Newspaper project - ideas and discussion

Hello everyone,

In this thread I'm proposing different model and solution to mke this Newspaper our strenght and our pride. Please, as always, your feedback, ideas and suggestion are more than welcome.



Roles

To make this project work we will need the contribution of a maximum of member. Not everyone have same abilities, same time to dedicate to such a project, so here is a list of the possible role that one can take to contribute to this ambitious project.

• reporter : A reporter is not a writter, but can obviously also be a writer. A reporter is someone very active in game, very present where there is action, and who know what's going on. His mission is to gather information and transfer it to a writer that will proceed the info into an article. The reporter will also check the finished article to see if it match with his testimony.
  Example : Joao is ganked by a guild in the starting zone, and is witness of a large and aggressive action from this guild. He ask arround him what exactly is happening, try to have the point of view of a ganker and a victim. He will then report to a writter what happened.
  The style of his report do not matter, but it must contain clear, valid and complete informations.
  A reporter can also report events that could be interesting for an article, but need more informations. Writters can then organise a deeper investigation and send other reporters to complete the subject with more informations.
  Reporters will also be in charge to take screenshots of the event they are witnesses.
  
  
• Writer : the writter is not a reporter, but can obviously be also a reporter. A writer is someone motivated to write article. He doesn't need to be very active in game, but need to be quick to proceed an informations, and relatively talented at writting. A writter also need to be able to know when his article will be to hollow due to a lack of solid informations, and must be able to give up his text, or complete it with an additional investigation.
  Some writer need to be well introduced in the community and be able to gather interviews of players and guild leaders.
  
  
• Proofreaders : This is certainly the most boring job, but it will extremly needed. Proofreaders are persons with an excellent knowledge of english and good ability to spot mistake. Their mission is to avoid Whitestar to be covered of shame while presenting a Newspaper filled with mistakes and typos.
  
  
• Graphist : Will be in charge to take care of making screenshot looking nicer, and the design of the Newspaper page.
  They will also be in charge to make attractive commercial to promote our Newspaper.

Different modèle

Three model come into my mind : "Flash news" - "Monthly publication" - "Monthly publication + flash news"

• Flash News
  Flash news should be a blog updated as soon as something happen. An event occurs? We make an interview? The morrow the blog is updated with a new article.
  As this model will requiere us to be fast, majority of articles will be short and maybe not very deep. However, in addition of "daily news", more refined article can be published aswell.
  Advantage : There will always be something new happening. The community might want to check the blog daily for fresh news, like it happen for a real newspaper.
  Problem : will requiere us to be fast, and productive. We will rely heavily on reporters.
  
  
• Monthly publication
  Monthly publication will allow us to be more carefull and too choose better our subjects. We can even choose a theme for the month. The newspaper could be either a blog, or a document PDF stylised. People will know when to expect the newspaper, and every informations can be read at once.
  Advantage : allow us more flexibility to organise our work. Allow our newspaper to have a fix structure, our articles to be more deep and well worked, and the design made with care
  Problem : We can miss an important event because it wasn't planed in our draft. Some articles might speak about 1 month old events and become uninteresting for the people.
  
  
• 
  Monthly publication + Flash news is simply the mix of both. Mainly a monthly publication with in addition a special article for an important news.
  While very flexible, this model can also be confusing.

Ideas ...
According to the model we are choosing for the newspaper, the design and the structure of our newspaper will be drasticly different. A monthly publication will allow us to pay more attention to the Graphics and design, to several categories that we will find in each numero. While a flash news model will requiere us to be efficient and flexible, and very attractive to catch readers attention.

Differents ideas of type of article we can find in both model (but will requiere some preparation)

• Interview of the monthly Vanarch (or its opposant, or a debat between two opposants)
  
• Article about the Guild of the Month
  
• All Whitestar events covered in details
  
• Adventures in XXXXX place (PVE related, written like a National Geographic, or Indiana Jones article)
  
• Discover the Class or Race of the Month (gathering short testimony of several players of the right class or the right race. Alow us 16 articles)

Ok, here is my idea:

On one hand, the blog is the better idea. It gives flexibility and if something important happens on the server we won't miss it/be late with the news. But on the other, it's kinda...meh ;D Everybody has it, everybody can have it. Lots of guilds will do the same thing on their main sites. That's why i would suggest to make the blog (we would always be on time + it's the best way to communicate) AND we could do special edition/issues. My idea for these special editions is to put them out whenever we feel like it (when we have gathered enough material for it).

