Need a push getting started on your article for The Sacramento Press Journalism Open 2012? We've got a workshop for that. Bring your story ideas and questions about the writing contest to our Journalism Open workshop Tuesday, Jan. 17. We will go over how to enter photos: standalone or accompanying, judging criteria, past winners and how to develop your stories by including sources and doing research. The workshop will be from 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. at The Sacramento Press office. Our office is located at 431 I St., Suite 107, in the Sacramento Valley Station station. We are in the same building complex as Starbucks. We recommend you find parking on the street, bike or take light rail, as th

The first Sacramento Press Journalism Open was a success, and we’re ready to do it all over again! We will have some exciting prizes for our top submissions, and your stories could be chosen for our section pages or newsletter for thousands to read and enjoy. Becoming a published writer is easier than you think, and we’re here to walk you through the process and get you committing acts of journalism. I'm David Watts Barton, editor in chief of The Sacramento Press, our area's top hyper-local news website, where we focus on up-close, in-depth coverage of neighborhoods like yours. We aim to spread the traditional habits of good journalism – accuracy, fairness and a diversity of opinion – ac

Once you publish your story, it’s final, so we encourage you to save it as a draft or view it as a preview before hitting the publish button to make sure you haven’t overlooked any typos or mistakes. That said, we all make mistakes, and we want your published work looking its best. If you ever catch a spelling error, typo or spacing issue, send an e-mail to support@sacramentopress.com and we can fix it. We also offer free copy editing. Send your story to journalism@sacramentopress.com, and we’ll get it edited and back to you within 24 hours.

For our readers and users who have an interest in online news sites and community journalism, we have a survey that we would like you to take. Reynolds Journalism Institute is doing a research project on local news sites and online community. On their website it states their mission as "reconnecting journalists and citizens around the importance of journalism in a democracy, and using technology to enhance methods that help journalists reach citizens in many ways." The institute is part of the University of Missouri and the Missouri School of Journalism. RJI reached out to Sacramento Press to participate in their research and created a survey tailored to our site. The survey has 36 que

We would like to invite you to our second workshop of the month - an interviewing techniques workshop at The Sacramento Press office from 6:30 - 8 p.m. on Wednesday, May 26. The interview is one of the most important parts of a story. Which questions to ask, how much time you'll need and whether to take notes or use a tape recorder are all key to conducting a successful interview and writing a compelling story. We are happy to have Doug Herndon teach the workshop. Herndon is an English and journalism professor at Sacramento City College and adviser to the college's newspaper, The Express. He has been a professional writer for more than 15 years and has worked for Sacramento Magazine, Th

It's very exciting to see the number of our community contributors continue to grow. We now have close to 800. With so many new writers, we want to make sure we offer you the tools and resources to improve your writing and help you feel more confident posting on our site. We've held many journalism-related workshops in 2009 ranging from Interviewing Techniques, Bias in Media, Journalism Ethics, among others. We're happy to announce another Intro to Journalism workshop this month, scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 17 6:30 - 8 p.m. Brandon Darnell will be teaching the workshop. He is a freelance writer and editor, and he currently copy edits for The Sacramento Press. Darnell graduated from C