Sunshine Review:How to report news


Report It •	The Good •	The Bad •	The Ugly

1 Article guidelines
2 Categories
3 Project templates
- 3.1 Discussion pages

Goal: To teach the reporting process on a wiki. For an in-depth version please read this article.

See also: Sunshine Review:Writing government accountability articles and Sunshine Review:WikiProject News

Article guidelines

Finding articles

If you'd like a place to start out please check out the Sunshine Review government corruption pipeline.

Headlines

Create a short headline describing the story. Some things to keep in mind:

Use the keywords you want. Always consider what you're audience is most likely to search.
Don't use weasel words.
If you can--incorporate the location.

Articles are written by readers like you!

To report on government accountability and transparency enter a good headline below to start an article. For more guidance, see the article guidelines section or our introductory tutorial. <inputbox> type=create preload=Template:New_page editintro=Template:New_article_intro width=20 bgcolor=#f5faff </inputbox>

Break it down

When reporting news on wikis think of writing in the "upside down triangle" format. In the first paragraph have the information be definitive and explain the situation that is going on in general.

Then break it down. In the second paragraph get to the juice of the article and expand on what it's impacts and revelations are.

Sample code

{{tnr}}DATE

==Headline==
This is the text that will show up on state hubs and news feeds.

==References==
{{reflist}}

{{STATE}}

[[Category:MONTH YEAR]]
[[Category:NEWS TOPIC]]

Sources

Remember that a wiki is not a newspaper. People will not trust you because of your byline. Source everything you can whether it is a blog or preferably the original documents.

Sample reference:

Sample fact<ref>[http://www.url.com ''Source'', Title, Date]</ref>
Or if you are going to use the reference twice: Sample fact 2.<ref name="nickname">[http://www.url.com ''Source'', Title, Date]</ref>
Then after that: Sample fact 3.<ref name="nickname" />

Next include the following:

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

Templates

Two templates should be included at the bottom of every article.

{{state news}}
{{STATE}}

Project templates

Discussion pages

For each page make sure you add the state project template to the discussion page. This will be the state abbreviation like {{al}} It will look something like this:

This page is part of Project Alabama, a Sunshine Review Project dedicated to articles related to Alabama.

Also, please add {{wn}} to the discussion page for any news articles you write. This tags the article as being in the "news" portal and allows other users faster access to the news component of Sunshine Review. When you add that template, this will appear on the article's talk page:

This page falls within the scope of The Sunshine News WikiProject, a Sunshine Review Project that helps organize all news articles on Sunshine Review.