ajmilne

Hello all. I'm your new news wire maintainer, as of around a week and a half ago.

I'm a 34-year old consultant (software design, mostly), and former reporter/photographer who has long read the news so continually and obsessively that the endless reading involved in doing the wire really hasn't changed my life much.

I don't have much of an active history around II. Wrote an essay around a year ago on Newdow, otherwise mostly a very occasional lurker/very frequent newswire reader type. Gonna try to check into the fora a little more often now to take the pulse (and hey, just 'cos you seem like a pretty cool bunch), but given the demands of my work and the wire, I'm probably not going to be waxing eloquent or anything.

Just thought I'd say hi. So hi.

Godless Dave

Hi AJ! You've been doing a great job so far. I had just about guilt-tripped myself into volunteering for the newswire job when you showed up so I'm doubly grateful to you.

Abacus

Hi ajmilne. You're doing a fine job with the newswire. I know I appreciate it. Thanks!

Enlighten Me

Thanks, AJ....The newswire is jampacked with relevant articles, thanks to your hard work. I have a question----if I suggest an article for the newswire, do you just go to on online publication of the newspaper and find it? For example, today in the LA Times is a great op-ed piece about how we are all Sodomites. It's called "Banishing a Medieval Ghost" by Andrew Sullivan (section B). If you agree it should be posted, how will you access it?

Kevin Dorner

[Dunno if he will check this thread again, so I'll jump in (having sent a few stories to the Wire meself.)

To submit a story, just copy the address of the article from your browser's address bar (drag over it and Ctrl-C) and paste it in an e-mail to [email protected]

Some tips:

1) Turn off Word Wrap in your e-mail client as it will fracture long URL's onto two lines by putting extra characters in. In Outlook Express it's in Tools:Options:Send tab, change the Mail Sending Format to Plain Text, then click Plain Text and change the MIME type to Quoted Printable, which will turn off wrap (you'll see the "Automatically wrap..." field grey out.)

2) Check the URL by going to an unrelated page (ie your homepage) and pasting the article URL into the address bar and then going there to make sure the article loads as planned. Some sites don't allow direct external linking to specific pages (this is rare in news sites though) you might have copied a frame URL, etc.

3) I also like to put a cut'n'paste of the title of whatever it is in the title of the mail with whether it's a story, press release, letter, etc., so the Wire maintainer knows it's a story submission.

And you are doing a great job AJ. It's nice to see the Wire flourishing.

Enlighten Me

...but Kevin, I read the article in an actual newspaper....EL

Cheiron

Yes, Cheers to aj, for a while there I was wondering if the newswire had been completely forgotten, But thanks for bringing it back to life. Good job.

Kevin Dorner

Oh no wonder... I would imagine that if it's not online already the paper would have to give reprint permission due to copyright, but hardly any dailies don't have an online edition these days, so you'd probably be able to find the article on the Web and submit the link. As well if it wasn't a local story it was probably pulled from the wire organizations so it's gotta be online.

Edit: try a keyword search on it from http://news.google.com/ and you might find it if it was in a major daily.

ajmilne

<Chuckles>... shoulda figured Sullivan would weigh in on this. Will look for it online too.

Hey all, and thanks; glad you're enjoying the wire.

And that's good advice re checking external loading, Kevin, thanks.

Easiest, quickest thing, Enlightened Lady, is to copy the URL and the headline; you don't even need to put in that it's a submission if you're rushed; I can usually infer it.

Although I'm going to read (almost) everything sent anyway, the headline helps me prioritize and pick out duplicates; syndicated wire stories often run across dozens of publications and thus have different URLs but identical content (with occasional local embellishments); frequently I get multiple suggestions on the same real story; the headline can save me a bit of time. And every bit (of time) helps.

Again, thanks all.

ajmilne

Just FYI, found the article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...mment-opinions