A listing of these abbreviations is available for those of us that don't have them memorized ;)

Opinion pieces are an exception, though. They are labeled with the location of the paper in which they were printed. So, even if the writer is talking about the border wars in Texas, if the piece appears in a California paper, it is given the US CA: descriptor.

Watch for US national pieces. Even if a story is printed in a Illinois paper, if it talks about a national situation, it gets the US: descriptor.

Another challenge occurs when the story talks about several international countries. Leave the country code out for these.

If stumped by a city, try a search at yahoo(www.yahoo.com). Type the city/state name in the search box and yahoo will quickly return the answer to you.

As always, if you just don't know what to do, send your question(along with the article) to the stafftalk mailing list. Someone will answer you within a few hours.

Here are the different types of articles with the cooresponding subject line code:

News Article = default, no type descriptor used

Editorial = Editorial:

Opinion Editorial = OPED:

Column = Column:

Letter to the Editor = LTE: or PUB LTE:

Wire = Wire:

News Article: News articles let readers know about an activity or situation without bias. The majority of our submissions are news articles so the type descriptor is omitted for these.

Editorial: An opinion piece written by an editorial board -- usually no author given.

OPED: An opinion piece written by someone with some authority on the subject. A good tip-off for this category is the signature block at the bottom of the piece.
Example: Tom Hedrick is a parent and is vice chairman of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Column: Columns can be a bit tricky to catch unless they're obvious like Ann Landers. Columns are usually clearly marked in newspapers but the newshawks don't alway pass this information along with their submissions. They usually look like an OPED minus the signature explanation.

PUB LTE: Letters which clearly have a drug law reform slant - legalization, decriminalization, any letter that advocates changing our current drug policies.

LTE: Letter writers who claim that our current drug policies are effective and/or that our drug laws/enforcement should be enhanced. If the writer's position is questionable, the letter fits into this category also.

Wire: A wire service is a news organization which collects and provides news, photos, graphics, audio and video to other media sources. Popular wire services include the Associated Press and Reuters.

Wire stories are processed by experienced editors since they are a bit more challenging. Roboeditor usually catches these and assigns them to the editors who have volunteered to process them.

If a newspaper carries a wire story(i.e. the story appears in print), we label it as a newspaper article.

As always, if you have any doubt about the story type, send it and your question to the stafftalk list to get ideas from other editors.

Continue to Lab 5 or Return to Manual Outline