How to write a brief

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.