If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to publish your first article, consider the rewards of doing it on The Sacramento Press. Last year we gave out thousands in cash prizes to winners of The Sacramento Press Journalism Open, and we’re ready to do it again. This is the third year that we’ve hosted The Sacramento Press Journalism Open. The contest is pro-am, meaning writers of all skill levels are welcome to enter. If you aren’t familiar with The Sacramento Press, we’re a hyperlocal online newspaper that focuses on community news. We aim to be the best source for local news and we would like you to help us achieve that by sharing your stories. No reporter knows more than you when it c

We are excited to announce "To Catch an Error," a monthly contest that we hope will improve the quality of content on our site. We know mistakes are inevitable, but we want to do our best to eliminate as many as possible. So, starting Monday, we're asking for your help to catch errors in articles on The Sacramento Press! Each month, we want you to submit any spelling, grammar or factual errors you catch to contest@sacramentopress.com . Errors will be accepted until midnight on the last day of each month. Throughout the month, errors will be evaluated and corrections made to articles at our discretion. At the beginning of each month, we will announce the winner from the previous round al

Here at The Sacramento Press, we want to provide you with the tools you need to confidently deliver your message to readers. To help polish your voice, we provide free copy editing to all of our community contributors. While we don’t require you to have your article edited, we strongly encourage it since articles are permanent once they are published. It’s always helpful to have a second set of eyes review your work! The best part is, it’s a fast and easy process. Just send a draft of your article to journalism@sacramentopress.com and an edited copy will be returned within 24 hours, ready to copy and paste. We offer copy editing every day except Saturdays. A couple quick tips about the c

The Sacramento Press has close to 2,000 contributors signed up on our site to voluntarily write articles. Without them, our site would fail to exist. Among this group, there is a small core of writers and photographers whom we work closely with on a weekly basis. These contributors go above and beyond by taking assignments from us, having their articles copy edited and making us very proud as they represent us in the community. To just tell you how great they are isn’t enough. So we’ll show you a tiny snippet of why we love them in the six videos below. Without further ado, we present to you six of our fabulous top community contributors.   Bill Burgua Julia Marino David

Project61 Update:   "Feast for the Forgotten" This Saturday, November 20 at 2:00pm under the 12th Street Bridge. Saturday is the annual "Feast for the Forgotten" Thanksgiving meal and gathering for those who meet up once a month under the 12th Street bridge. This monthly event is called Project61 and was started by local rapper and motivational speaker Minister RMB in the fall of 2004 with some friends.  RMB says, "Everybody wants to know they are valued and loved...regardless of their current situation or background.  People desperately need love.  Love with no agenda.  We have all experienced times of brokenness, failure, loneliness, betrayal, abandonment....and it was during those ti

The Sacramento Press and The Sacramento Bee co-sponsored a panel discussion titled "Paying for Content" on June 22. The third floor of The Bee housed 37 people who gathered to listen to panelists discuss paywalls, online revenue and the relationship between consumer and organization. Independent journalist JT Long moderated. The panelists were Tim Foster, editor of Midtown Monthly; Michael Sanford, KVIE's vice president for content creation; Geoff Samek, co-founder of The Sacramento Press; Tom Negrete, Bee managing editor for the online edition and production; Ron Trujillo, editor of The Sacramento Business Journal; and Mike O'Brien, co-publisher and owner of Sacramento Magazines Corpor

The Sacramento Press presented its "Introduction to Journalism" workshop Wednesday evening hosted by Sacramento Press' copy editor Brandon Darnell. The 28 attendees came for advice on a wide spectrum of journalistic problems. Some wanted to alleviate their sarcastic and biased writing voice, others came to discover proper format. Chelsey Miller, who said she wants to cover articles focusing on culture (music and fashion), came because she felt it was an opportunity to help "people to see me as a professional." Ira Cohen, who is more interested in covering business and technology, said he always had a hankering for journalism but considered it in his "I'll get around to it pile." His o

If you have been reading about communication and marketing tools over the past couple of years you are aware of the proliferation of new devices and platforms for marketing to and establishing community with existing and prospective customers.  Studies continue to show that growing numbers of people are adopting the use of social networking and micro-blogging platforms for personal use and to “follow” or “fan” their favorite businesses.  Social media will continue to grow and offer businesses perhaps the greatest value in time and investment to reach customers and successfully track the results of their efforts.  Read this: your business needs a presence in social media. As growing number

Have you ever noticed yourself straining to make out someone's profile picture? Perhaps you've had trouble seeing detail in an article photo. If so, you'll be pleased to know that tonight we've rolled out an update to The Sacramento Press that should make your pictures clearer and smoother than they've been before. Initially, you'll only see the difference in pictures uploaded after today, but in a few days we'll go back and fix everything uploaded to the site since day one. In addition, article images now appear in the order in which they were uploaded, and we're now accepting a few more image file types (although we recommend sticking with JPEG or PNG files). We also added a few new cap

 Photos taken at The Sacramento Press and Entreprini Tweetup.

