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]. 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: