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As a writer on the Opera News Hub, you should write great follow up articles around breaking news, instead of simply reporting it.
This way, your article will be unique, because it adds incremental value to the information already on the platform.
From what has been observed, follow up articles get more engagement than breaking news articles, and this is because users of the Opera News app want to see articles written from an angle that differs from what has already been seen.
As a smart writer, instead of duplicating breaking news, you can focus on follow up articles.
Check out the example below:
Breaking News: Federal Government declares public holiday to mark Nigeria's 58th Independence anniversary
1. Explainer: 8 Facts You Never Knew About Nigeria's independence
2. Nigerians react to FG Declaration of Public Holiday to mark Independence celebration
3. 5 Nigerian heroes that fought for Nigeria's Independence in 1960
4. 9 Throwback Photos that describe the mood at Nigeria's Independence 58 years ago
These follow up stories add more value to the information already seen, and this way, you'll be giving value to readers in return for more engagement.
If you duplicate breaking news, your article will be rejected.
Please leave your comments on this below.
Follow the OperaNewsHubAcademy to make more insights on how to create quality articles, and at the same time, get good engagement.
Account Creation
When users sign up to Opera News Hub, they would need to create an account and author profile. After submitting their details, the information would need to be reviewed, using the criteria below:
The account name, avatar (picture) and description are positive and healthy.
The account name, avatar and description do not contain divisive, pornographic, violent, bloody, and/or other illegal content.
The account name, avatar and description do not contain content that disrupts social order or undermines national unity.
The account name, avatar and description do not contain personal attacks, insults, and slander against others.
The account name, avatar and description do not infringe the intellectual property rights and portrait rights of others.
The account name, avatar and description do not contain advertising information.
The account name and avatar shall not contain ‘Opera', which could be easily misunderstood by users as the official account of Opera News Hub.
The account name, avatar and description do not contain other content that violates laws and regulations and does not conform to the platform's norms.
It is important to note that according to local and universally acceptable laws and provisions on human rights and other such local laws:
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression,
a) Freedom of the press and other media;
b) Freedom to receive and impart information or ideas;
c) Freedom of artistic creativity;
d) Academic freedom and freedom of scientific research.
2. The right in subsection (1) does not extend to:
a) Propaganda for war;
b) Incitement of imminent violence;
c) Advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm.
Publishing articles on Opera News Hub
Content published on Opera News Hub across all projects is expected to meet the following criteria:
Originality
Professionalism
Clear logic
Good layout
High-definition and good quality graphics
Need to be more than 150 words for news articles, and minimum of 500 words for analysis feature and opinion articles. A minimum of 500 words is acceptable but such content can be more than 500 words.
The following types of articles will be rejected:
1. Articles that violate editorial and writing best practices
2. Articles that undermine national unity
3. Articles that undermine and/or misrepresent the country’s political and legal systems.
4. Articles that expose the state’s sensitive information; such as defence, science and technology, trade and others.
5. Articles that undermine the state’s national interests.
6. Articles that incite ethnic hatred or discrimination, undermine social cohesion, or infringe on society’s customs and traditions.
7. Articles that promote violence and terrorism.
8. Articles that may incite or encourage activities that violate general law and order.
9. Any other content that is prohibited by the country’s laws and regulations.
Pornographic content
Articles that contain real or comic sexual imagery, or detailed descriptions of sexual activity in the text, should be rejected.
Articles that contain real or comic imagery that depict sexual organs and/or nudity should be rejected.
Articles containing pictures that display acts of prostitution, fornication, rape, etc, and link to pornographic websites.
Articles that display sexual acts with minors, child molestation, sexual assault on minors, and indecent exposure of minors.
Articles with disgusting, uncomfortable and frightening pictures:
1. Articles that contain mostly horror pictures or spooky video screenshots, frightening ghosts, corpses, etc.
2. Articles that contain images showing the eating of living organisms or disgusting food, etc.
3. Articles that contain images that cause shocking reactions, such as excreta.
4. Articles that depict frightening scenes, such as shooting, murder, violence, etc.
5. Articles that show abnormal people and animals.
Poorly Written Headlines
1. Headlines that are in capital letters will be rejected as ‘poorly written’.
a. Example: GUYS CAN CAUSE TRAFFIC WHEN PROPERLY DRESSED - EVEN ON CASUAL.
2. Always capitalize the first letter of each word in the title / except the prepositions (for, or, and, to ...)
a. Example: The Mystery behind My Success
3. Articles will be rejected if the title has spelling errors or typos;
Example: Becoming Finioncialy Stable At A Job You Hate
4. Articles will be rejected if the title has obvious grammatical errors. Example: Arsenal's mikel arteta names is assistant. The “is” should be “his”, and the name should start with upper case letters.
5. Articles will be rejected if the title is incomplete or confusing, which makes it hard to understand. Example: Help my husband promises relative to name our daughter after her - furious wife shouts
6. Articles will be rejected if the title contains symbols, like ^ & Example: Why you should eat Rice & Fish every week
7. Articles will be rejected if the title contains the first letter in lowercase
Example: how to cook Jollof rice
8. Articles will be rejected if the title contains proper nouns in lower case
Example: World war 3 trump blocks iran's top diplomat
9. Articles will be rejected if the title contains unreadable characters
Example a: The Skin Benefits of Sugar will shock youüò ± üò ± · --‚ÄòThe goop lab‚
Example b: Ä Trailer: Gwyneth Paltrow showcases how exorcisms and ..
Clickbait
1. Articles will be rejected if the title uses these words at the beginning of the headline. They will be deemed as clickbait.
a. Shocking
b. Shock
c. OMG
d. Unbelievable
e. TWITTER GOES WILD
f. SURPRISE
g. Amazing
h. You Won’t Believe
2. The phrase 'Will Shock you' as well as three or more exclamation marks after the words in the headline would also be deemed as clickbait.
Example: Bobrisky is not dead!!!
SHOCKING!!! 19-Year-Old Boy Impregnates His Mother While Testing Love Charm, Threatens To Kill Her.
3. Exaggerated headline: A title that exaggerates with the intent to cause sensational effects.
Example: 2020: See South African banks that may not survive
4. Articles will be rejected if the headline and content are irrelevant or the headline deliberately hides key information, such as time and place to induce users to click.
Fake News
1. Articles will be rejected if the content is contrary to established science fact(s).
2. Articles will be rejected if the circumstances of the event in the article are contrary to what has actually occurred.
3. Articles will be rejected if the content is based on fabrication or rumours that are not verifiable.
4. Articles will be rejected if they do not cite a reputable, linkable source for the majority of the information in the articles.
Out-dated content
1. Expired time-sensitive content, such as sports games, events or shows, weather forecasts, etc, will be rejected. Example is an author who is still publishing news that happened three days ago.
2. Obsolete information: When there is a new development, but the author is still writing the development before the new update.
Plagiarism
Authors are encouraged to publish original articles. If more than 50% of the content in the article is plagiarized, such articles will be rejected for copyright infringement.
Advertisement
1. Articles containing marketing, purchasing information, and the advertising of a product or brand.
2. Articles containing a phone number or shopping website link for readers to buy products.
Article with low quality cover image
1. Cover images that cause discomfort, are disgusting, bloody, violent, or scary.
2. Cover images that are fuzzy and of low quality, making it difficult for users to determine the content of the image.
3. Cover images that display pornography and other illegal content.
4. Cover images that contain marketing content or illegal promotion information.
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