NCV Blog Editorial Guide

The New Collins View Blog Editorial Guide - Writing for the Web

This is guide is for use by contributors and editors. Writers should focus on content, without regard to formatting. Editors will check writing for consistency, readability, completeness, and clarity. The web guy/editor will prepare the content so it can be presented on a variety of devices.

In this guide, Article == Blog Post == Blog Entry. All the same.

Our blog has Categories where we place articles.

Arts
Culture
History
Stories
Nature
Science
Hikes
Walks
Transit
Business
Bikes
Grab Bag (catch all)

Hyperlocal

What does Hyperlocal mean? Hyperlocal is information oriented around a well-defined community with its primary focus directed toward the concerns of the population in that community. Read more on [Wikipedia]

Photos should be taken locally, by the author or other local person, and credited in the article.

The topic should have one or more of these qualities:

something that happened in CV or nearby
something that could happen in CV
something of interest that someone in created in CV
something to do in Collins View
something about an animal or plant that inhabits CV
something useful to know if living or visiting CV

'CV' doesn't apply strictly to the modern neighborhood boundaries. CV includes the cemeteries, River View Natural Area, Willamette River shoreline, Lewis & Clark College campuses, Tryon Creek, Marshall Park, even over to Futon Park, even extending over the Sellwood Bridge, since that is all easily walkable from Collins View.

Our Process - From Writer to Blog

An article topic is proposed by an author/writer.
The category editor approves the topic or focused and approves.
a writer drafts an article.
the draft article is reviewed for suggestions.
the draft article is finalized by the author.
the final article is queued for publishing to the blog.
the article is formatted for web, and posted to the blog.
the web guy returns the URL of the article to the author for approval.
the author approves, with any final fixes.
The editor for the category shares the entry on social media (below).
web guy links the article into the category and possibly the blog home page.

Once on the blog, the author (or editor) posts a 'notice' and link on Nextdoor and/or Facebook (our current platforms). This notice merits thought and a carefully worded invitation to view the full article on the Blog. We are not producing full blog entries on Nextdoor, just using ND to notify peeps. We have no template for these notices at this time, May 2022. (We should try to formulate a template.)

The author monitors the comments and discussion, answers questions, and collects the best remarks so they can be added to the Comments section at the end.

Topics

An author can come up with a topic of their own or choose from the many topics on our list. Warning! Some topics may require a week or month of research before an article or articles can be realized.

Here is an list of topics to be covered in the future.. We have some material for these topics: [Working List] Also see this outline of things we'd like to have in The Collins View History Project.

WRITERS: Preparing your Submission (Technical Details)

Please note that Web pages are not Microsoft Word documents.

Blog posts can have captioned graphics & photos. Some posts may be mostly images. Others may be all text, but it's always good to offer a little eye candy, even for the most obvious topic. In that regard, one image should be provided that will make the entry stand out when it is shared on social media.

Some topics/subjects could be divided into a series of blog posts, spanning weeks or months.

Send an article idea to scoop @ newcollinsview dot blog. This address may change. You might send a very rough draft. If we deem the idea as appropriate, go ahead and go to work!

Write a short note explaining your submission.
Tell us which category best fits your post. We welcome all categories category equally.
Provide a suggested headline for the blog entry. See 'Headlines' section below.
Provide your text of your article in the body of an email message, in a plain text file, or in a Word or Open Office document.
Provide the short description ("grabber") to use when posting the link to the article on Nextdoor or other site.
Provide images separately, as named PNG or JPG files.
Provide figure captions at the end of your document. Refer to your file names if not obvious.
We can handle submissions in Word or Open Office documents, sans fancy formatting. If writing is submitted as an email message, it will be copy-pasted into a text document for processing. (You may optionally provide a word processing document as a reference to indicate where simple style and formatting is used.)

Headlines

Authors should suggest a headline for the blog entry. This should be a sentence that expresses the content, not something vague or ambiguous. The title will be hyphenated and used as part of the URL for the blog entry.Here is a made-up example:

http://newcollinsview.blog/science/viewing-the-total-solar-eclipse-in-March-2027.html

Note how the category precedes the title in the URL. The editorial team will take care of this, but it is something to think about in selecting the title of your article (blog entry). No two articles can have the same headline, so something that captures the uniqueness of the story would work well.

Submitting Articles

You can gather all items into a folder and 'compress' it with Mac OS Finder (File Menu:Compress). Use zip on Windows.
Alternatively, you can attach all items to an email message.
Preferred method is a zipped folder.
Remember, please do not embed any figures in your document. This will make extra work for the editor or web guy. Thanks.

Send comments and questions to scoop @ newcollinsview dot blog :^)

Send submissions to the editor of the category, as given on the contact page below.

Image Sizes

Nextdoor's recommended 16:9 aspect ratio, good (width)x(height) dimensions are: 528x297 and 1024x576.

Nitty Gritty Details are in the Appendix!

Editorial Guide Appendix LINK