Blog would be strictly the link to the community (all the fresh news and gossip ). Special edition magazine - more eye candy, more info about the game itself. I would not want the magazine to be a copy of the blog, but it's expansion. We are doing it for the community, but the main reason we are doing it - to promote our guild. We just need to make lots of cool stuff for everyone to admire

Special edition mag could consist of (only an example):

1) Some of these :

Elloa wrote:

• Interview of the monthly Vanarch (or its opposant, or a debat between two opposants)
  
• Article about the Guild of the Month
  
• All Whitestar events covered in details
  
• Adventures in XXXXX place (PVE related, written like a National Geographic, or Indiana Jones article)
  
• Discover the Class or Race of the Month (gathering short testimony of several players of the right class or the right race. Alow us 16 articles)

2) Summary of all the important things that happened lately on the server (short, we don't wanna repeat the same things that are already on the blog)
3) Guides, theory crafting, lore and such
3) Interviews with guild leaders, chosen players
4) Info about upcoming patches (would be nice to get an interview with someone who is still playing on the Korean servers and has already seen all the changes)
5) Screenshots

We can't just copy all the news/entries from last month, put it in the pdf magazine form and voila, done. That would be only a special edition (not weekly, monthly), so we would have more time to prepare it and make it really interesting. The blog needs to be the main source and the magazine could be the cherry on the top

What do you guys think?

I'll not comment anything about Klaudyna's propositions now, I'm really waiting for more feedback from everyone.

I'll just be very precise with this :

• We can not halfly do this project. It need to be well made, or not made at all. We will need to be sure to know who is going to help on the long term before making a too ambitious project.
  
• Once we start, we will have to continue or we will ridiculouse ourselves
  
• Better to start small, and increase the project as we see our possibilities/interest increase than starting with something awesome and end with something poorly made.
  

We also have to think about this :

Do we want this project be exclusively ours? Or do we want to lead a project where we could include other players from our server?
If we want it to be exclusively ours, then we need to be sure of what we are doing, and not be too ambitious
If we want to open it to external players, we can have a different structure and be a bit more ambitious.

Well, let's see if we can cover all this (pun most definitely intended):

First of all: We have to make sure we have enough writers. Helping out as a reporter, no problem, but for example i am absolutely horrible at writing long texts.
And i really agree, we can't do it half-way or quit after a little while, so it would be good if we are not completely dependent on a single person(s) for it... since if that person goes away for whatever reason it would all collapse.

As for the different models, i think a mix could be good. Both shorter (could be really short, potentially... maybe just use a twitter for it, or something like that?) news about what's going on and a regular more in-depth kind of thing. I liked the "Adventures in XXXXX place", we could make a dungeon run and then write down the adventure like a Indiana Jones story. Could be a lot of fun.
But if we have to choose, i would definitely say that the more in-depth / monthly publication (although just once a month is wayyy to slow) is the way to go. That is easier to keep going i feel, if we only have flash news we are dependent on actually finding things, and fast, and that is hard to guarantee.
So for startup, i would say let's go only with the more in-depth one, since that is easier to manage, and not dependent on other things (like that something actually happens).

Also, i think it would be fine to have guest writers, if anyone would want to contribute. That would make it more of a community thing, also, since it is easier for people to care about things they are / can get involved in.

One thing tho: DEFINITELY NO PDF OR THINGS LIKE THAT. Keep it available in a browser, like a blog or so. It's easier to manage, easier to read, and you can easier keep tabs on how many people actually reads it, not to mention the possibility to post comments and such. PDF and other files is too one-directional. Use a website, and we actually allow for two-way communication.