Photos taken at The Sacramento Press and Entreprini Tweetup.  

The Sacramento Press was updated tonight with a grab bag of wish-list items, tweaks, and bug fixes that have been accumulating over the last two months. Recently, we've been using email as a tool to pass on news and workshop event details to you. Now, with this new release, we've started verifying  email addresses on our site. So, for all new signups (or if you're already signed up and you change your email address) you'll get an email that contains a link to visit that lets us know your email address is in good working order. This will help us better communicate with you. We run a lot of free, fun workshops here in our downtown office, and having a working email is really important for u

Today 2500-3000 people attended Earth Fest at the Sacramento Zoo in perfect Spring weather. " I think its activity creating activity, the animals are a huge draw but when you add all the live music and vendors its great for families" said Marisa Hicks Sacramento Zoo Marketing Coordinator. We gave out 750 reusable grocery bags, stickers and postcards to the public by spinning are gameshow inspired prize wheel. Our booth was visited by the Zoo's very own mascot, Gus the green tree frog, who with one spin walked away with a SacPress bag. It was great to meet so many enthusiastic kids, parents and visitors so excited about the special events put on at the Sacramento Zoo. The next first Satur

Even a sweet bunny couple reads the daily issue of the Sacramento Press

While out on the Sac Press bike leaving fliers all over town, I noticed a sign lying down outside The Salvation Army in downtown. I of course left a Sac Press sticker on the sign asking the community to tell what happened. I was crossing the street to leave more fliers, when I saw some of the Salvation Army employees examining the sign and what I had left. I am proud that these people stumbled across the Sac Press site in such a unique way. I am still wondering what had the power to knock that sign over? Could it possibly have been a storm? A drunken driver? Hormonal teenagers? Someone please tell me what caused this.  

For the past three years that I have been living in Sacramento I have often discovered giant lemons all around the streets of Sac town. Friday afternoon a local of Sacramento had my answer to where they come from. Just as I was leaving a Sac Press sticker near some giant lemons I came across on H and 13th, I saw a man watching me from nearby. We got to talking and I told him of my fascination with these mysterious giant lemons.  He explained to me that they are a cross breed of lemons and grapefruits. I have actually cut one open before, and the inside is the size of a normal lemon but the rind is four inches thick. Turns out that my now good friend Curtis, who was telling me all this i

Over a month ago I asked everyone: what is wrong with The Sacramento Press? It was an attention grabbing headline, but more importantly it opened an honest conversation between all of us who run and write and read The Press. Now I am asking for broader feedback: tell us what you like and don't like about The Sacramento Press. Give me suggestions for our operations, marketing and sales. The last time I asked we got feedback that helped us build out a better help section, fix bugs, add features, and even begin a path towards changing our legal agreements. We are always looking to improve our site and operations. We don't have all the answers, but I hope we continue to ask the right quest

The Holidays are finally here. At least that is what the Sacramento Press employees have been claiming for the past week. One week ago today, The Sacramento Press had their holiday party. Thanks to Geoff Samek, Ben Ilfeld and Nicholas Walsh who made the evening even possible. This wasn't an ordinary holiday party. It was filled with much more holiday cheer, much more food, and too many great wines it was hard to keep track. The party was held at Tuli Bistro on the corner of 21st and S. I have been to holiday parties before, and no restaurant has been as welcoming as the staff at Tuli. Not to mention the food was phenomenal. The Director of Marketing himself, Nicholas Walsh, carefully pic

Another Sacramento Press update just went live. Among the two dozen changes we made to the site tonight are a few that concern storylines. We've noticed that it may take an article or two to get a sense for the common thread in your subject. Perhaps you intended to write about one thing but ended up writing about another. If this has happened to you, you'll be glad to know that you can now rename your storylines. Other changes we pushed out include some icon fixes, tweaks to our RSS feeds, making profile edits more forgiving, and many more tweaks, bug fixes, and improvements.

While it was Black Friday to everyone else, I was working in the best location for the occasion, the Downtown Plaza. Even around noon people were still heavily gathered in their favorite stores to get the best deals on electronics, home-wear, clothing and more. Everyone, including the jolly decoration at the mall, was in the Christmas spirit. I was in a Sac Press spirit, and decided to shower the community with gifts from SacPress. I managed to cover all areas of the mall with copious amounts of buttons, stickers, fliers, etc., all with the Sac Press logo on them. Maybe now the people of Sacramento will be in the spirit of both Christmas and The Sacramento Press. I am personally hoping