Join the new world

One would almost forget there is more to eRepublik than war and missions alone, but with the National Shield behind us, Tony Clifford and myself find a quiet little pub, for a decent pint and a good talk about his newspaper, which won the first Readers' Choice Awards.


The Big Red Express, a name like that has to come from somewhere?

Well, as I am a Big Red Dog, I thought I should have a Big Red newspaper!

The term Express is a double-meaning: Express is the name of several newspapers, with express meaning courier, a fast messenger. But it is also the name of a fast train, the Express: in that meaning,it is the Red Glacier Express of the Swiss Alps, which I saw, but never used (I was eSwiss before becoming eBelgian!).



Then, the Express was Belgianized into the (former i guess) red Antwerp Express, which is shown in the Newspaper avatar. And i like Belgian trains!

Ah, a fellow train traveler, excellent!
What do you think makes your newspaper qualitative?

Simply because I give something about the game that no other newspaper gives.

Well, there are a lot of newspapers dealing with the happenings in the game that get a lot more votes than mine, but they are mainly polemics between countries.

My numbers are impartial: maybe I have fewer readers, but they are from all over the world, from every alliances, and all of them are equally interested in my articles. I make friends, not enemies.

Is that why you write?

Mine is not really writing: it is more making figures, graphs and pictures and then trying to explain them easily. I like analyzing data, and eRepublik give me a lot of them, data which are also partially social-related, making them more interesting.

In the meantime, I also learned to manage new software and more statistics XD. So, why do I have not to give this info to the community? Even if only for a feedback?

Wouldn't photos of semi-naked women be easier?

Depends on what is your goal! Which is it? Having more votes or subscription? Getting the Media Mogul Medal?

Yes, it would be easier. It would be easier if I bought subs for energy (i saw people buying subs for only 100 energy! I say to them: don’t be so greedy, at least pay more!).

My goal is to give people information, so if the people like the information i give, they’ll come to my newspaper, if they want to look at semi-naked women, they can choose another newspaper dedicated to it. Such as the Daily Muffin of fabyzol.

It’s more than 200 days that he daily publishes a different semi-naked woman, and, obviously, I follow him every day, only because i want to know when he will get bored of it!

What would you change to the media module?

Some long-requested improvements were already did by the admins: the draft and the preview! In the beginning of my career, I lost some articles because these functions were not enabled!

I would like also it would be forbidden to buy subs with supplies or votes, so to give more importance to the media mogul medal, but that’s difficult to implement.

Well, at least the admins banned the owner of the Voter’s Club.

Another useful feature (that they told me it was deleted because of a so-called rebellion), is to have international news easily accessible from the home page, now it is quite impossible to find international news.

Moreover some inprovements may be done for organizing subscriptions in a rational way, allowing the players to create categories where to put the newspapers, such as: foreign relations:, warfare, statistics, politics, semi-naked women...

Now I have to use egov4you’s to find the new articles about foreign relations!

Any good advice to young/new newspaper writers?

Write your own newspaper, that’s it.

It’s not important about what it is, and do not listen too much to critics. If they don’t like, they can read another one... There are thousands of newspapers in this game.

Then, practically: shout your articles in a short and clear way, and make friends of all your readers, so they will read your shouts and come back again!

What is your favourite in game newspaper, besides your own ?

The most difficult question!

Normally I read the official newspapers of governments about foreign relations and warfare, so to be updated (I’m Belgian MoFA and CoT aMC!). In Belgium I voted for tommot’s “This is eBelgian”, but not only for the newspaper, but also for his cross-media approach: he also updates the wiki and facebok!

But the newspapers I like the most are those of the “eRepublik’s tourists”, such as the series of articles in Rhual’s “The Voice of the Enemy”, which unfortunately has been interrupted some months ago, or Lorcema’s Media Idea’s O-T-Road series, which again was interrupted and never resumed... These series were about the geography, society and culture of every country of the World, with lots of pictures of cities, natural landmarks and people, and i liked it a lot!

Thanks, Tony, and again, congratulations on winning the first Readers' Choice Awards. I hope this can be an inspiration for all writers in eRepublik.