EDITORIAL
By Ruth Luse
Believe it or not, Hopewell Valley schools open two weeks from today, on Sept. 6.
It’s been a very quiet summer, but we know that with schools getting back to business, area clubs and organizations also will begin again to submit news about their activities and coming events.
If you are one of the many people in Hopewell Valley responsible for submitting news releases to the HVN, please clip this and keep it for future reference. Herein are a few tips that should make your task and ours a little easier:
If you have e-mail, please send us your news, letters, etc. in that manner. Everything but sports news should be e-mailed to [email protected] preferably not as an attachment. What seems to work best for most people is just to copy what you have written, paste in into the e-mail and send to us. The sports e-mail address is [email protected]. If you are e-mailing a photo, send it as a separate JPG attachment. The news release and caption should be in a separate file.
Please make a note of our new mailing address: Hopewell Valley News, 52 E. Broad St., Hopewell, 08525.
If you do not have a computer, please submit typewritten copy. Handwritten copy takes much longer to process, increases the likelihood of errors and usually winds up at the bottom of the stack.
Don’t forget any of the important elements of your story who, what, when, where and why.
If your news item includes a list of names to be published, see that the hometowns of the individuals are included. With few exceptions, we publish news only about people who live in Hopewell Valley.
Always give a full name not Ms. Jones or Mr. Jones, but Joan Jones or John Jones. (School publicists particularly should make a note of this, since they tend to identify teachers in the same way students do.)
Always include the phone number of a contact person. If we have a problem, we need to contact you. If we can’t solve the problem, it may become necessary to hold the item.
Please meet our deadlines. For news and photos, the deadline is Monday at 3 p.m.
Letters to the editor should be kept to 500 words. The letters must be signed and a phone number given for confirmation purposes. Deadline for regular letters is 3 p.m. Monday. The same rules apply for those submitting letters and news items for Campaign Corner, except that the deadline for that column is 1 p.m. Mondays.
If you’re planning an exciting event and think it would be a great photo opportunity, let us know at least a week ahead of time. (We will do everything we can to help, but our photographer has many assignments to cover for us and two other local papers.)
If you are submitting a photo for publication (not by e-mail), write an identifying phrase on the back of it so we will know what news item it goes with. Avoid, however, placing captions on the back of photos. Submit the caption information on a separate sheet of paper.
Don’t depend on one-day mail delivery. Use our fax number, 466-2123, or e-mail addresses for timely items near deadline.
If you would like help with your news release, please call Ruth Luse, managing editor; or Tim Falls, sports editor. The number is 466-1190.
If you have suggestions for ways we can improve our news coverage, drop us a line at 52 E. Broad St., Hopewell, 08525, e-mail us, or call us weekdays (preferably on Thursdays or Fridays) during business hours. Help us help you.