LESSON 1 Overview
- a. Overview: What We Do and Why We Do It
- - MAP's function
- The Media Awareness Project(MAP) is a worldwide network of activists dedicated to drug policy reform. We aim to impact
public opinion, and especially media coverage, on public policy related to drugs -- to create a
more balanced view about our drug policies. Our objective is the dissemination of honest,
accurate, information on all aspects of drug policy, including alternatives to the criminal
justice/prosecution/interdiction model.
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Our existing drug laws are flawed, harmful to our society, and based upon inaccurate
information and false assumptions. MAPs objectives are designed to correct this situation
by providing accuracy, reason and science in place of hysteria and hyperbole
Read more about MAP at our MAP Background and Objectives pages.
- Quality & consistency
The editing process aims to produce a high-quality, relevant, focused, truthful and
consistently-formatted information stream of articles on drug policy and drug policy reform.
- Ease-of-use
MAP intends to provide an easy-to-use interface for our volunteer Newshawks to submit articles for review and
republication by the MAP Editorial Staff. When submitted correctly it takes just a few minutes
to reformat for posting.
- The "big" picture (Check out the big picture picture)
MAP Newshawks locate appropriate articles and formats them according to the
Newshawk guidelines.
The Newshawk sends in the formatted article to the Roboeditor. Roboeditor is a piece of
software which attempts to make "best guess" header fields out of information it finds in
the email from the Newshawk.
Roboeditor uses a Media database containing names, email addresses, websites, and other information on
newspapers, magazines, journals, TV stations, wire services, and so forth from all over the world.
The Roboeditor assigns the article to an editor and emails it to them.
The editor conducts a check for appropriateness, focus/revelancy and format. After
modifications are made, the editor sends the article back to MAP for posting.
The Roboeditor checks the format for accuracy and the title for duplicate postings.
If all goes well an "accepted" message is sent back to the editor. If errors or dupes
were found, a "bounce" message is sent back to the editor.
- MAP Tools
There are several tools available to MAP editors to assist with the editing process.
They are in the password protected staff room which will be made available to editors-in-training
as they become ready. They include our media database, State & Provincial Abbreviations,
Queue adminstration interfaces, site statistics and an interface for editors to set their
workload pace.
Continue to Lesson 1b or Return to Manual Outline
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