CanNews aims to become the biggest citizen journalism resource for news from all over the world. It can be as global or as local as each individual needs. With CanNews, you can become the writer, reader, and editor. You choose what to report, when to report, and how to report it! It is an exciting time to circumvent the once traditional need for a publishing house or media organization to make your voice heard. You can become the whole team here!
CanNews aims to break the traditional news cycle of “few-to-many” and replace it with the more democratic and powerful “many-to-many” system.
Once you create an account, you can start sending your news stories right away. These can cover any topic you are interested in and can cover any scope. It might be a local story of fishermen fighting corruption in their village to a global story about climate change. The choice is totally up to you.
In order to be able to offer the highest quality news that our readers expect, we have some general guidelines that reporters need to keep in mind when writing stories for the website:
1) Account. To start submitting stories to CanNews, you need to create an account. By creating an account, you agree that all information you submit is true, accurate, and complete, and that you will keep it up to date. No personal information you submit to CanNews will be shared with third-party members. However, your real name will appear on articles you write. This helps to establish the credibility of your work as well as further your personal recognition. Active, trusted reporters will be promoted to higher ranks with more options and powers.
2) Community. With CanNews, we have set out to create a community of people excited about news and news reporting. You can hook up with people who are reporting about things you are interested in and follow their updates, stories, and comments. Each and everyone is an effective part of this community and together form the lifeblood of the website. Respect others in the community, even if they don’t hold the same views and opinions. Before posting something, try to consider the dignity and loyalties of others. As a way of nurturing this community, the CanNews team will offer training and will help reporters to excel in what they are doing. People who show exceptional dedication to providing stories will receive incentives. Our correspondents will even receive media credentials from the website to help them in their work. The team behind CanNews is part of the community, and you can address us and talk to us personally any day!
3) Diversity. By its very nature, CanNews has reporters from very diverse backgrounds, religions, ethnicities, political opinions etc. By using the website, you acknowledge that you accept to read things that you might find offensive. This is the nature of the different opinions we all hold. We want CanNews to be a place where such opinions can be discussed logically, respectably, and effectively. Refrain from verbal attacks or threats to anyone of a different opinion to yours. At the very least, it will weaken your argument. At the most, it will cause us to deactivate your account.
4) News Style. CanNews is primarily a news website. That means that material that appears on it should conform to the specifications of news. It has to be accurate, new, and worth reporting. When writing a story always ask yourself:” Am I sure of my sources? Is this story going to be of interest to anyone other than me? Is it exciting and captivating?” If the answer to these questions is no, then you need to reconsider the story. If it is a resounding yes then go ahead and start typing!
5) No Plagiarism. Plagiarism is simply defined as taking the work or words of someone and attributing them to yourself. This is completely unaccepted in CanNews. You have to make sure that the material you post is yours. For copyright reasons you must never, under any circumstances, copy a news item that you see somewhere else as is. If you want to report on a story that you saw in a newspaper or another website, then write it in your own way and your own words, and always mention the source you’re reporting from.
6) Attribution. It is very important that you attribute everything to the proper person. So if you are quoting someone, then you must include their words between quotation marks. If you are paraphrasing what they are saying, you must say where you got this information from. Don’t pass it as yourself (for the sake of plagiarism again).
7) Objectivity. One important aspect of news-writing is that the reporter must be as objective as possible. Separate between your need to report on an event or a development, and your need to comment about it. When you are reporting a story, don’t include your personal opinion in it. Tell the story as is, by giving the readers the facts and allowing them to make up their own minds. You can, however, comment on any news pieces written by yourself or anyone else on CanNews and state your personal opinion here. So if you are reporting a story, you should make it objective in the body of your article, then you can post your personal opinion about anything in it in the comments below. In order to keep CanNews professional and useful, we need our users to be able to make this distinction between objective material and personal opinion. This is not to say we prefer one over the other. On the contrary, both are equally important for telling a complete, accurate, and interactive story that users find useful and interesting to read and reply to.
8) Masked Advertising. News and advertisements are two very different things. The line blurs sometimes when reporters and journalists produce advertisements masked as stories. Sometimes we fall prey to this unintentionally and sometimes it is intentional. Whichever way, this is bad. If you stay objective when reporting about organizations or products, then you won’t fall prey to masked advertisements. Always stick to the facts and essentials and report on them.
9) Size. No size does NOT matter. Not with a news story. There will be people saying that a news story has to be “x many words.” That is far from true. A news story is as short – or long – as is needed to deliver a clear message. You don’t need to bloat your piece to make it interesting. People come to read news to get the main points and the essentials. Anything else is just dead weight your story is carrying. So if you have a very interesting story that you want to tell that is only 20 words long, please go ahead and do that! People twitter the most amazing news pieces in 140 or less characters after all!
10) Respect. Having said that, we also do not endorse attacks on any groups, especially minority groups who have special status on CanNews. While we encourage CanNews to be a platform for discussion, we do not accept any stories that promote war, violence, racism, or hate. Such stories will not be published or will be removed. If this is repeated, we reserve the right to ban the account of the user who is posting this material.
11) Platform. Since almost all of the material published on CanNews is produced by a third-party, we find it important to stress that opinions or stories that appear here do not represent those of CanNews. We are only a platform for people to post their views. We do not necessarily endorse any of the material published on the website.
12) Copyright. By posting a story on CanNews, you enter into a form of dual copyright holding. You retain the copyrights to the story in your name and can publish it somewhere else afterwards. However, CanNews retains the right to share the material with any parent company, subsidiary companies or affiliate websites.
13) Moral Obligation. By using a mass media tool like CanNews, you have a conscientious obligation to post accurate information. Think about what you are posting and you have any doubts it is wrong, then don’t post it. By adhering to these standards, we can all have a website and resource that is exciting and dependable to visit for the latest news.
14) Pornography. We will NOT tolerate pornography in any way. This is a website that is accessed by people from all over the world and from all ages. Protect children and respect those offended by material of explicit sexual nature. This includes text, pictures, or videos. Linking to pornographic or sexist material on other websites is not allowed either. Failure to abide by this might lead to the cancellation of your account permanently from CanNews.
15) Enjoy. Finally, we hope you manage to enjoy the website. We believe that the new age of the internet resides in co-creation of material and bringing people together. We think CanNews will be a perfect platform for this. We hope you enjoy the thrill of posting breaking news before any of the major news organizations break then and the recognition you build from this. One day you might be a famous journalist, and it would’ve all started here!
