Welcome. If you were invited to read this page, it means we have read your writing and really want to see you writing on The Speaker. Probably, we’ve taken into account other things too, like if you have interests that we think will help in covering the type of news we will be dedicated to covering, and your ability to cover it in a terse and informative way.
We start you on this page because there are some things we have to say to everyone, and it’s better everyone hears them the same way so we’re all on the same page. Then we’ll communicate individually at length, particularly at first, to form the subject of news you’re covering.
When you first start with The Speaker, you will probably have a set number of articles to write per month. The number may be 50, or it may be 25, or another number. (The number is not exact. 50 could mean 45 or 55.)
Some of these articles will be no more than one or two sentences long. Others will be full news reports, sometimes with interviews. You must decide what the correct treatment for a news story is.
For an idea of what articles look like that are only a sentence or a few sentences long, as well as a few examples of longer articles, click here.
Two questions you can ask yourself: 1)When the editor reads this, is he going to say “I don’t need to know this” and cross it out or delete it? 2)When the editor reads this, is he going to have a question that I have not answered in my article or at least stated that there is no answer?
The goal is to write an article that presents the news of what happened, without giving information the reader doesn’t want, and without leaving the reader with important questions that are obviously part of the news story but that you failed to give him information about.
When we look at a journalist we’ve recently hired and review their work, which we will do with a lot of scrutiny at first, then less and less scrutiny and more and more trust as time goes on, we will look for several things: 1)Their writing is interesting, gets to the point, and doesn’t present useless information; 2)They do not make claims or quotes without providing solid sources (as time goes on and you become trusted, this requirement will lessen and we will just take for granted you’re doing your due diligence); 3)You are covering stories appropriately (we won’t count words, so don’t try to make the publisher happy by writing a lot of words, but we will notice if the article has too much or too little writing for what the story demands). Other than that, we like that each journalist has their own style.
When selecting stories to write for us, think about how important the story is on from a broad point of view and a longer timescale. One good question is “Will this story be important one month from now?” It might be important as a reference for future events, or it might describe an important change in policy or precedent or relations, or it might just be illustrative or funny or interesting and offer “color” about the culture and daily life of a location, but it has to have some real value as part of the ongoing story of the subject. This cuts out from The Speaker’s coverage a lot of what many other news organizations include. We don’t aim to cover everything that happens, though. We’re more of a chronicle of the formative and informative events that happen in a region, country, or subject.
When we hire, we hire someone who’s writing we have looked at and we think fits the style of The Speaker. We usually hire for a smaller number of hours or articles per month than we can handle. As we review a new journalist’s articles and see everything is going good, we will often increase our contract with the journalist. Sometimes, we will be hiring editors and other roles as well, and we hire from people already working as journalists because we know they understand the general writing style of The Speaker.
We will be publishing on two websites, one for English and a separate one for Spanish. Editors will translate articles to publish on the other website.
Note that use of a pen-name is permitted, and it is a choice for each journalist. The current age is not privacy- or integrity-friendly. There may be threats to a journalist that would inhibit his ability to do the best job possible. To the question of whether a person can hide their identity and still be a trustworthy source with integrity, let your writing be your resume. Let it be that if anyone questions whether they can trust you, you can say, “Here, click this link, and find me a reason you shouldn’t trust me.”
Your first articles will be submitted through a Facebook group we will add you to. You will just send the plain text as a message, and put any photos you might want to include in the same chat. Later, we will give you an account on the website.
Before you send us any articles, check them for plagiarism. (I’m sorry to have to write this, because when honest journalists read this they will be as surprised and taken aback as I am every time I see someone try to submit plagiarized news, but it’s something we have to spend a lot of time preventing.) Run all your articles through duplichecker.com and copyscape.com, because we will be checking them there. It’s fine if any direct quotes match, long titles and names of people and some short phrases – that will obviously happen, even in original writing, but nothing else should match. If we see a journalist copying and pasting the writing of another journalist (not counting the exceptions just mentioned), we’ll end our relationship with a journalist immediately.
Another thing for which we’ll end our relationship with a journalist immediately is if they misquote or misrepresent facts. All journalists must always be accurate in their presentation of facts, and when they say someone said something or did something, that must be accurate.