LESSON 1 Our Job: 3 Basic Functions
- c. 3 Basic Functions
1) Deciding if articles are within MAP's scope & relevance
2) Verify correct header info
3) Consistent article appearance
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1) Deciding if articles are within MAP's scope & relevance
The first and probably most important decision is whether the article is relevant to our
objectives.
We encourage our editors to develop a real "editorial" sense. In addition to
performing a formatting and hand-off function, editors need to achieve a level of
independent decision-making appropriate to the task. If you're just starting out, you'll
want to run questionable articles past the MAP editorial staff for review and comment,
but over time you should develop a sense of what's in and what's out.
The senior editor and the staff mailing list are always available as definitive editors:
consult them if you are in doubt at all.
We need to strike a balance between the quality and the quantity of the
material we republish, and making the call is sometimes difficult. There are some
questions you can ask yourself, though, to help you decide whether or not a
piece is relevant:
"Does it apply to drug policy or drug policy reform?"
"Would a busy drug policy activist be interested in reading it?"
"Will it serve as a point of departure for letters to the editor?"
Please take a moment to print the three questions of relevance down by
clicking on this print link and printing the page that appears.
Keep the printout near you until it becomes second-nature to you.
- Sometimes articles are submitted to MAP which come from appropriate sources, but are not focused or
relevant enough for inclusion in the news service. Examples:
- Minor busts for drug posession (exceptions in some cases, i.e. if the person busted was a public official or
DPR activist)
- Articles about non-prohibited drugs (Viagra has been a recent nuisance here, although there have been
some items which have interesting drug policy tie-ins, especially in OPEDs, LTEs, and Editorials which we
have republished)
- Political articles without a specific drug policy focus (numerous submissions regarding Dan Lungren's
campaign for Governor which are only tangentially related to drug policy have been rejected recently)
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2) Verify correct header info
- There are two headers in a MAP submission (posting), the message header and the
article header.
- The message header directs the article back to Robo with critical
article title/location information.
- The article header credits the newshawk, contains details of the media source
and article, and links to relevant archived articles.
Please take a few minutes to browse through several articles in the MAP database:
www.mapinc.org/drugnews
paying particular
attention to the article headers.
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3) Consistent article appearance
- Another Editor function is to polish up submissions. As you
can imagine, there are a few of us programmer-types who wish we could automate the
entire process. But, alas, since human beings send the data in, there will always
be a need for human beings to review and adjust these submissions. Luckily it can
usually be done within a few keystrokes which will be covered in a
later lesson.
Please take a few minutes to browse through several articles in the MAP database:
www.mapinc.org/drugnews
paying particular attention to the general format of the posted articles.
Continue to Lesson 1d or Return to Manual Outline
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