That's it for now i guess. ^_^

I Guess for me I would have to see how into the game I am, like if i am into Tera like I was with WoW then I could get involved, but if im into Tera like SWTOR "can't be arsed with this game after 2 months" then no.

Sorry for not giving any ideas or thoughts but I am not going to commmit myself when I don't know if I am going to enjoy all that is Tera after a month or two.

Making the conclusions of what had been said so far :

• We still have to choose between a "everyday" publication, monthly one, or a mix of both.
  
• We choose a blog or website as model.
  
• We start by ourself, but we will integrate later guest writters from the server. We keep the lead of the project. With this in mind, we could make our blog flexible to new additions. For example, we could add guides and patch notes.
  
• We start by a not so ambitious project, and we improve it step by step, according to what we can do without exausting ourselves.

Still need more feedback concerning this. Don't be shy guys and girls, and share your ideas.

Argh, I was suppose to post long time ago here >.>. Though, I don't want to write same things that have already been said, since I was brainstorming with Karn about it, her post is also my opinion on this matter.

Regarding the conlusions Wendy made:

Elloa wrote:
We still have to choose between a "everyday" publication, monthly one, or a mix of both.

I'm for mix of both - it will give us ability to inform about most recent events and to make, for example, monthly special issues. Also without fixed timeframe on release date we will be under less presure - sometimes there is no time to write, there isn't anything to write about etc. and there is nothing worse than writing about nothing because the release date is coming.

Elloa wrote:
We choose a blog or website as model.

A blog is the easiest way to go, there are a lot of implementations with a lot of features. It's also perfect if we wan't to go for the mixed option, we can get feedback in the comments on both daily news and the monthly issues, be it even PDF (it's easier to make something in an doc outside the website), so this way it won't be one-sided thing .

Elloa wrote:
We start by ourself, but we will integrate later guest writters from the server. We keep the lead of the project. With this in mind, we could make our blog flexible to new additions. For example, we could add guides and patch notes.
We start by a not so ambitious project, and we improve it step by step, according to what we can do without exausting ourselves.

I think this is a good way to go - we should start on our own so we can have total control over the project (and this is the most important thing, since we want the newspaper to be one of our main tools for obtaining teh political power), with strict goals - not too many in the beggining because it can overwhelm us.This is really important if we really want to make this project succeed.

As for myself, I can go as a writer/reporter, helping Karn with the design if needed . And by the way, this is the most important thing to do IMHO in the first place - making a list with all volunteers eager to help with the project, so we know what are we capable of.

Idea to make the community participate actively, immediately :

Creative Contest
prize = publication + small interview

1. Themed screenshot (screenshot can't have been modified by external program such as Photoshop)
2. Artistic Screenshot (can use external programs)
3. Themed video
4. Short story


Thanks to everyone that have already given a feedback. Still waiting more! Don't be shy!

I like all the ideas, obviously I started this idea a while ago and haven't really answered until now but I really support this still. My time has been very limited due to large amount of studies but It's getting better now.

Having it daily updated would work but It's very time consuming. Depending how many reporters/writers we have this is very well doable if some people take turns in doing it. Being reporter is clearly the hardest work here (atleast for me).

Starting a blog is the easiest way or publishing a PDF on the offical website. I belive, though, that having a blog you can update is the easiest way to go, IE Tumblr.

I'm a decent writer when it comes to fantasy series, maybe we should have a section we could publish som Tera short stories? There could also be funny screenshots readers post in and their share of stories!

This might obviously sound a bit too much but It's not so bad when you think about it! Especially not when they take our job seriously. I also really like your idea Wendy with the contests!

If we think about it more realistically, we should decide how often we want to update it depending on how many people we have that wants to be active in this project. Say we have 10 people that wants to be a part of it (this is obviously a very generous amount) we could update it quite often. Especially if these guys on their own will just do the reporting and send us writers material! That would be really cool.

Another important aspect is that 2-3 people should not be the leaders all the time. What I want so say is that we want people that can act on their own will too and not wait for orders for every move, that would get quite depressing in the long run.