Join the new world

As promised, I will hand out prizes to those who were most helpful in the media to get me up to speed again (while also helping our new players). My thanks to Tommot for keeping track of all articles in eBelgium; this helped me a lot.

I read everything from porn stars quitting the business to Jofroi’s digestive challenges after a spare ribs contest. Some thing should be left unsaid, but unfortunately that doesn’t always happen.

I also included governmental newspaper! Some might say that it is “their job” to publish these articles, but really… it isn’t. They have real life jobs or studies, and spending time on eRepublik is not “their job”. My thanks to those who are spending their time for our country.

Anyway, to the winners per category:

500 BEF - eBelgium (Training) Wars.
We had a TW with eNL? We are now fighting eUK? What's the military situation?

In the media, I find it very important that different sides of a story are told. On the events resulting in the wars in eBelgium, there were two particularly good articles. (There were plenty more articles, but just shouting “treason” and “elite government” isn’t really helping your stance.)

Chris1983 did a good job here to point out why he felt what happened was unfair, using arguments to support it. At about the same time, Country President e Vladimir did his story in this article.

Without judging which one is more "true", I will split the prize between them!

2,000 BEF - eBelgium Internal Affairs
A huge EclypsiaBE party? Yes or no to Congress elections? What happens within our country?

A lot happened, and it would be nearly impossible to describe everything in one article. I found two articles that were especially helpful in understanding what’s happening on eBelgium’s internal affairs. First of all, Nanoyo did a good job to describing what happened with Eclypsia.
More general, our Chairman of Congress Tommot has written a Congressional report to explain what happens in Congress. (And from personal experience, I can tell that that takes a lot of time.)

Both will be awarded 1,000 BEF.

500 BEF - Global eWorld
Poland is nearly gone! What else happened?

A hard decision, as the article of Shotan was already good, but Nanoyo explained more Europe-wide what happened here. The part I really liked was that it contained links to articles where he got his information from, making this a very trustworthy article. VERY good stuff!

1,000 BEF - Mentor Award
Best article helping out new citizens... can be about anything: First steps, tips & tricks, missions guides, explanation of political landscape, forum explanation, etc...

Yet another article where I just couldn’t choose the best. Again, Nanoyo (he’s gotten off to a superb start in the media!) will get part of this reward for writing down his mistakes at the start of his eRepublik life. Many of us have fallen in those traps, and it is good to warn new players to buy what’s really important with the few golds you get.
Another good article was ThomasRed’s forum newsletter, encouraging everybody to check out our forum at erepbelgium.com. Cool people will click this link to get there.

100 BEF - Visual contest
Bonus for adding the hottest picture to your article. [No, I'm not talking about temperature, so fire doesn't count.]

Last but not least: making the media visually… attractive. 100 BEF goes to Christijan I. of Finland. His article on Lisa Ann might have been totally unrelated to eRepublik, but it did ensure some good visuals.

No hot guys were posted in the eBelgian media as far as I have seen, so my apologies to Elynea and MaryamQ.

New category
I promised to add any donations to the prizes. However, I also promised I’m random, so seconds ago, I decided to create a new prize for the best article not fitting any of the categories above.

This means that the prize is funded thanks to the generous donations of ThomasRed, Tommot, Shmuel97, Viridi, nogex1 and BelgiumGeneral: 135 BEF in total! I’ll double that amount to have 270 BEF to be granted to Phil84.

He made a very good article on economics to compare our salary level with production costs over the borders. He also very knightly admitted that his first article was not fully correct, and updated it in a second article. Although I assume there are still many things to add and adjust (for example workforce and supply/demand mechanics), I think Phil84 did a great first attempt to explain our salary levels!

Wrapping up
So to wrap up, I’m happy to distribute the prizes to the following persons: Nanoyo (2,000 BEF), Tommot (1,000 BEF), ThomasRed (500 BEF), Phil84 (270 BEF), Chris1983 (250 BEF), e Vladimir (250 BEF) and Christijan I. of Finland (100 BEF). Maybe even more important: every article winning something was linked to, so maybe that will attract a few more readers to your newspapers!

However, this does not wrap up the media awards that can be won! The highest honour of being 2014’s best newspaper is still to be awarded. Keep track of Tommot’s newspaper, and elect the first finalists here!

Thanks for reading and special thanks to those who participated!

Kind regards,

Your rather random fellow countryman,

Boklevski