Difference between revisions of "Economist Partnership"

Latest revision as of 21:33, 11 June 2015

This page has moved here: http://community.globalvoicesonline.org/guide/editorial-guides/economist-partnership/

Global Voices has a special arrangement with The Economist.

All Global Voices authors are welcome to pitch stories to the editors, and can email Solana Larsen for more information and contact details. Once a story idea has been agreed on with the Economist, these are the special guidelines for writing the story (provided by them):

A POINT, NOT A STORY Contrary to Global Voices posts, which strive for "neutrality" and show a range of perspectives, on the Babbage blog you should whittle your story down to make only one strong "point" or argument. You have to decide from the outset what that point is. This means cutting a lot of reactions, and cutting the story down to only those parts that support the point you’ve decided to make. And it means including a preview of your argument in the very first paragraph.

CONTEXT Open with context about your country: what does a general reader need to know from the outset to understand the story you’re about to tell? Assume your readers are intelligent, interested people who can place your country on a map, but not much more. You still have to get the story moving in your first paragraph, but it’s crucial that you give the reader everything she’ll need as soon as possible. Essentially, you’re doing the general reader a favor. We feel embarrassed and stupid that we don’t know who the president of Paraguay is or which party is in power there; when you tell us right away, we don’t have to feel stupid.

QUOTATIONS You will use far fewer quotations for Babbage than you would for Global Voices.

- We’re often told at The Economist that “only the singer or the song” justifies a quotation. That is, either the person who said it has to be important, or the quotation itself is said in a really interesting way. Paraphrase where possible, and if something is obvious, you don’t have to quote a blogger saying it. You can just write the obvious thing yourself.

- When you do use quotations, format them as you would with a GV post, NOT as you would with a news article. So this:

On Facebook you’ll find advice on how to use both phones to your advantage.

BLOCKQUOTE My friend has two cell phones, with one of them he texts his family, friends and girlfriend, and he uses the other for his secret conversations. His girlfriend has no idea of the existence of the other phone, he keeps it in his shoe or his closet while he is with her. /BLOCKQUOTE

Instead of this:

On Facebook you’ll find advice on how to use both phones to your advantage, “My friend has two cell phones, with one of them he texts his family, friends and girlfriend, and he uses the other for his secret conversations. His girlfriend has no idea of the existence of the other phone, he keeps it in his shoe or his closet while he is with her,” shares a female user

- Make sure you include the link, not as a formatted html link, but actually pasted into the post.

NUMBERS are important. Every time I fail to include a figure or a date and instead write “recently” or “many” or “often”, I get a grumpy note from my editor telling me I’ve used “weak words”. I think for our purposes numbers and dates will also help the general-interest reader get a more precise sense of the country you’re writing about, since we’re unlikely to know, for example, when the most recent election took place.

NAMES This is just a style thing peculiar to The Economist: we don’t put titles before names. So “Fernando Lugo, president of Paraguay” and not “Paraguayan president Ferndando Lugo.” Always use the first and last names on first mention, and thereafter either “the president” or “Mr Lugo”.

FORMATTING Please submit as a simple, unformatted Word or .txt file. Include all links not as formatted, clickable links, but simply pasted into the text. We have to do a lot of formatting for the blog, and pre-formatting in a different programme actually makes the process more complicated. Where html is necessary, indicate in caps:

BLOCKQUOTE /BLOCKQUOTE

EM /EM

B /B

I /I