- Joined
- Dec 29, 2002
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- Pronouns
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- Staff
- #1
Bulbanews seeks to publish not only news related to official Pokémon products, merchandise, and events, but also news and commentary from the Pokémon community itself. Everyday, somewhere in the world, there's a Pokémon related news story happening that's just waiting to be reported on. But as much as we'd like to be, we can't be everywhere and see everything. The biggest limitations on our ability to cover the news are simply the constraints on the time of our volunteer writers. This is where you come in. You can help us in one of two ways:
By bringing news that we haven't covered to our attention, you'd be helping our team in their ability to cover a greater breadth of information than we would otherwise. We can't promise that we'll be able to publish a story on every single tip-off we receive. We will however be aiming to at least respond directly to all tips that come in, so that if your tip doesn't lead to an article, you'll at least know why we weren't able to act on it.
When submitting tips, the two main things we need to know are:
All tipsters whose tips we are able to act on will be acknowledged with a HT credit at the end of the article, and will receive a Bulbanews Tipster badge to display on their forums account.
Full news stories:
The biggest help anyone could give us of course is to actually write up a full article. In practice, many of the day-to-day news items in the Pokémon fandom tend to be relatively smaller pieces of information. So it might take a lot less effort than you think to write up a story in full, rather than just submitting a tip. Your submission doesn't have to be absolutely perfect either. Our editors will be able to make whatever touchups might be needed prior to publication, so you can focus on the story rather than having to worry about details like formatting.
Writing a full article also means that you can add your own perspective to the coverage of a particular story. If you've got some special knowledge or insight into a topic or issue that would help to give the story deeper coverage, or if you were actually there, experiencing the news right as it happened, we'd love to see you bring that into your writing.
While we will accept user submitted stories and articles on any topic within our scope, we're especially interested in publishing pieces of interest to groups in the Pokémon fandom that have been traditionally under-served by the largest fansites. So if you've got something related to Pokémon that you're really passionate about, and you'd like to help that reach a wider audience, we'd love to help you make that a reality.
When submitting full news stories, a basic rule to remember is "Five W's, an H, and at least one I":
When a news story that you've submitted is published, your name will be right there on the byline, and you'll have an opportunity to submit an author bio to go along with it, just like the ones you can see on the articles written by our team. You'll also receive a Bulbanews Community Contributor badge to display on your forums account.
Opinion pieces and One-shot articles:
Since February 27, 2006, Bulbanews has carried the tagline "your community Pokémon newspaper". Since then, in addition to reporting news regarding the Pokémon canon, Bulbanews has also sought to publish non-news articles of interest to the Pokémon community, including opinion pieces. In practice, these sorts of pieces tend to involve more direct involvement between writers and editors, and often more than 1 draft before publication. Our editors will be more than happy to assist you with that process.
Some of the kinds of article that we'd love to see include:
As with news stories, when an article that you've submitted is published, your name will be right there on the byline, and you'll have an opportunity to submit an author bio to go along with it, just like the ones you can see on the articles written by our team. You'll also receive a Bulbanews Community Contributor badge to display on your forums account.
- Submitting tips for news stories that we haven't covered
- Submitting fully written up news stories.
- Submitting an opinion piece or one-shot article
By bringing news that we haven't covered to our attention, you'd be helping our team in their ability to cover a greater breadth of information than we would otherwise. We can't promise that we'll be able to publish a story on every single tip-off we receive. We will however be aiming to at least respond directly to all tips that come in, so that if your tip doesn't lead to an article, you'll at least know why we weren't able to act on it.
When submitting tips, the two main things we need to know are:
- The core of the story - WHO has done WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN. - e.g. The Pokémon Company International (WHO) making an announcement (WHAT) via the official Twitter account (WHERE) in a post earlier today (WHEN).
- The source(s) - Ideally, this should be a URL link to the original source of the news (e.g. press release, new product listing, etc). Tips which don't include a link to the original source are still useful, but may be harder for us to act on until we can confirm the information.
All tipsters whose tips we are able to act on will be acknowledged with a HT credit at the end of the article, and will receive a Bulbanews Tipster badge to display on their forums account.
Full news stories:
The biggest help anyone could give us of course is to actually write up a full article. In practice, many of the day-to-day news items in the Pokémon fandom tend to be relatively smaller pieces of information. So it might take a lot less effort than you think to write up a story in full, rather than just submitting a tip. Your submission doesn't have to be absolutely perfect either. Our editors will be able to make whatever touchups might be needed prior to publication, so you can focus on the story rather than having to worry about details like formatting.
Writing a full article also means that you can add your own perspective to the coverage of a particular story. If you've got some special knowledge or insight into a topic or issue that would help to give the story deeper coverage, or if you were actually there, experiencing the news right as it happened, we'd love to see you bring that into your writing.
While we will accept user submitted stories and articles on any topic within our scope, we're especially interested in publishing pieces of interest to groups in the Pokémon fandom that have been traditionally under-served by the largest fansites. So if you've got something related to Pokémon that you're really passionate about, and you'd like to help that reach a wider audience, we'd love to help you make that a reality.
When submitting full news stories, a basic rule to remember is "Five W's, an H, and at least one I":
- WHO did it
- WHAT did they do
- WHERE did they do it
- WHEN did they do it
- WHY did they do it / should we care what they did / etc
- HOW did they do it / can the reader get it /etc
- Include at least one IMAGE
When a news story that you've submitted is published, your name will be right there on the byline, and you'll have an opportunity to submit an author bio to go along with it, just like the ones you can see on the articles written by our team. You'll also receive a Bulbanews Community Contributor badge to display on your forums account.
Opinion pieces and One-shot articles:
Since February 27, 2006, Bulbanews has carried the tagline "your community Pokémon newspaper". Since then, in addition to reporting news regarding the Pokémon canon, Bulbanews has also sought to publish non-news articles of interest to the Pokémon community, including opinion pieces. In practice, these sorts of pieces tend to involve more direct involvement between writers and editors, and often more than 1 draft before publication. Our editors will be more than happy to assist you with that process.
Some of the kinds of article that we'd love to see include:
- Discussions on the current metagame for current Pokémon video games (both main series and spin-offs), or the Pokémon Trading Card Game
- Reviews of Pokémon merchandise
- Pokémon fan and fandom retrospectives
- Academic analysis of some aspect of the Pokémon franchise and/or fandom
- Speculation on the future of the Pokémon franchise and/or fandom
As with news stories, when an article that you've submitted is published, your name will be right there on the byline, and you'll have an opportunity to submit an author bio to go along with it, just like the ones you can see on the articles written by our team. You'll also receive a Bulbanews Community Contributor badge to display on your forums account.
