundcloud on the Web and recopy the code and repaste into the source editor, making sure there are < p > < /p > tags before and after the code.
At the bottom of the article, make sure you include this sentence: Discover more new music on all the 88.1 KDHX charts. Make this sentence italics by highlighting it and clicking the I in the WYSIWYG. Then, highlight the words "88.1 KDHX charts" and add this link to them: index.php?option=com_k2&Itemid=195&lang=en&tag=charting+the+music&task=tag&view=itemlist
Preview and Save
If you are happy with the way the article looks, you are ready to preview and save.
Change the Publishing State on the right side to Special. Click Apply, open another tab with http://kdhx.org, log in to the front end under Login/My Account (using your Admin log in), then go to the main Charting the Music page (http://kdhx.org/tag/charting-the-music) and preview your article. Check for any error and go back to the Content Editor tab and make necessary changes.
When you're happy with it, Click the Save icon and save your article and then email Nick at kdhx dot org that the article is ready for review.
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