Format and writing style is about more than just looks. How you format your writing might make the difference between people reading your article or passing it by. One of the trickiest parts of news writing is keeping things brief and to the point. Stylistically this means paragraphs that don't exceed two sentences. While it seems excessive, if you read any major newspaper you will realize that this rule is nearly universal. By adding whitespace an article seems more readable; huge paragraphs deter readers. Good grammar, spelling and punctuation, is another important part of having your work read. Proofread your work, or have another person proofread it. If you have no one to proofrea

The most frequently asked question about the Sacramento Press at this point is, what is that tag cloud and what are tags? Great questions. I'll start with a definition and then give a few basic examples. Practical E-commerce has a really great definition of tagging:   "In general tagging can be defined as the practice of creating and managing labels (or “tags”) that categorize content using simple keywords."   So then tags are like categories. The problem with categories is that often things are given a single category, whereas anything almost always can fit into many categories.   Which brings us to the first concrete example of tagging, this article. If you were asked what this art

"Beta" is a little bit of shop talk I guess. In our case it refers to the release state of our web software application. We built our online newspaper platform from scratch. Beta just means that our initial release has not been tested enough to be considered 100% robust and sturdy. We will be "beta testing" our application by launching it in a specific neighborhood. We call that neighborhood our "beta" area because, like the application, we are just testing our processes in preparation for a full launch. Our "beta" neighborhood is the quadrant of downtown between the Sacramento river, Capitol City Freeway, 16th Street, and N street. This area includes the neighborhood of Southside Park,

Its easier than you think. If you want to be a writer, sign up or log in and click the "write!" button on the top of the page. Now you can sign up to become a Community Contributor. Our journalism support department offers a manual, seminars, and workshops on becoming a better writer and journalist. The more workshops you attend the better your credibility with us and the more likely our editing staff will place your work on the front page. For more information contact journalism@sacramentopress.com. Please pay close attention to our ethical code and disclose your biases. Our watchword is transparency because it helps us balance the news we report on the front page. Start by covering on

We do not prohibit content based on its viewpoint. We do however select stories that will go on our front page and our section pages. That editorial decision is primarily based on the quality of the content written. We also rely on the community to help label offensive content, spam and redundant content. When identified, said content will be removed by staff at the Sacramento Press. 

At this time we do not fact check all of our community contributors' content. We will fact check what is written in house by our editors and interns and We do provide resources to our Community Contributors to allow for them to find the most factually correct information available. Should a reader find that a fact is incorrect we have the ability to take down the offending content or issue a retraction.

Yes and no. You have the ability on our site to post anything to the site without it being reviewed. If you violate our terms of use, your content will be removed. If you continually violate or terms of use your account will be suspended. If you write content that is not in line with the mission statement of The Sacramento Press, "To be the most comprehensive source of local news and information in the Sacramento area," your content will never be featured and will dwell in the bowels of our site. For instance we do not want people's thoughts on life. A life diary is better suited to a blogging site like Blogspot or Blogger. Additionally we do not want people writing about national or stat

We sell advertising. However, you will not see any pop up ads or ugly flyovers on our site. And you won't see lists and lists of button adds or text adds crammed on the sides and bottoms of our pages. All of us at the Sacramento Press use our own site and rule number one is if it looks bad to us then it will look bad to you. Our advertising is based not on the number of eyeballs we can distract or the number of clicks we can generate. It is based on the privilege of sponsoring the best stories and conversations about Sacramento. Our advertisers want to be associated with you, not distract you! We respect that our advertisers keep us in business and sponsor your great writing. So we do no

There are three main differences. The first is not technical. Right now storylines are usually written by one author. He/she is the author for each article in the storyline just like most blogs. However, we ask each author to tell just one story over time rather than posting all sorts of interesting tidbits. While blogs can go all over the place, we ask our writers to stick to one story and cover it well. The second difference is technical. Our storylines are dynamic. Editors can combine any series of articles into a storyline. This kind of editorial control is really great. And because we built our system with this kind of flexibility in mind from the start, we have an amazing content ma

Ben, the cofounder of the Sacramento Press gets asked this question about 20 times a day, so below is the answer that he gave for this question: Let me start with a different question: what is an article? In printed newspapers articles are the basic unit of content, it is how a newspaper tells a story. An article can only be a certain length because there is only so much room on the page. And if a writer wants to post a history of the topic covered, link to older news items, or follow up the progress of the story? Well, tough luck. Traditional papers are constrained by space and time and try to tell the whole story in any given article. So if you want to start an online newspaper, you cou