How to put your story on Arc, our content management system (CMS)
Log in: https://arcpublishing-uscannenberg.okta.com/
Note: The website is bookmarked on all the Media Center computers
Username is your USC email and shibboleth password. This may very depending on when your account was created.
Big picture: you’re making a new article in Composer and filling everything in.
Make a New Article
- Open Composer via the Arc nav bar
- Click on “Create story,” then “Click here to start a new story”
Fill Everything in
- Write your headline first.
If you don’t have a headline yet and are not sure how to write it, ask yourself: How would you describe the point of this story to a friend? You can talk to your editor or faculty if you want to discuss headline options.
Try to put something down without overthinking it. It’s always easier to edit and rework something when you have a rough draft to start with.
Style Note: Only capitalize the first word and proper nouns in the title, as that is the Annenberg Media headline style.
- Write a subheadline that adds some more information
- For the rest of your article: Paste in your article. If you want to embed any elements, hit return for a new line and then click the blue plus sign to view the embed tools.
- Manually auto-save the article. Arc auto-saves regularly, but it never hurts to manually save it too.
Add post information in the left column.
- Planning: This is where you choose the section for an article and add everyone who worked on the story as an author.
Click the Manage circulations button and select the section for this story.
For example, for all political news select:
news > politics
Then, click Save
- Metadata: This is all the Metadata that gets attached to your article.
Description: Copy and paste your subhead here. You can use the same thing for both.
SEO Keywords: If there’s something people would be searching for that’s not already in your headline, add that here as a search engine optimization keyword.
Story tags: If there’s a subject that gets covered across different sections, you can add a story tag for that subject here. Examples include: Commencement, Election
You can leave everything else on the Metadata tab as-is.
- Featured Media: This is where you’ll upload the featured image for your story. EVERY story needs an image.
If you took a photo while you’re reporting, use that! If someone else was out in the field, ask your producer if there’s a photo you should use.
Click “Add Media” and Upload Image, then Photo Template.
When you upload a photo to Arc, you need to fill in two things: the caption and alt text.
Caption: This is all that’s publicly visible under a photo. Here’s the prompt on caption style you’ll get whenever you upload a photo.
Write a sentence explaining why you’ve put this photo in your article, then credit in the following format. (Photo by NAME OF MEMBER OF ANNENBERG MEDIA) OR (Photo courtesy of NAME OF OUTSIDE SOURCE)
Alt Text: DESCRIBE THE IMAGE FOR ACCESSIBILITY, EXAMPLE: Photo of a chef putting red sauce onto an omelette.
You need to write the caption and alt text for every image you upload.
Note: Ignore Related Items and Clipboard.
Save your article: Once everything is filled in, save your article. Then, it’s ready for a final review/publication.
