The Paragon Beholder - We See What Goes On!

Submission Guidelines:

The Paragon Beholder will only survive if members of the City of Heroes community send submissions to help fill the space. Below are some things that you should keep in mind when writing an article for the Beholder. This isn't meant to turn you off writing - it'll only take a minute and then you will know what we are looking for. It will also tell you what to expect from us.

The Paragon Beholder is here to throw a street eye view over Paragon City - it's meant to be like a real newspaper but with stories going on about the happenings among superheroes and citizens within Paragon City. This means you have to write in character, but not in avatar - the authors of (most of) the stories are journalists. If it helps, pretend to be a journalist when writing the story: how would they view what had happened? What spin would they put on it? Who would they talk to? What is the point of the story?
Submissions size is up to you, but please be aware the editor(s) don't want to read 10 000 word exposes. Keep it short and to the point like convential news media do. Cut out unnecessary words in sentences and write in an active voice.
If you've got the time, have a look at William Strunk's The Elements of Style, particularly Section III. If you start to follow some of these rules, it will help your writing.
Classified ads should be no more than 30 words. The Beholder won't count every word to see if you meet these limits, but use this as a guide.
Stories should be written in the journalistic style - an introduction paragraph that provides most of the information in summary form, with following paragraphs using dialogue and examples to flesh out the story.
If you wish to specify a server for the reported event, please include it in the author line (eg "by Ashton Burrows, Virtue"). The Beholder considers the different servers to be parallel dimensions and will treat all stories as server-neutral unless otherwise specified.
Attribute your sources. If you are quoting from existing materials, mention it in the article. Real newspapers do it all the time. If you violate copyright, it will be on your own head as the Paragon Beholder takes no responsibility for that kind of thing.
Any submissions made to the Paragon Beholder are made on a voluntary basis - you won't get paid, but you will be recognized on a contributors' page.
Try to avoid writing long PR materials for your avatar or your team. You can promote your avatar / team please in the classified ads instead. If you can write a reasonable story about your avatar / team in a journalistic style, it will be considered for inclusion.
The Beholder will accept avatar rants / opinion columns on CoH events / features, but they must be clever and meet the other submission guidelines.
Submissions made to the Paragon Beholder may be used in any way the editor(s) see fit. You may think your story should be on the front page with a huge headline. We may disagree for reasons we won't go into. Please accept that this may happen up front.
If you submit something that we don't use, you can ask us why it wasn't included, but only if you are polite. Being rude isn't going to help your case. The editor(s) may tell you why but don't expect a huge critique as they are busy doing other things.
Be careful when making up quotes. If you are making a fictitious quote from a fictitious character, that's fine. If you are making a fictitious quote from an existing avatar, we'd prefer you asked them about it first, but we aren't going to check. If you write something that offends someone, the Paragon Beholder may ask you to write an apology for publication, may allow the offended party right of reply or take other courses of action in an attempt at restitution. We may even sponsor Arena Grudge Matches if suitable (pending inclusion of the Arena in game)!
The use of offensive language is unsuitable. If you have to include it, star it out. Submissions that include uncensored offensive language will have to be pretty good to be included. Articles that rely on offensive jokes will almost definitely not be included. It is up to the editor(s) to determine what is offensive and what isn't. This may be harsh, but now you know.
Submissions are going to be converted into HTML, so it is preferred if they are sent as the body of an email or a text attachment (written in something like Notepad). Please don't send word processor attachments - the editor(s) can't guarantee they will be able to read it and also don't want viruses arriving along side your article. Remember: send it as the body of an email or as text.
Pictures should be kept small in file size (100k and less), and it should be remembered that they will probably be resized to fit the page.
DO NOT send uneditted .tga images. They are too big for emailing. Use something like Vicman's Photo Editor to convert them to jpegs. To do this, right click on the .tga, select "Open with..." and then "Vicman's Photo Editor". Crop the image and save as a jpeg file.
Pictures should support stories. Don't just touch up a picture and send it in, expecting the editor(s) to include it. That said, a suitable picture and expert caption will most likely make the paper in a "Shot of the Month" position and advertising jpgs will almost always be accepted.
Advertisements are always needed to help balance up a column. An advertisement can be humourous or serious, but it should have some message it is trying to push and be appropriate to the spirit of the the Paragon Beholder.
Pictures will be displayed at standard widths of 340 pixels (in the large columns), 260 pixels (for the medium columns) and 190 pixels (for the small columns). Their height may be adjusted to fit a column.
Standard picture formats (ie jpg and gif) are the preferred format of picture submissions. Pictures and advertisements that don't use these standards may not be usable by the Beholder.
This is a free service, so give us the benefit of the doubt. If we do something with your story that you don't like (see next point) we are sorry, but it's done.
The Paragon Beholder and its editor(s) reserve the right to edit any submission they receive for use in publication. This can mean fixing spelling mistakes, grammar and other typographical matters; this can mean ripping the guts out of your story and re-writing it. You'll still get the credit for it. This is being told to you up front, so get over it now. It may not happen, but we reserve the right to do it.
Cascading style sheets are being used for everything and will be set as standard. Below is the standard text appearance that will be used for every story:
Front Page Headline

