Submissions policy
Learning News submissions policy is there to ensure that news content is good quality, newsworthy and accurate.
This submissions policy exists to guide authors towards producing good quality announcements and articles and prevent those that are not newsworthy or interesting or are just promotions.
All submissions are published at the discretion of Learning News and may be edited by Learning News.
1. General policies for news and articles
The following points a. to e. apply to all submissions:
a. It is especially important that news announcements and articles are not adverts. Those which do appear like adverts will be withdrawn.
b. Prize draws, give aways, offers and free trials are not suitable. We do not permit any mention of price, free or otherwise, as the main theme, or in headlines and synopses. Competitions, on the whole, are not suitable unless the competition has genuine news value.
c. All posts must contain sufficient substance and depth to properly explain the news/story being presented.
d. Learning News is for the learning sector and is only able to carry information specifically about learning, training, education, coaching and other learning-related topics.
e. Well-written, interesting announcements and articles help to maintain Learning News' reputation as a great source of information for the learning industry. News announcements should be newsworthy: thinly-veiled advertising and un-newsworthy stories should be avoided. Articles should be well researched and well written, providing good argument and thought-leadership: quick ‘blog-style’ posts are not permitted.
News announcements
The following points f. to j. apply to news announcements:
f. Submissions must be written as an 'announcement' from the issuing organisation. News announcements should have a specific point to make that is likely to be of interest to the market: i.e. an announcement about what is happening and its impact. News announcements focusing on the general merits or past achievements of a company or product should be avoided.
g. News is always written in the third person – this is a fundamental requirement for all news on Learning News, (except for the text in quotations from a company representative). News submissions not written in the third person are rejected by Learning News.
h. Each news announcement must be specifically about the issuing organization, such as its activities, people, markets, research, customer projects, services, products, etc and while it's acceptable and encouraged to include external subjects, these must not lose sight of the issuing organization and the main theme of the announcement.
i. News announcements must be newsworthy, offering genuine potential interest to the outside world. Authors are encouraged to pay attention to 'uncovering' the real heart of the story, which can often be missed.
j. If your news announcement is about an event or seminar it should focus on its news value and should not just be an advert for it.
Articles
The following points k. to r. apply to articles:
k. Learning News encourages learning providers to submit articles including, for example, thought-leadership and opinion articles, research articles, substantive blog posts, reports and case studies. Learning News doesn't accept quick, one-paragraph-style posts, but we love posts with substance and depth. Articles should be an in-depth presentation to properly and fully explain the author's position on a subject.
l. Fundamentally, articles on Learning News are there to provide interesting, meaningful observation, comment and thought on learning-related topics. Articles should not overly promote the author’s business. Modest calls to action are permitted and encouraged, however this should not be confused with advertising.
m. All submissions must be the author’s and their organisation’s own original work. Those submitting articles warrant that they have the right to use all of the material within each article; and that each article is their own/organisation’s original work and no copyright or any person's rights have been infringed and they have the right, and where required permission, to publish it on Learning News.
n. All articles should be written to a good standard and be well researched. Where external statistics, views, data and quotations, etc are included the sources should be referenced.
o. Research articles/papers and reports should present original findings, such as market research and surveys and the reports based on them. Notes on the data set should be included, including the sample size, demographic and research period.
p. Opinion articles/papers may offer the author’s perspective on a learning subject and ideally provide a balanced argument that is well researched.
q. Case studies should provide an in-depth study of a project with, as far as possible, balanced input from different stakeholders.
r. Articles should be complete and contain sufficient substance to explain the subject being written about. Very long articles, for example those of several thousand words and over, may be truncated and a link included to the full article on the author’s website.
2. Accuracy
Organisations are solely responsible for the facts and accuracy of all of the information that they publish. It should be clear what is being announced or implied. The language and any implied assumption, perception and meaning should not contain artifice, equivocation, pretence or ambiguity. I.e. all perception (created and implied) should be true.
3. Opinion and claims
Authors may give a view about any matter, including the qualities or desirability of their products and services, provided it is clear that they are expressing their own opinion rather than stating a fact and usually these should be written as a quotation. Opinions should usually be written within a quotation to reflect that they are an individual's views. Any claims made must be substantiated and properly attributed: when claiming that something has been said or implied, the claim must be attributed to the person(s) by name.
