Content.
Ed addressed this in one of the first posts. The content of The Eye should be anything that is connected to the City of Middletown.
EXAMPLES (many more possible):
•Coverage of municipal governance, such as reporting on Common Council actions, land use decisions, local elections, city budget, Board of Education, the Police Department, Board of Health, etc.
•Interviews or biographical profiles of interesting or important people (broadly defined) who are connected to our city by residency, former residency, or visiting.
•Review, critique, or descriptive commentary about an event the writer attended, such as a performance or visual arts display in our city, including Oddfellows, Wesleyan, public school, and private productions.
•Coverage of the monthly meetings of political parties.
•Descriptive commentary or critique of a city business, neighborhood, nature, farmers market, political speech, academic seminar, yarn-bombing, rally, garden, protest, gathering, architecture, etc. These could be public or private, and the coverage could be as little as a photograph.
•Descriptive commentary or a photograph of a sporting event at a Middletown college, public school, or parochial school.
•History.
•Stories of private events (a cool birthday party!).
•Stories about the activities of Middletown residents outside of our city. This could be a vacation report, a gathering at a New Haven arts venue, a random something in Topeka. It could be current or former City residents.
•Stories about the perspective that people outside of Middletown have on our city.
•Original art, including photographs. Poetry. Humor.
•Crime reports, obituaries and tributes, births, weddings, honors to school children. These could be as brief as a list of names, or could provide some background information and photographs.
•Commentary. We encourage all viewpoints, the only criteria are that it is on an issue relevant (and preferably specific) to Middletown, that the author is clearly identified, and that it is respectful of other viewpoints and individuals.
•Announcements about upcoming public events such as church services, athletic events, theater, educational opportunities, arts performances, community meetings etc. We do not have a policy against posting announcements for commercial businesses, but the event should be unique and newsworthy. Announcements should be written and formatted as news articles, not as advertisements.
As long as there is a Middletown connection, it is appropriate for The Eye.
THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE IS THE FOLLOWING:
Post! If you do not post an article, the community gets NOTHING. A flawed article is WILDLY better than no article. Readers know you are a volunteer, and they see your post as community service. If there is any concern, they know that they are free to become an author and do better.
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The guidelines below are much less important than the most important rule above.
Copyright! For material from another source (including published news stories):
•Don't quote more than 50 words;
•Paraphrase if you need to use more than 50 words of material;
•Whether quoting or paraphrasing, credit the source;
•When crediting, state both the publication ("Hartford Courant") and the writer ("Saraiah Sheldesthorne Baker").
Middletown, DUH!
Readers do not need to be informed that your article is about something in Middletown. Thus, do NOT include the name of our city as the first word of the first paragraph. Do not give an address that includes the name of the city. And NOT the zip code or state, for goodness' sakes! We are an outlet for local news written by residents, for local readers. The unnecessary inclusion of the city, state, and zip code tells the reader that the posting was not created for local readers and suggests it was not written by a resident for The Middletown Eye.
Conversely, information specific to a neighborhood, school, or other organization needs to be relevant and comprehensible to all readers. Sometimes a newsletter written for the members of a local non-profit organization includes information not appropriate for a news blog. Edit so that it is for all of our city.
Scheduling
Blogspot allows you to schedule your post for publication in the future. We think most events are best promoted on The Eye a few days in advance. We try to schedule event listings for midnight, and original work for the morning, so that the original writing does not get buried below press releases.
Promote!
We encourage authors to promote stories on their own Twitter and Facebook feeds. We will do the same on the Eye Facebook feed for many articles.
Titles
Each word in the title should begin with a capital letter. If possible, make the title short enough to fit on one line (54 characters).
Typeface
The Middletown Eye is a newsblog, not a bulletin board or windshield. All text should be in default font, with default size: Times, 14pt. It is fine to make words or phrases bold or italic to emphasize something. Avoid big, or flashy, or centered, or multi-colored, junk fonts. If there is a flyer with pictures and your favorite font, feel free to include a jpg version of it as a photo, but all text should be Times, 14pt, left justified.
Links
USE THEM! We encourage the use of hotlinks within the articles, including links back to older Eye stories on the topic, where appropriate. For instance, a story about a new business moving into town should incorporate a hotlink to the business' website.
Subheadings
The Eye encourages subheadings as an organizing and emphasizing tool. Use these as an aid to your reader. These should be left justified, bold, default font and size, with a space above but not below.
Quotes
Put quotations inside quotation marks, do not italicize. You may also indent (both left and right) to set apart a particularly long quote (click the button with the picture of the quote mark).
Miscellaneous
•Position titles are capitalized. For example, "The Mayor is a young progressive who has demonstrated great leadership in reaching out to those with whom he disagrees to better our city."
•People are referred to by their last name or their title, except for the first mention, when they are referred to by their first name, last name and title. For example, Councilwoman Jeanette Blackwell is one of the pioneers in bringing the ukelele into acid metal music. White will showcase her skills on Caterwauled, a radio show hosted by Councilman Ed McKeon. White is credited with driving McKeon to the world of acid metal ukelele music.
Jump breaks
To allow readers to see more than one article, please insert a jump break after the first or second paragraph. Interested readers will click through to read the rest (and in doing so will register as increased traffic), and other readers will be able to quickly see the next article.
This is more important for simple publicity announcements than it is for writing that provides original coverage, commentary, or description of a meeting or artistic event.
Paragraphs
Effective newsblog paragraphs are usually short, frequently much shorter than they would be in a typical college essay. They can be from 1 to 5 sentences long.
The first paragraph (The lede)
Summarize the article in the first paragraph, clearly stating the primary point you are making (the lede), so the casual reader can quickly get the main point.
Photos
The Eye encourages photos, which make articles much more interesting. Photos should be sized no bigger than what is needed to show the information, interested readers will click the image to enlarge. Usually the "medium" image size is best, under layout click "right".
A note about writing style
Wikipedia has an extensive "Manual of Style". If you have any questions about capitalizations or punctuation, etc, check them out.
One of The Eye's favorite sections is the "Words to Watch" one.
Press Releases
We are happy to publish press releases pertaining to Middletown.
•The content must be appropriate for The Eye (see above).
•The release must include contact information for the individual or group that submitted it.
•If we do not publish a press release it is frequently because none of the volunteers was able to post it in a timely manner.
•We follow the same guidelines as other news outlets: we will feel free to alter any aspect of a press release, to provide clarity, context, to eliminate non-Middletown information or add Middletown-specific information, or to include alternative viewpoints. We will not alter direct quotes.
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Technical Tips
If you have a post that is already in Blogspot, and you want to turn it into the default font and size, the easiest thing is to set tab to "Compose", select all, and use the Font drop down menu to set to "Default Font" and the Point Size drop down menu to set to "Normal".
If you are starting with a document in a Word (*.doc) or Acrobat (*.pdf) format, the easiest thing to do is to set Blogspot to the HTML tab, copy all the text in Word or Acrobat, and then paste it into Blogspot. Remain in HTML tab, and add or take away the line breaks as you need to. This will generate text without the crazy formatting or fonts of the original, and everything should be in the default mode for Eye consistency.
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