Headline

Author Name

Story Text

Caption Text

It is unlikely that a request to use something outside this range will be acted on.
Please include informationin your submission on the name of the writer / artist who developed the submission (this can be your real name or a fictitious name; don't be offensive or stupid (eg IP Daily and its ilk) when constructing a fictitious name or your article may get overlooked).
Please include information for the Authors' page and address information such as if you want your email address, real name and / or a user name used when the article is attributed to you. If no preferences are given, the least personal information available will be given - this means email addresses will only be used if no other author information is available.
Tempting though it is, please leave recognisable trademarks alone when developing advertisements for the paper. The Swoosh, Golden Arches, Big Red 'S' etc have large legal departments surrounding them that like to smash down hard on those who might corrupt their million dollar brand. It is acknowledged that satire is protected from most forms of civil prosecution, but the Beholder really doesn't want to become a precedent. Stick to developing your own imaginary ads for Paragon City services. Satirical ads may still be run, but you'll have to take your chances.
If you do use a picture that you do not own copyright to, please attribute the picture to its owners (or at least the site you downloaded it from) and note that if the copyright holder complains, the picture may have to taken down. The Beholder will not go around checking that every picture is being used within copyright as such a task is hugely onerous for a not-for-profit fansite.
If in doubt, please contact the editor(s).

A good question. As at Issue 16 (July 2004) the Beholder has included a

button on the index page (and one just there too). You should donate to the Beholder if you have enjoyed what it provides and want to help it to continue.

What will you do with the money?

My overall aim for the Beholder is to make so much money that I can retire young and devote myself to CoH. This will never happen :-), so my more realistic goal is to make the Beholder cost neutral. It costs a bit of money to keep the Beholder hosted independently and free of paid advertising, which is my preferred method of maintaining this site. I could give to someone else to host (and there have been offers) but at this point in time I don't want to do that.

The amount it costs to keep the Beholder operational isn't prohibitive and won't threaten its short-term survival, but everything adds up. Donations will be used to offset the costs of maintaining the Beholder (eg hosting fees, url registration, etc) and related costs (eg cost of CoH subscription).

What will you do if The Beholder starts to make lots of money?

I'd be very happy if this ever happened, but don't expect it to. However, if enough donations rolled in I would start paying contributors for their articles / submissions. Payment for articles would come from the money left over after costs have been met.

When I make a donation, will you recognise my donation publicly?

Those who donate will have their name / nic added to a list on the Beholder site unless they request not to be publicly recognised. The amount each person donated will not be made available.

What does the future hold for the Beholder?

With the release of CoH, the Beholder will attempt to include more material based on real events inside the game. There will still be the fanfic articles, but the Beholder also wants to be a source for players to find out about player events (so if you are running / have run one, please write it up and send it in!).

I will also be adding a separate MMOG research section to the Beholder, where I will include articles / research on MMOGs written by myself and anyone else who wishes to contribute. This will just be a sideline to the Beholder - the focus will still be on What Goes On in Paragon.

I welcome any feedback on how to improve the Beholder - please email me at editor@thebeholder.org, send me a private message on the CoH forums (forum name:UnknownSubject) or in-game (UnSub on the Virtue server).

If I pay you a donation, will you run my badly-written article?

No. I really appreciate the donation, but I view donations and contributions as two separate entities.

I've got other questions you haven't addressed here.

Send me an email at donate@thebeholder.org and I will attempt to answer any queries you have. Be aware that I will not release donation information or information about site costs.