Where claims are being made, authors should hold objective evidence to prove the claim(s). Should a complaint arise such evidence may be requested by Learning News. Claims should not exaggerate the value, accuracy, technical validity or practical usefulness of a product or service and should not contain untruths, exaggerations or statements likely to mislead.
a. Where the claim refers to a measurement, it is especially important that the units of the measurement are clear and unambiguous.
b. Comparative claims: Comparative claims about and between products are best avoided, for example saying something is 'bigger' or 'the best' or 'better than' or 'the only' and we usually remove them from posts. However, authors may make comparative claims as long as they are corroborated with independent, internationally recognised, credible sources. Learning News may request evdience sources and may request that they are referenced.
c. Comparative advertising: Learning News is not a forum for discrediting or denigrating competitors. Authors may not unfairly disparage competitors, or improperly interfere with a competitor's business relationships. Referring (or creating an inference) to another brand in a negative way, providing opinions and observations between or about others' products, made by one another, are best avoided and are usually removed by Learning News.
4. Complaints
Learning News will promptly deal with any complaints about submissions. When a complaint is made we will review relevant information and if upheld, request that the issuing company amends or removes the post. Learning News will use reasonable efforts to correct any error brought to its attention.
5. Duplicating posts
a. Each post may be issued only once. Dressing previously-issued posts up, or plagarizing other posts must be avoided. Do not submit different posts with the same or similar content.
b. Each post should have a unique value and unique content.
c. Do not copy-paste chunks from previous posts and reuse them in new ones.
6. Industry events
a. Learning News carries profiles and news feeds for the learning industry's most significant conferences, expos and events around the world - those occurring in the next four to eight weeks are listed at any one time. Customers taking part in these events may assign their posts to them, but should only do so if they have an official role, for example: a confirmed sponsor, exhibitor or speaker.
b. Where a news announcement is specifically about a company exhibiting at an event, avoid headlines like just 'ABC Company to exhibit at XYZ Event', instead focus on an activity such as a new product announcement, what you are demonstrating, a thought-leadership position, what you are presenting about; and what that means for the event's visitors or wider market.
c. No offers, give aways or prize draws.
Further guidelines on writing news about exhibiting at tradeshows.
7. Reasonable usage
An annual subscription to Learning News provides customers with unlimited postings under reasonable usage guidelines:
The intention of Learning News is to allow and encourage learning-provider organizations to issue frequent 'value-based' publicity, news and articles and not to encourage peppering of the market, through Learning News, with promotional communications.
Learning News will reject submissions it considers not unique and not having news value and interest to the market. So while there is no limit, within reason, to the quantity that may be posted, this should not be confused with repeatedly posting similar stories that are not sufficiently unique and newsworthy.
Where more than one post is submitted in the same week additional care should be taken to ensure they are truly unique and newsworthy, for example: multiple, frequent product announcements will be rejected; multiple, frequent 'new client' win announcements will be rejected.
8. Images and videos
a. Images
Learning News encourages adding a photograph, news graphic or an infographic to each news announcement or article. Do not use logos or over-promotional messaging, which will be removed by Learning News.
IMAGE FORMAT GUIDELINES: The ideal aspect ratio for images is 16:9 landscape. The optimum image size is between 960 x 540 px and 1920 x 1080 px; the absolute maximum file size 5 mb; accepted file formats PNG and JPG.
Notes on the 16:9 aspect ratio: While images with other aspect ratios display well in Learning News they do not always share and syndicate well on social media sites or in the e-mails that we send out. For example infographics are often long and thin, and when shared on social media can result in just a proportion of the image being displayed. While we do not remove images from your news due to aspect ratio alone, we do remove them from our e-mails and sharing and syndication features. In such circumstances, when your news is shared on social media it will be accompanied by a 'Latest News' image from our own image library.
b. Videos
Learning News encourages adding videos to each post. Videos can be either part of the news story or included as supporting / supplimentary material, for example a company video. Learning News provides the option to position your video at either the start or end of the story. For example, when your video is part of the news story you may choose to position it at the start; whereas you should position a company/general video at the end of the story.
