How to write a WHPR (Part 1)

Day 4,661, 18:27 • Published in USA USA • by James S. Brady Press Room


Dateline:August 24th, 2020 (Day 4661)
Location: James S. Brady Press Room, The White House

How to Write a WHPR:

:1: And Now For Something Completely Different (part 1)


Today is going to be a bit different than your usual WHPR, but haven’t they all been lately.

Being SecMed is not a simple job. I dare say it can be harder than almost any job in the cabinet, when done right, but I’m biased since I’ve done the job quite a few times. It is (IMO) the most fun job in the cabinet and at times the most frustrating at times.



How to Write a WHPR:
anonymous

Let's explore a few areas of the job a Secretary of Media does, and how I did it back when I was SecMed along with the great George Armstrong Custer. This will be a 2 part introduction written over the week on “How to write a WHPR”. Of course, there are many different styles and ways to write it but I am going to go into how I along with Custer and several SecMeds have done it. I’m going to start with a general overview and the mechanics of production, and finally (sometime later this week) elements of style and content.

As with any Cabinet position, the job is what you make of it. I chose to do more. You may choose to do less. Your President may have specific ideas of what is to be done, and how the job is to be done. Ultimately, you will be "the official voice of The office of the President and the White House," and all eyes are upon you. In my opinion, the administration lives and dies in the eyes of the public by the WHPR and the CP's own paper. The people that the administration represents have no clue what they are doing unless we tell them. If none of us publish than it looks a though the administration has done nothing.




Let’s look at form and format

When I did the WHPR every edition looked very much the same, one edition to another. Look at your own RL daily newspaper-- same masthead, then headlines, and somewhere on the front page a table of contents. Each story has a picture, byline, then text. Features are where you expect to find them every day. Sure, the actual content is different-- of course-- but the form and format are consistent.

This is by design, this consistent look and feel makes you feel comfortable with your newspaper. It develops in you a sense of ownership. It breeds familiarity and the comfort of knowing what you are going to see, or at least how you are going to see it. (The morning starts with coffee in my cup and reading my newspaper.) And so, beginning with my very first time at the helm of this newspaper, while working for then-SecMed George Armstrong Custer, It was rather simple for me to take over because he had developed a “cut and paste” Style. It made it simple to accomplish. We use to stick to a schedule, 3 WHPR a week. Consistency was the key

As it pertains to the current SecMed, This is your newspaper. You may, at your sole discretion, opt to change the masthead and segment separators, and anything else you see fit. Make your newspaper a reflection of not only the official capacity it serves but of your own style and feel as well.

The main element of the format is the segments. You can cover any number of stories within an edition-- more stories, shorter segments; less news, go for a long segment.

A segment is not a full-page article-- it's a segment. Optimally, a segment is three or four paragraphs, each of those being two to four sentences. Introduce the topic and get all the pertinent facts in right away, then fill out the story mid-segment, and finish with a "hammer" or "hard closer" that makes an impact.

Our readers have, I should say we all have, a relatively short attention span. This piece right here is an example of "tl'dr" that'll be wasted on 90% of those who click in to read this edition. Not because my writing isn't absolutely riveting, because it is, but because they wandered off after the first three short paragraphs.

One more particularly important element of the format system is the row of image links at the very bottom of each edition. It is a handy collection of links to every official government newspaper. It's a mind-numbing, blinding code string, in two parts-- the row of image links, then the text links.


The simplest option is to save those little 55x55px images off-game, which puts them more in your control and preserves them. As for the links, themselves, they'll all stay the same month to month except the President's newspaper... it's first in the code string so you can find it as we change Presidents. You'll also change the image link.

You'll find a Shout near the bottom of every edition. Make the Shout, yourself-- check that it fits and looks good within the shout-feed system... make it yourself because consistency in that is as important as consistency in the product itself.

Make the Shout with seven "x's: where the specific newspaper number should be in the link.


Publish. Grab the exact number from the new URL, reopen Edit, and fix the Shout. Then immediately copy/past your Shout as the first comment to the article.



There's quite a bit more to my own brand of formatting for consistency, but by now we've lost all but the most hard core readers and I don't want to torture those any further.

Thanks for sticking with me.


Not The SecMed
Anonymous


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How to write a WHPR