June 30, 2009 08:57 PM UTC

New Front Page Guest Editors Take Office Tomorrow

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• by: Colorado Pols

As most of you know, it’s almost time for our new front page guest editors, ClubTwitty, ThillyWabbit, and guest front page author Barron X to begin their six-month terms. We will grant them the necessary privileges first thing in the morning, and we look forward to them doing as well as our outgoing editors, Laughing Boy and redstateblues did. We’re proud of the community that has grown up around this blog in the last four and a half years, and we feel really good about the people you’ve elected to help us manage the fun.

In the interest of clarifying the expectations and responsibilities of our front page guest editors, we’ve put together a set of basic set of instructions that we’d like everyone to take a few minutes to read and comment on (posted after the jump).

Please follow these guidelines when writing posts for Colorado Pols, and keep them in mind when making decisions on promoting other diaries to the front page.

1. Make the headline relevant and short (and please, not in all caps). All caps is for BREAKING NEWS only. Don’t write two sentences in the headline, and please try to capitalize all of the words in the headline.

2. Where’s the link? Don’t just talk about a story that you read in the Denver Post – provide the link. The whole point of these here Internet tubes is to share information.

3. When citing another source, don’t cut and paste the whole damn thing. Not only is that a copyright violation, but nobody wants to read an entire New York Times article on Colorado Pols. Use ellipses (…) to indicate that you are citing two different sections of the story. Use blockquotes to indicate that you are citing something, and not writing something original. If you cite the entire article, we WILL cut it down.

4. Tie your post back into Colorado and Politics. This is Colorado Pols, and we talk about Presidential politics because it affects Colorado. There are always exceptions to this rule, but if you want to talk about something in another state/country, it had better be REALLY interesting or have some relation to Colorado. But please, try to stick to politics.

5. Can’t cite it? Don’t write it. If you can’t cite, with links, a detailed accusation about something…don’t write it here. If you want to float a rumor, you ABSOLUTELY MUST have some substance behind it. Your post WILL be deleted, and you may lose front-page editor privileges. We are not the place for you to attempt to float negative, damaging rumors about candidates or campaigns, no matter the party. We will be diligent about this; we’re not getting sued over some rumor you tried to start.

On that same topic, please help us watch out for posts like this, and let us know if you see them.

6. Can’t write nice? Then don’t write at all. Please, no vulgarity or unnecessary and childish name-calling.

7. Do NOT overtly endorse a candidate or campaign for any reason. This could get ALL of us in legal trouble, and any such post will be immediately removed. You can be supportive and agreeable, but there is a difference when you are clearly just trying to make an endorsement. For one obvious example, don’t post “Why I Endorse Cleve Tidwell for Senate.”

8. We reserve the right to make changes to headlines or posts for clarity’s sake. We won’t do this often, if at all, but occasionally we may feel the need to adjust a headline or paragraph if we think it just doesn’t make sense. For example, if the headline is “Ritter Campaign Falling Apart,” but the post is all about Scott McInnis  and his campaign for governor, then we’re going to change the headline to better reflect what the post actually says. The headline is not the lead of the story-the headline is there to tell the reader what they should expect to see in the post.

You are a front-page editor, but we are the Editors-in-Chief. We’re not going to change your content to reflect a different opinion or position, but we might make a few adjustments sometimes – like a copy editor at a newspaper – to make the story more clear to the reader. It’s nothing personal, and it won’t happen often; if you really disagree with a change, please let us know and we’ll be happy to discuss it.

9. Look at what has already been posted today, yesterday and recently before you put something up. If there is already a front-page post today about how Diana DeGette just ran a TERRIBLE press conference, don’t post a new diary talking about how DeGette ran a GREAT press conference. Maybe there are two perspectives here, but its first-come, first-served in that case; if you want to disagree, do it in the comments section. Otherwise the readers get confused and their heads explode, which is bad.

10. We’re not getting sued for you. We’ve said it already before, but it bears repeating: Colorado Pols is a community blog, and we do our best to let people express their opinions freely. But we’re never going to let someone express their opinions to the point that we are endangering ourselves. This is not a “free speech” issue-this is a “cover our own ass” issue.