Quality of original news post articles have gone really low.


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I think that it's great that Neowin is trying to produce more original news, but the truth is that it's becoming more like an opinion blog than a primary news source. Some things in particular:

  • Spelling mistakes that could have easily been picked up with Spell Check
  • Incorrect use of words: eg: using "Dug a whole" rather than "Dug a hole"
  • Incorrect use of words: eg: using "Literally cleaned up" metaphorically, rather than actually doing some cleaning
  • No references or further reading. Not everything has been sourced from another publication, but should still include other references where ever possible to show that it's fact rather than opinion. If you can't find other publications (Forum Threads, Other Forums, Blogs) because someone has told you, then say "According to a source who wishes to remain anonymous", and then follow it up with some links with general information on the topic. Otherwise it looks like it's completely been made up.

My suggestion would be to introduce a new review procedure before publishing. It's usually not sufficient to review your own work because you will be prone to the same mistakes without realising it.

The procedure at my work place is that we have three stages: Contribution, Review and Publish.

  • Contribution: The author writes the article per style guides and writing standards to be published.
  • Review: A reviewer (someone who is NOT the author) checks over the contributed article. The reviewer either ACCEPTS the article to be Published, or REJECTS the article back to Contribution to be fixed up. The reviewer does not fix anything up themselves (they could have their own writing mistakes), but they include all the reasons for rejection in a note for the Contributor to fix up themselves. People are strict about spelling and grammar make good reviewers.
  • The process continues until it is Published.

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We'll most of the news posters are new, and for that, there is a bit of a learning curve on our part.

Second, we do have one of the older staff submit our news to be visible on the front page. We as news posters just submit to a news system, where it can be reviewed by anyone before posting. So technically we are doing the three stages of publishing.

Lastly, the reason we write original articles, is to be the source of web site links, not the middle man

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