How long does it take News to get approved?

I just submitted a News story and I was wonder how long it takes to get approved usally? and is there anyway to track the status like incase it gets rejected?

I looked all around I didn't see any way to but mabey I am just retarded...

It took less than a day for me.

It depends. All of us editors have jobs and lives outside the site, so we can't always edit stories as soon as we get them. Sometimes, editing takes a long time - sometimes, it's really quick. It all depends on the quality of writing, the perceived interest of the story, how many other stories we have to deal with, and whatever else is going on. And sometimes, stories will be deleted and never published. This happens if a story has already been published on essentially the same subject, if there are no links provided with the story, or- most often - if the writing quality is so poor as to simply be unpublishable. There is no way to track your story once it has been sunmitted. Please just be patient with us.

Thanks

it takes less than a day normally

in a perfect world we'd get responses based on such problems, but like previously stated, there is a life outside of SG for some.

[Edited on Oct 30, 2005 by shortchanged]

I heard that editors get paychecks?

Edit: I don't know I said this like it was shocking.

[Edited on Oct 31, 2005 by 4Stella4Star]

Lots and lots of people who regularly submit stories that don't get published have asked that we correct and/or critique their work and help them to become better writers.

My standard response is that I'm not a teacher, and I don't work in a writing lab. Editors edit and publish, or reject work, not help you work on your writing skills.

Also, if your story is accepted for publication, you'll see a 15-point jump in your Army Points. The story will also appear in your Board Topics threads at the bottom of the Boards page, but you won't be able to click on it until the story "goes live."

Read this. It might help.

i mean if everything worked like we wanted it to the editors would tell us what was wrong with our new submissions, i.e. its already been posted, its grammatically horrible, the story is just plain boring, etc... ^_^

+1

Yup, we've gotten a lot better about that.

If your story still hasn't been published or queued 24 hours after you submitted it (give us a little more time on the weekends; we get hangovers too), it's pretty likely that it's been rejected.

If the writing in your submission is on par with the writing in the original post of this thread, I think you might have some significant room for improvement.

Actually, aside from a few missing commas and a redundant word or two, the submission wasn't bad. It was published this morning.

Here's a little more from my personal perspective, and some advice for members that would like to submit News -

1 - Please do submit news!

2 - Before carrying out 1, please read the Newswire. You will get an idea of the stories we tend to publish, the way to format them, and just a better overall feel of what stories are supposed to read like. You will also know what has been published already - I have seen some well-written stories that I have had to delete because we published the same thing a week earlier.

3 - Spend some time on the article you write. Are articles hard to write? No, but each does take more than 2 minutes. So sit down and put a little bit of effort and time into making an interesting story. If stories are 2 lines long or look like you wrote them before your microwave pizza was finished, they're generally going to be of poor, unpublishable quality.

4 - Adhere to basics of grammar, punctuation, capitalization, tense agreement, spelling, etc. Yes, the articles go through us as editors and we will read and catch mistakes. But just because your article is going to an editor, don't be sloppy and expect that we're going to salvage everything for you.

5 - Include a link! Every article HAS to have a link, no exceptions. We need to read the story that you are basing your article on not only to check quotes and accuracy (and to make sure that you aren't plagiarizing) but also because that's the basic essence of the Newswire. We take what other outlets have published and we spin them, comment on them, summarize them, whatever. I think that most articles without links are just the result of oversight, but this is CRUCIAL.

6 - Have fun with it. Get angry or excited or passionate about what you're writing about. Be as biased as you want to be (or as objective as possible if you prefer).

7 - Be nice to the editors. We work hard, we work a lot, we don't get paid for this, and we take a lot of crap sometimes. We have jobs and lives outside of SG, so we can't always get to everything as quickly as possible and we can't give specific critiques and answers as to why things were deleted or changed. But, overall, this is a pretty rad gig and I love doing it. I want to see members get more into it. So start scouring and start writing.

(Disclaimer - I can only speak for myself as Politics Editor. I can't guarantee that every editor feels or thinks this way. I can say that we're all awesome people.)

[Edited on Oct 31, 2005 by MissTyrios]

I think Misstyrios summed up my position pretty well in the above post. I would add another point, too:

8 - Pick an interesting topic to write on! Ask yourself "if I saw an blog post about this, would I read it?" I'm sad to say that I have deleted member submissions because they were boring or of only marginal interest. It's not that hard to see big picture issues in smaller stories, but if you want people to agree that there's something interesting there then you have to show the reader how that story about cops setting up DUI checkpoints in your hometown or Malaysia's new trade agreement with Vietnam or an amendment to HR 4421 is important to everyone, not just the few people that it may affect in the original story.

And no, to reiterate, we do not get paid. This is strictly volunteer work for us, I have two other jobs besides this (that do pay me) and the rest of the editorial staff has plenty of obligations keeping them busy as well. I'm not asking for pity, just a little slack every now and then.

Also, here's a tip for you guys- if we get a story from "RandomFuckbag", we probably won't publish it. Not to mention "stories" that really are just thinly veiled promotional crap about your band/show/opening/zine/whathaveyou. Just start a thread about that kinda stuff.

Although I think plenty of people would agree that crdbodyjewelry.com is hot news.

I don't know what's more mind boggling, the people that actually spend time writing something but it's so poorly written it's not even salvageable; or the people that cut and paste articles and expect to get credit for it.

I'm not terribly prolific, but at least I don't waste anyone's time with drivel.