Difference between revisions of "Talk:Music news submission"

Revision as of 23:07, 12 February 2014

Overview

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

- 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

Please review the Wiki page KDHX online writing style for tips on proper capitalization, punctuation and other conventions.

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.

These 2 short video tutorials will walk you through the submission process.

1. Tutorial #1
2. Tutorial #2
   

Getting started

Enter a catchy headline in the Title field

- A good headline will mention the artist you're writing about and will draw in the reader.

- 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.

Title Alias

Leave this field blank. K2 will auto-generate the alias once the item is saved.

Tags

Add a few tags (keywords). Artist name, music genre, type of article (interview, review, et.al.), record label, etc. 4-6 tags are adequate.

Be careful to spell your tags correctly. Use the drop down suggestions whenever possible.

Category

Make sure you choose the correct category of Music News from the drop down list.

Featured

Leave "Featured" defaulted to No.

Published

Click No for "Published."

Pasting your text into the Editor windows

A few notes before we get started on this next step.

Online publishing is tricky. If it were as simple as cutting and pasting from a formatted Word document, all of our lives would be much easier. Unfortunately, it is not that simple.

People use different web browsers, different versions of Word, different operating systems, etc., all of which impact the way that text behaves on the Web.

Following these steps carefully will result in cleaner and more consistent copy in all articles, fewer headaches for you and fewer headaches for your tireless editors.

The steps are not difficult, but it is vital that you do your best to follow them.

Tip: The easiest and cleanest way to make a dash is to type the word, then a space, then two hyphens, then a space, then the next word. That will give you a nice clean dash.

AP style reminders:

- Only 1 space between sentences.

- Commas and periods ALWAYS go inside quotation marks.

- Do not indent paragraphs, instead enter an extra return between paragraphs.

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

- Composition titles, like play titles, go in double quotation marks in text. Do not italicize such titles.

- Do not use the serial (Oxford) comma unless to avoid ambiguity. That's the final comma before the "and" in a series of items:

ex. "Hamlet," "Macbeth" and "The Tempest" are my three favorite plays.

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