Article Submission Guidelines

Our content management guidelines are designed to offer our readers a superior source for news and information that edifies the communities in which they live.  Our stories are written by community members, because our purpose is facilitate a positive dialogue among neighbors, by giving them the ability to tell the story of their communities themselves.  We believe that positive dialogue causes community members to focus on things they have in common with each other and creates a true spirit of community, where there are more opportunities because people work together.

We do not cover politics, crime or controversy so please do not submit articles on these subjects to us.

Article format – Please do not submit Press Releases

If you would like to write for your community please review the following guidelines:

1)  County – Specify the counties in which the article is to be posted.  In some circumstances we will consider a request to post it in more than one county, so specify more than one, but put your primary county first.  We cannot move an article once it’s posted so please put your first choice first.

2)  Headline – Create a catchy headline for your article.  Type your headline so that the first letter of each word is capitalized.

3)  Body – The body of your article should be between 300- 500 words.  That is the equivalent of 1/2 to a full single spaced page on an 8 1/2 x 11 inch piece of paper.  If you have a longer article please break it up into more than one part.

4)  Photographs and video- Submit at least one photograph with the story.  Photos must be your own or you must have written permission from the photographer to use them in your story.  When possible, submit a rectangular photograph so we can feature it on the front page of the newspaper. Send your photographs as attachments to the the email in which you send the text.  Matching up photos from one email to an article previously submitted creates a tremendous burden on our support staff and creates substantial delays.  DO NOT PUT YOUR PHOTOS IN A WORD DOCUMENT ALONG WITH THE TEXT.

If you wish to have a video embedded into your article please send the link to the video (not the embed code) on Youtube.  Facebook links will not allow us to access the code we need to embed the video in your article.

5)  Byline – Draft a byline to appear at the end of the article.  Your byline should look like this:

Glenn Garnes is a community reporter with the Village Connector Community News.  He is a (fill in the blank here with your student status or career) retired attorney and lives in Laurel, Maryland.  You can reach Glenn by calling 301-776-1490 or by visiting his website at http://www.glenngarnes.com.

6)  Your articles should be submitted to the email address for your state – which is – “articles@villageconnector.com” preceded by your state’s two character abbreviation.  For example, if you are in the State of Maryland the email address would be: “mdarticles@villageconnector.com”.

7)  Timing -  Articles are posted as quickly as we can get them on the site.  We work Monday through Friday posting articles so if you submit one after hours on Friday or over the weekend we will not be able to take action on it until Monday.

If your article is well written, has all required pictures and content, and requires minimal editing it could be posted the same day you send it.  If it requires editing, it may take as many as 5 days for it to post.

8)  Questions – If you have questions about these guidelines or anything else we can help you with,  please feel free to send us an email at:  mdarticles@villageconnector.com.