Difference between revisions of "Talk:Music news submission"

Revision as of 21:39, 12 February 2014

Overview

Music News (kdhx.org/music/news) is the category on KDHX.org for interviews, features, lists and other essays related to music.

- All articles should be substantive, not just a short blurb about your show or the mention of an upcoming concert; those belong on your DJ show page.

- All articles should be relevant to the KDHX audience.

- You may also submit album or concert review to this category. The editor will move them to the review section for you.

Music reviews are located here: http://kdhx.org/music/reviews

Preparation

We are striving for clean, consistent text and formatting.

- Use single space.

- Do not use indents for paragraphs. Instead, use a clean double return between paragraphs.

- Turn off smart quotes, or use this tool to clean up your text before pasting. jhy.io/tools/convert-word-to-plain-text

Your text, before pasting it into the KDHX.org editor, should look essentially like this: Click for example

KDHX strives to use AP Style.
Review or consult this Wiki page and do your best: KDHX online writing style

We are using AP style as much as possible.

Please review the KDHX AP Style Guide for proper capitalization and other conventions.
You should do your best to prep your text according to these conventions.

Watch the two video tutorials on submitting an article (turn on your sound first):

http://screencast.com/t/fXKWlQVcGxa

http://screencast.com/t/Orjc6GnQZv7

Logging into KDHX.org

For best results, we recommend using Google Chrome as your browser.

If you do not know your username or password, contact kelly at kdhx dot org.

1. Log in using the My Account button along the top right side of the homepage, just under the "Donate Now" button.

2. Look at the menu labeled KDHX.org on the left side of your screen. Click on the appropriate section for your new article.

3. Near the top of the page, find and click the button Add a new item to this category.

The Page editor will then pop up.

4. Select the appropriate category or sub-category.

5. You are now ready to begin adding content to the editor.

3. Compose or paste in a catchy headline in the title field. A good headline will mention the artist you're writing about and draw the reader in. It should be clever and informative. Try to keep it to 12 words or less. Use single quote marks instead of double quote marks in the headline.

4. Ignore Title Alias.

6. Add some relevant tags. Artist name, genre, type of article (interview, review, etc.), record label etc.

7. Select "no" for Published state.

8. Add in your lede (about 20-30 words) in the Introtext window, but do not paste directly. Instead use the "Paste as Plain Text" icon. This is the icon to the left of the icon with a W on it. This will paste in clean text.

Your lede should be snappy and engaging. It's the first thing a reader encounters; it should make him or her want to read further.

9. Add in your body text in the Fulltext window, but again, do not paste in directly. Use the "Paste as Plain Text" icon. If you have formatted your text properly, it should paste in just fine, with intact paragraphs.

10. Do not use italics or bold. For song and album titles, put those in standard quotation marks. Same for book titles.

11. If you wish to add an image, you may do so, but it must be exactly 600x400 pixels in size and it must also be rights clear (from an official website of the artist or from the public domain). Add a caption (name of artist, if the viewer might not know from looking at the image) and credit (name of photographer and/or the website where you found the image).

If you do not have an image or do not wish to add one in, the editor will take care of that.

12. If your article focuses on a musical artist, highlight the first instance of the artist in your text, click the chain icon, and add this link:

index.php?option=com_k2&lang=en&tag=name&task=tag&view=itemlist

Change "name" to the name of the artist or band. If name has more than one word, separate with + Like this: Bob+Dylan The+Rolling+Stones Make sure you remove any extra space at the end of that URL after pasting.

12. Proof your work. Remember that our WYSIWYG editor does not show paragraph breaks. If it all looks good, click Save. The window will refresh, you'll "Item saved" in the upper left, and you may close the editor.

13. Email roy at kdhx.org that you have saved a new article in Music News. He will edit and proof and publish, usually within 24 hours.