Arc for Editors
If you’re not familiar with Arc, you can start with this guide on the CMS in general. This page is meant to cover additional things you need to know as someone with publish power on uscannenbergmedia.com
Editorial policy on corrections/takedowns
You now have publishing power on uscannenbergmedia.com
It is of the UTMOST IMPORTANCE that you understand the editorial policy around corrections and deletions. Check out the ethics guide.
If you take away one thing from this doc: we almost never remove a story. Think about that before you hit publish. As a reminder, we are working in a real newsroom and must follow our editorial policies. Always strive for overcommunication and transparency—talk to faculty, coaches and fellow leaders as soon as an issue starts coming up.
Corrections and updates are a-ok as long as we’re transparent about them. This is a place for people to learn and improve. Refer to the Annenberg Media editorial policy for more information.
If you need to temporarily make a story private for review, there is a way to do that. PLEASE communicate first with other members of the newsroom before you do this, it should not be taken lightly! Once you’ve confirmed with your fellow leaders that it has to be done, you can put this as the “Forward URL” in Composer and update the story: https://www.uscannenbergmedia.com/review/
Here’s how to add a forward URL:
Style guide
There is a written style guide document in-progress that you can read. It is intended to cover ways in which Annenberg Media deviates from AP style and the most common errors people make.
Story tags
Story tags are used to organize content on our site. It’s a field in Composer, on the meta tab. If you want something to show up on the homepage you need to add the story tag: homepage
If you want a story to show up in the “Editor’s Picks” section, you need to add the story tag:
Editor’s Picks (or editor-pick works too)
Trending bar
The trending bar on the top of our site is the most visible way to direct users to our content. It’s a very unique tool to retain readers.
It is manually updated by the web team, led by Lauren Hseuh and Win Thant Tin Han. Message them on Slack directly or in the #web-requests channel when you want something added. It could be an individual story, a social post or a landing page for a story tag.
Analytics
Our site is set up with the analytics platform Chartbeat. You should use it to understand our audience and what engagement our content is actually getting!
User: mediacenterann@gmail.com
Password: Refer to the Annenberg Vault
The best way to interact with Chartbeat if you’re looking for info about a particular story is to use the Heads-Up Display. Here’s a setup video. If it doesn’t work on Safari, try Chrome.
Note: Some things take a little while
If you make changes and update something (like a correction, or add a story tag) it can take a little while to show up. The lag depends on the load Arc’s servers are under.
