Join the new world

A lot of things of the New World are scary or confusing to a new citizen and tend to change quite a bit, usually for the worse. What is the most consistent of the game mechanics in eRepublik is the media module. All news is created by us for us, and anyone with 2 gold spare to create a newspaper can make an article. However, if you want the media to be your claim to fame, you'll need more than a witty satirical piece or the ability to buy votes for your articles. You'll need to have:



BBCode Skills

You need to know BBCode. eRepublik BBCode is just like normal BBCode, but worse.


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

Luckily you only need to know the basics, but a simple bit of bold or italics can really make the world of difference. A bit of editing in all the right places and it can make it so that your article doesn't look so plain.



Setting up your Newspaper

Newspapers cost the 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 worry about 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. If you want to publish an article then it'll be released in what ever country you're in at the time, so be sure to make sure you're in the right place if you're moving all over the eGlobe!



Worldly Knowledge

Some good things to think of before you publish:

- Proofread
Use the preview button to check your formatting, and make sure to search for bad spelling, poor grammar or or anything inbetween. Yes, it can be annoying, but it'll save your comments being flooded with "LOL LRN2SPELL AND WHAT NOT". If you don't trust your own eyes or are lazy, edit 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 and you'll have to rewrite your entire article all over again. I'd recommend using Word, computers these days get a free version of it pre-installed and the auto checker is worth it's weight in gold to any budding author!

- Test your links
Some links will be replaced with an "unauthorized link" url by eRepublik, breaking it. No one why knows why this happens, 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 anything on the internet, articles are very public and will attract the trolls 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 and that goes for anything. At the moment there's a lot of talk on how bias something is, and how what you've written is irrelvent because of that. If it really is bias and that wasn't your intention, learn from it. Otherwise just keep it in the back of your mind that there are people who'll always call articles good or bad depending on party affiliation, so be sure to question all feedback, good and bad, to help you improve in the future.

- Watch your images
eRepublik limits images to 675px width. If your picture is bigger than that, make sure you link it so people can click it to enlarge as eRepublik will automatically shrink it. Also, nothing too naked (if you can help it).

- 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 and it always helps to throw a splash of colour into something that is typically black and white.

- A Niche

A writing niche is an aspect of writing that fits you. It's something you love to do, that you're interested in, 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 excitment. Humour. Or if you're a subscriber of jamesw, a lot of BOLD.



Welcome to the glamorous world of a media mogul!

Thanks for reading,

Betafoxtrot
Minister of Education