At Hypergrid Business, we love running short news briefs. We don’t have the 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 editor@hypergridbusiness.com. 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
Fact-check guidelines:
In addition, we have new fact-checking policies for all stories published in Hypergrid Business.
First of all, every piece of information mentioned in the article should include either a link to the online source, or the name of the person who provided you with that information.
If the source of the information is your own personal experience, you will need to specify what expertise that is.
Second, we will need a list of contact information for each person quoted in their article, including name, title, organization, and email address or phone number. The contact information will not be published, but will be used as part of our fact-checking process. You will need to let your sources know that they may be contacted later by a fact-checker.