NOTES ON VIDEO FORMAT: Learning News accepts only videos that are hosted on either YouTube or Vimeo. To include a video copy and paste the standard YouTube/Vimeo URL into the Learning News form. When you include a video we still also recommend including an image where possible as this improves the story's appearance when distributed and shared.
9. News about webinars
News announcements must not advertise or promote an individual event, instead they should be a news announcement about it. The main theme of a news announcement about an event should focus on the event's content and not on any logistical aspects such as its date, price or registration, which should be included as secondary information. (Learning News will usually move any mentions of the date, time, price, etc in headlines or synopses in to the main body). Additional guidelines are available to help authors writing news about webinars, seminars and presentations.
10. Writing guidelines
The following guidelines apply to all submissions to Learning News. If your post does not comply with our writing guidelines below, it may be withdrawn. Where relatively simple corrections are required, such as simple formatting and grammatical corrections, we may make these without notice where we deem necessary.
Learning News recommends the BBC News style guide as a rough guide for punctuation, grammar and writing. While the examples it uses tend to reflect world and national news, its writing principles offer a useful guide for writing business news. A few of our own additional writing rules are listed below.
a. All submissions should be written in English. US English (US-EN) and English English (EN-EN) are acceptable.
b. Do not use ALL UPPER CASE, other than for abbreviations. This applies to the headline as well.
c. Opinions are acceptable as long as they are clearly written as a quotation and support other points within the story / article. A quote on its own is not acceptable as a submission.
d. It is acceptable and encouraged, to use web links in the main body to make it easy for visitors to reach further information on your own web site or elsewhere on the internet. Avoid placing links around verbs like 'register', 'click here' or 'download', instead place the link around descriptive words that relate to the content of the linked page, e.g. the title or other content on the linked page. Avoid placing URL text, calls to actions and further information instructions in headlines and synopses. Avoid placing links around promotional pricing words. Each link should be included once and not repeated or copied elsewhere in the story. The sentence that includes any links and further information instructions should be written in the third person.
e. Keep headlines and synopses short and succinct. Headlines in excess of 12 words and synopses in excess of 50 words are usually either edited down or truncated by Learning News. These should be considered the upper limit; ideally they should be shorter.
f. Submissions should be at least 200 words in length, excluding the headline and company description (boilerplate). While there is no limit, within reason, to the maximum length of a submission, news in excess of 1,000 words and articles in excess of 2,000 words, may be truncated.
g. Exclamation marks have no place in news publications and should not be used. Learning News will usually remove them. Where they are used in an article, please pay extra attention to thier correct use to exclaim a point and restrain from repeatedly exclaiming.
h. Be careful when issuing news announcements about individual courses, events, seminars and webinars, books, products, services and resources. If your submission is promotion without a valid news theme it will be rejected. (One way to do this and avoid creating an advert, is to write about why it exists and its target market.)
i. When quoting someone or writing about other companies and products, obtain permission from the persons or companies you are referencing.
j. Pricing: It is acceptable and encouraged to explain the price of a product or service within a news announcement as long as this is done in a factual way. However, posts using the 'price' as a key theme, or including it in the headline / synopsis, will be rejected. The 'price' may be mentioned a maximum of once in the main body or as supplementary information in a notes section at the end.
k. Be extra careful when using words like 'free', 'discount', 'now offers', 'download', 'sign up now', 'only $X', etc. Learning News will usually edit them out or reject the news announcement.
l. Learning News’ preference is to omit ™ and ® symbols althogether. However they may be used in the first instance only in the main body text and ommited thereafter. Learning News does not use either the ™ symbol or ® in its news headlines and synopses at all and these characters will be removed from these fields. The same applies for business entity designations such as Limited, PLC, Inc, etc.
m. Capital letters should only be used for initial letters in sentences, proper nouns, including people's names, organisation's names, days of the week, months of the year and nationalities, and abbreviations. They may also be used for the main content words in the titles of products suchas course names and so on, but not the prepositions or determinators unless they are the first word. For headlines, both English-UK (traditionally first word capitalised) and English-US (traditionally all main words capitalised) are acceptable.
If you are not sure whether your news complies with these guidelines please e-mail it to us and we'll take a look, without charge and let you know. Additionally for a fee we will edit or re-write a news announcement for you. E-mail it to [email protected] for a quotation.