New Citizen Education: Media And Journalism

Day 1,189, 14:06 Published in USA USA by Department of Citizen Affairs

A lot of aspects of the New World are dangerous or incomplete to a new citizen. There's always one thing available in the game mechanics though: the media. All news is created by us for us, and anyone can jump in. However, if you want the media to be your claim to fame, you'll need more than a dream. You'll need...

BBCode Skills


You need to know BBCode. But not normal BBCode, no, we roll with eRepublik BBCode in this hood. eRepublik BBCode is just like normal BBCode, but worse.


Link in case you can't see the image above.

The good news is, there's nothing but the basics. There's literally nothing else you can use, except for the email tag, which isn't really helpful. Using some extra tags like [ center ] and [ hr ] will not only fail to work, but will mess up your article's leading and color for no discernable reason, making it slightly more annoying to read.

Two Gold


Newspapers cost a small sum of 2 gold to start, and after that, it's completely free to operate. You can find the "Create Newspaper" link on your profile, under your workplace and party. Don't fret too much over the details. After you create it, you can change the name and description by clicking "edit newspaper details" on your newspaper page or any of your articles.

Your paper location must be the same as your citizenship country, or you can't publish.

Worldly Knowledge


Some good things to think of before you publish:

- Proofread.
Use the preview button to seek out errors in your formatting, incorrect information or bad spelling. Yes, it's a pain in the ass, but it's still important. If you don't trust your own eyes or are lazy, reuse an old article to show off your work in progress to another eRepublikan.

- Don't write your article in eRepublik.
If you don't plan on wrapping up your article in minutes, make sure you write in Notepad or a word processing program. Just a few minutes of inactivity in eRepublik will cause your login session to expire. When that happens, your publish button will send you to the homepage instead of media
glory - causing you to lose your hard work.

- Test your links.
Some links will be replaced with an "unauthorized link" url by eRepublik, breaking it. Why this happens is unknown to everyone, so you need to test them all, including your article's. If your new article's link is "unauthorized", change the title to something else, and it should be fixed. If all else fails, use a link shortener.

- Prepare for negative feedback.
Like posting your picture on the internet, articles are highly public and magnetize the dense troll underworld of eRepublik to you. If someone has decided to target you, brush it off. Listen to praise and constructive criticism only and you will retain your sanity.

- Watch your images.
eRepublik limits images to 400px width. If your picture is bigger than that, make sure you link it so people can click it to enlarge. Also, if you're hotlinking from another site, make sure you don't have a giant red image that says "STEALING MY BANDWIDTH? YOU USELESS WHORE" painted on your final product.

- Break up things.
Use images or bars to break up your text. No one likes reading a giant block of text, like the one I'm making right now, even if it's formatted well. My line breaks are sexy American flags. You can see one in 3...2...1...

A Niche


A writing niche is an aspect of writing that fits you. It's something you love to do, that you can do well, and something that appeals to a base of players. Some people like war reporting, some like educational writing, and some people like trolling. All of these have audiences that you appeal differently to.

If you're writing about something you're indifferent about, you'll write worse. It'll be written like homework. No one wants to read homework. They want grandeur. Fanfare. Buzz words.

See this article by Athanaric to read about some niches you can explore.

Welcome to the glamorous world of a media magnate!

Outro/Links

This article is an update of Mizu's original journalism article, here.

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[img]http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg220/finaltacticscross/fligh Until next time,[/img]

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