WHEN POSTING...

A. Writing/putting together posts: 1. Sourcing: Besides looking at mainstream media/blogs for sources, have you checked city resources for official press release? 2. Could you make a phone call/send an email for a quote? Even if you don't get an answer, you can say "We contacted ___ for comment and are awaiting a response." 3. Is this post timely? Is there a way to advance the story? B. Ledes: Have clear, concise first paragraphs and no more than 50-word ledes 1. Have a compelling visual 2. Overall look of post: Preview your posts and make sure it doesnt look sloppy (image choice, image size, etc; see more about images below). 3. Refrain from cursing in headlines/first grafs (that gets sites placed on blacklists at some companies). 4. Use tags, but dont use TOO MANY, there should never be 3 lines of tags.

C. Headlines: 1. Capitalize all the words in headlinesit's just easier that way instead of picking which to cap. 2. Dont make it confusing. The reader, whether they are in your city or another city, should know what the post is about by reading the headline. 3. Dont make the headline TOO long (theres a balance!). 4. When doing Extra, Extra and Early Addition-style posts, add to the title (i.e "Extra, Extra: Giving Your Posts Full Heds Is Great For Page Views") 5. This also works for recurring posts, like Friday Afternoon Diversion, Around Town and Pencil This In

D. Formatting: 1. Please use Em Dashes (code: —) instead of double hyphens. Em dashes should be flush with the copy they're off-setting—like this. (aka use vs. --) 2. Use quotes around song titles, italicize movie titles, book titles, television shows, album titles. (We have a style guide we can share with everyone) 3. Italicize intro grafs of interviews, and please keep the intros brief.

E. Linking: Always link when it makes sense to (ie: if you are doing a TV show recap, link to that shows site).

1. Always link back to tags (ie: Art Shays posts always have the following tag in the lede: http://www.chicagoist.com/tags/artshay). 2. You want to make it easy for readers to find sources and your own old posts on similar subjects. 3. Videos: Please embed videos when a video exists, and make them 640 wide (you can customize size on YouTube, Vimeo, and most other video sites). If you cant make it 640 wide, please center the videos. 4. Never right or left align them with text. 5. Also make sure you have an image asset for the post, or else the post will appear with an image error on the homepage.

F. Images: 1. Make the post as visually interesting as possible, include an interesting photo. (Example: one of the Top Chef recaps first used just a small photo of the shows logo, when there were photos and video from the episode that could have been included.) 2. Check Twitter to see if there are any good pics (do searches with "twitpic" and "yfrog") 3. Please also make photos 640 wide, or if they are smaller, 365 wide, vertical or horizontal frame. If you have one image on top at the post, it should be horizontal, and 640 wide. For @main posts the first image should be around 465 wide up to 640 wide (for the preview option). 4. To avoid have your @main images looks squished or stretched, use a 3:2 ratio for the image. What this means: If an image is 640 wide, the height should be around 426 (640x480, which is a standard image for photos, also works fine). If the image is 450 wide, the height should be around 300. If the image is 365 wide, the height should be around 244. If you have a width, to find the height, just multiply width by 0.67. If you have the height, to find the width, just multiply by 1.5 G. Tags: Make sure you add @main to your tags so the post appears on the left side of the page.

FOR A&E POSTS

With television recaps, if you must do them, please keep them interesting. Simply recapping a show isnt interesting. Be original, be creative, there are very few sites that do recaps, but the ones that do them well are the ones we need to be on par withthink Vulture, Hitfix, TelevisionWithoutPity, Eater, etc. Use images/videos Similarly, with concert or event reviews, try to give some added value or have an interesting angle. No one wants to read about something they werent at... unless maybe you have compelling photos. Or an interesting anecdote. Also look for video from the concert/event

More original content! Less filler! Create the story, create something people want to read about, that people want to Tweet, that people want to talk about. We may not have weeks to write an article like a NYT writer might, but that in no way means that we cant produce something original, or create a talking point. And that in no way means we cant do it just as well. It is particularly easy when its a topic you are interested in or familiar with. Get in contact with whoever you need to for quotes to make those posts more originalmake it the best you can to get it up on the site (esp for news posts) and you can add that stuff in later. Then, when you are feeling like its getting slow, its time to work on the rest, and you should have fun when you are writing A&E and Food posts, in particular. What interests you? Keep in mind, the minute you hit publish its going out into the public eye, on a highly read site. In the end, you need to remember that, that your name is attached to what you are putting out there, and in turn, Chicagoists name is attached to these posts. Write about what interests you and what will interest our readers, find a way to make it work into the site. We arent a reblogging machine, dont be afraid to be original. Reblogging: The main thing you need to ask yourself before even reading an article you are about to draw content from is: do YOU find this interesting? Would YOU click on it? How many manipulative words will you need to use in the headline to get someone to click through? If the answer to that last question is 1 or more, then you have to question even putting your name on the post.

Also notice that the headline worked well: "Beyonc And Other Famous People Went To A Park In Brooklyn This Weekend" has a celebrity's name plus location. It's more clickable/search engineoptimized than something more opaque, like "Really Famous People Went To A Park"

When its okay to channel Buzzfeed. Who doesnt want to click on 50 photos of cute puppies? No one. But that doesnt mean we should do it. What we CAN do is take that idea and make it make sense for your city, without looking like were just hungry for pageviews. So, who amongst us doesnt want to click on photos of the NYPD laughing it up in the Bad Old Days of New York? Vintage Photos Reveal City Crime Used To Be More Fun got 39,137 unique views. Photos of old apartments in Brooklyn got about 14,000. Again, double or way more than the Lohan post, and probably something you feel better about attaching your name to, and way more original. On this note, the John Lennon party footage post only got around 4,000 unique hits, but you know what, I love that video, it was relevant to the site, it took very little time to write, and it got linked to by sites we want to get links from, it got Tweeted a lot, it got 27 comments, and 72 FB likes. That Lohan post got 0 FB likes. Point being, you know when something is worth putting on the site, and if you like it, you'll write it well, and if you like it, chances are other people like it. Resources: Life has an amazing image site that we are able to pull old photos from: http://images.google.com/hosted/life Most libraries and museums have Flickr sites as well (cf. http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/) Be active on Twitter. This is so important. Everyone has an RSS open, but Twitter is a more original content generating RSS machine, and you may follow fellow Chicagoans that other outlets arent, who may Tweet something useful or interesting photos at times.