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Hey everyone, hope you all are having a great holiday season. So, I bet a lot of
you have sent a lot of articles to the Whyville Times Editor,
hoping for them to be published. And I also bet that when the monthly paper
comes out, and you don't see your article, you wonder how come?
Trust me I know how you feel but don't give up. Any way I thought I would ask
the editor some questions about how he/she operates.
Kelso911: Is there more than one Editor for the Times?
Editor: Nope, I'm all by my lonesome, so far! Oh, you know some
City Workers help out here and there, but the vast majority of the job's up to
me.
Kelso911: Do you actually read every single article?
Editor: Absolutely. But think about it -- if I spent just
one minute on every article we receive... well, we get anywhere from 200 to 500
articles a week. That would total three hours to as many as EIGHT
hours, just spent reading! Which means I have to make snap decisions on
everything I read. Imagine how much time it takes to choose the
best and most interesting submissions... correct the grammar and spelling, then set up
the webpages... well, it's a hefty job. So you can understand why I can't
reply to many writers, though I might like to.
Kelso911: How do you decide on who gets the official title of a Times
Writer?
Editor: It's a question of quality, quantity, variety and
consistency. Writers who always send in well-written, well-thought out
articles that cover a bunch of different topics have the best chance of being
named Times Writers. On the other hand, I'm learning that once you have
the title, that doesn't mean you'll always deserve it. There's a good
chance we're going to end the current scheme and start up a new system of titles
in the Times, in order to give everyone a better chance of earning a title --
and to make it nice and challenging to get ahold of and KEEP the best titles
possible!
Kelso911: Approximately how many articles do you get each month?
Editor: As I mentioned earlier, we get 200 to 500 emails a
week. I'd say that averages to over 1,000 article submissions each month.
Kelso911: What kinds of articles have a better chance of getting
published than others?
Editor:
Science articles, always! Unique help articles that cover topics and
games that don't get covered much. Timely articles that involve a holiday
or big event that's coming two weeks after being submitted. NEWS STORIES
-- that's a new, big-deal theme that I intend to push in the coming year.
The Whyville Times needs to be more newsworthy, more journalistic! What
events are happening that you want to report on? Don't just tell us what
you *think* -- we all have opinions. Tell us what happened today,
something that we don't already know. Anyway, I'm going to write a lot
more about that in the coming months.
Thanks for your time and I hope that this helps all you struggling
writers out there!
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