Front home page news

[ShardsofGlass]

What's the procedure for submitting news stories for the front page? I submitted something a week ago, and haven't heard anything since. I've heard that no one tells you whether or not they're going to use your news story. I can't believe that's true, yet no one has acknowledged that I sent in the story. I'm worried that I sent it into a black hole or something. Can anyone shed any light on this?

[Skydiver]

generally, you e-mail your tips to [email protected]

can't guarantee if darren will answer, but that's how tips are sent in

quite often, the acknowledgement is seeing a 'thanks to.....' at the end

It's also possible that he's working on verifying the data before he publishes, which can take time, especially if the people that could do the verification don't work the weekend

[ShardsofGlass]

generally, you e-mail your tips to [email protected]

can't guarantee if darren will answer, but that's how tips are sent in

quite often, the acknowledgement is seeing a 'thanks to.....' at the end

It's also possible that he's working on verifying the data before he publishes, which can take time, especially if the people that could do the verification don't work the weekend

Thanks, but what if he decides not to publish it? How would you know?

[Darren]

We are going to be opening the doors to letting anyone who is interested (and qualified) write news items for possible publication. If you are one of the two people I've given Contributor access to so far, you should probably go ahead and e-mail me about it rather than posting publicly.

I can offer feedback on a limited basis, but eventually I hope to have many, many active contributors -- and at that point, probably not enough time to provide feedback on every submitted piece to every author.

[ShardsofGlass]

We are going to be opening the doors to letting anyone who is interested (and qualified) write news items for possible publication. If you are one of the two people I've given Contributor access to so far, you should probably go ahead and e-mail me about it rather than posting publicly.

I can offer feedback on a limited basis, but eventually I hope to have many, many active contributors -- and at that point, probably not enough time to provide feedback on every submitted piece to every author.

I'm actually just someone who submitted a story to you. I don't have Contributor access. I'm not even looking for feedback. I just want the story to go on the front page. However, I haven't heard anything about it one way or another in over a week. I'm assuming you have it, but since I haven't heard anything and since it isn't on the front page, I'm a little worried you never got it.

I'm also worried that for some reason that I'm not aware of you may just decide not to post it -- without ever notifying me or asking me for additional facts or anything.

What I sent in is a legitimate story with the proper contact information in place, but I'm not sure what to do now. How long do I wait without hearing anything? I don't want to be a nuisance, but I've seen other stories go up since I've submitted mine. It's really hard when you don't get a response to know what's going on with it behind the scenes.

Can I be reassured that my story hasn't been lost and that it will go up?

[Darren]

I e-mailed you back, but just to clarify: We do receive several news tips in a typical week, and I don't have time to write all the stories, let alone e-mail everyone back with a thank you and an update.

Tips are *extremely* helpful for the site, and we are always appreciative. But we aren't able to post every single one, for various reasons (which we are currently working to improve!). If you send in a news tip, the story might appear within minutes, hours, days, weeks, or never.