At Hypergrid Business, we love running short news briefs. We don’t have time — or the budget — to cover every development related to virtual reality. But we don’t want our readers to miss anything important. So when we can’t do a story, we’ll run a brief with a link to another publication.
Send ideas for briefs to [email protected]m. The more timely, the better!
Here are the guidelines for a brief.
Length: Around 100 words
Headline: Should summarize the story briefly and include an action verb: someone did something.
Outline:
- Start with a strong lead paragraph. Who did what? Where? When? Why?
- Follow up with other information in short paragraphs in decreasing order of importance.
- End with a link to the full story.
Sources: Other publications, press releases, new videos, Kickstarter campaigns, new apps, and research reports.
Photo sources:
- Press releases, product images on shopping websites, images from promotional websites.
- Stills from video games or videos.
- Flickr images licensed for commercial use.
- Any public domain images, including images from Wikipedia Commons and government websites.
- Images that previously ran in Hypergrid Business.
- Original photographs that you took yourself.
- We cannot use images that belong to other publications — editorial privilege only goes so far.
- Attach or link to the largest version of the image. Write a caption describing what the image is. Write a credit line describing the source of the image.
Format:
- File as plain text or RTF file.
- Use systematic filenames. For example, HB-2015-month-StoryTopic-AuthorName-v1.rtf
- When filing a rewrite, use a different filename. In the example above, for instance, change the -v1 to -v2 or -v3.
- Include a title and your byline at the top of the story.
- Include links as relevant in the text.
- Include at least one image, either as link or attachment, with a caption and credit.
- If there’s a video, include the embed code for the video.
- If this is your first time filing, include your photo as an attachment, a one-or-two-sentence bio, and a link to your website.
Examples:
- YouTube gets 360 degree upgrade
- HomeLane demos furnishings with Cardboard
- Report: Mobile-based headsets are first to market
- Gloveone Kickstarter adds sense of touch to VR
- ABC launches VR app to promote ‘Stitchers’ TV show