[DoE] Guide to Journalism

Day 2,067, 09:52 • Published in USA USA • by Department of Citizen Affairs


Newspapers offer a great way for citizens of the eRepublik to communicate their ideas and opinions to the rest of the eWorld. Whether you’re writing about politics or military strategy, the game or real life, you’re bound to find a community of readers who want to hear what you have to say. Plus--not only do newspapers provide you with a convenient medium through which to express your ideas, but they can also present an excellent opportunity for you to engage your audience in meaningful discussions about the issues that capture your attention.

Sounds great! How do I get started?

Part I: Creating your newspaper

Requirements: Level 9 and 2 gold

Luckily, creating a newspaper is quite simple. Simply navigate to your profile page, locate the “create newspaper” link below your party and military unit information, and click. You’ll then be asked to give your newspaper a name and upload a picture for an avatar (both of these can be changed later if you change your mind). When you’re finished, you’ll be redirected to your newspaper’s home page. From there, you may also add a description of your newspaper, via the “edit newspaper details” button on the right-hand side of the screen.

Part II: Writing your article

Once you’ve chosen your topic, it’s time to write. Begin a new article by clicking the “write article” button on your newspaper’s home page. You can write about (almost) anything, but keep in mind that some content (spam, vulgar language, racial discrimination, etc.), is off-limits in the e-verse and could get you into trouble with the eRepublik authorities. When you’re finished writing, make sure your article has both a title and a category, or your it won’t be published.

I don’t see a save button anywhere. How can I be sure my article won’t get accidentally deleted?

The media module periodically and automatically saves the changes you make to your article. If you absolutely must leave the page before your article is finished, eRepublik will save a draft, which you can access later via the “write article” button. Because there is no separate “save” feature, however, you can only save one draft at a time.

Of course, the surest way to make sure that all your hard work doesn’t go down the drain is to write your article in a separate editor and save it to your hard drive. Technology fails, sometimes, and it’s not a bad idea to have a backup file. (It’s also easier to proofread in Microsoft Word than it is on eRepublik’s tiny preview screen.)

Part III: Formatting your article

The media module is very basic, providing only a few formatting options. Because the article editor uses BBCode to implement these options, you must be extra careful when editing your article to avoid messing up the code. Fortunately, eRepublik provides a preview function that lets you view your work as you edit. The preview screen will come into view when you press the green checkmark button on the right side of the editing menu (at the top of the article editor). You will need to refresh the preview screen periodically to update the display; to do so, simply press the button again).

Hint: While you can insert BBCode manually, the media module’s editing menu provides a set of buttons that will insert the code automatically. If you ever want to clear all existing formatting and start over, just press the “clean” button (next to the preview button).

The following is a summary of the formatting options available to you:



Fancy text. Well, not that fancy, but still...


Bold text: Highlight the text you want to format and click the appropriate button on the menu. [Shortcut: Ctrl+B]

Code:
[b]bold text[/b]


Italicized text: Highlight the text you want to format and click the appropriate button on the menu. [Shortcut: Ctrl+I]

Code:
[i]italicized text[/i]


Underlined text: Highlight the text you want to format and click the appropriate button on the menu. [Shortcut: Ctrl+U]

Code:
[u]underlined text[/u]


Strikethrough text: Highlight the text you want to format and click the appropriate button on the menu. [Shortcut: Ctrl+S]

Code:
[s]strikethrough text[/s]


Bold, italicized, underlined, and strikethrough text: Highlight the text you want to format and click the appropriate buttons on the menu. [Shortcuts: Well, you can figure them out…]

Code:
[b][i][u][s]Bold, italicized, underlined, and strikethrough text[/s][/u][/i][/b]

Note: When nesting tags manually (using more than one formatting option), pay special attention to the tags’ positions; start tags and end tags must appear in the opposite order.




Other fancy things


Images: Click the “Picture” button and insert your chosen image’s URL. [Shortcut: Ctrl+P]

Code:
[img]URL[/img]


Horizontal lines: Click the "Line" button. (Shortcut: Ctrl+H)

Code:
-----

Note: Previewing your article is especially important when using horizontal lines, as their formatting appears differently in the article editor than it does in the preview screen.


Note: Both images and horizontal lines are good methods of visually breaking up your wall of text, separating sections efficiently and making your article easier to read!


Links: Highlight the text you want to turn into a link, click the “Link” button, and insert a URL. [Shortcut: Ctrl+L]

Code:
[url]URL[/url]

OR

Code:
[url=URL]text[/url]


Email addresses: Click the "Emails inside text" button and insert an email address.

Code:
[email=randomness@email.com][/email]


Code: Although there is no menu button for inserting code samples without messing up your formatting, you may do so using the following tags.

Code:
[code][insert code here]
[/code]


Part IV: Proofreading and publishing your article

Now that you’re finished writing and formatting your article, proofread. Check to make sure you haven’t made any silly mistakes while writing on the fly. Check that your images and links are working. (It helps if your URLs are short and don’t contain a lot of extra punctuation marks--tinyurl works wonders in cases like these.) Check that all your formatting tags are complete and in the right order. If you’re not sure whether your article will show up the way you want it to appear, remember that you can always edit your article after publication by clicking the “edit” button beneath your article’s vote total. And if you don’t want the eRepublik community to know that you’re writing an article before you’re ready to publish it, reuse an old article to give your new article a worry-free test run!

Finally, have fun!

Respectfully yours,



Tanishq
Deputy Secretary of Education