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UPI is looking for the following elements that a story must meet in order to be seriously considered.

The item needs to:
1. Be newsworthy
2. Be balanced
3. Be fair
4. Meet basic journalistic standards

We are constantly improving our integration with other social bookmarking and sharing sites so that you can share your work with others through email and sites such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo Buzz, Digg, Fark, Delicious and more. Below each article is a Share application to help you and others share your work with the world.

There are three basic type of bylines assigned to work that is submitted to UPIU.com.

1.The first byline consists of the author's name. When you upload and post a story to UPIU.com, your name will appear beneath the title of your piece. If your work does not get chosen by our editors for publication to UPI.com, your work will remain displayed on UPIU.com. This first tier byline reflects work posted to UPIU that is not officially endorsed by United Press International (UPI).

An example of a first tier byline is: "By Jane Smith"

2. The second tier byline consists of the author's name, and the name of the school or organization they are writing within. This second byline is optional. For your school or organization name to appear in your byline, you must first be a member of that school or organization's group in UPIU. If you are a member of a group, then when you upload your story, you must select from the drop down menu which group you are publishing your story under. When the story is published to UPIU, your name will appear next to your school or organization's name, crediting the story to you as a representative of your group. To learn more about group functions in UPIU, please refer to the group FAQ item in the main menu.

An example of a second tier byline is: "By Jane Smith / International University

3. The third tier byline reflects the highest level of achievement within UPIU. If our editorial staff determines that the work you have posted to UPIU conforms with the journalistic standards of United Press International (UPI), it will be selected for publication to UPI.com, the official news website of UPI. Your story will appear displaying your name as well as that of UPI in the byline.

An example of this type of third tier byline is: "By Jane Smith / UPI"

In addition, if you have posted your work through a particular group, and your story has already achieved a second tier byline before being chosen for publication to UPI.com, then your name and your school or organization's name will be displayed along with UPI in your byline.

An example of this type of third tier byline is: "By Jane Smith / UPI / International University"

Stories with a UPI byline have been published on UPI.com. UPI editors give stories (text, photo, video and audio) of high journalistic quality consideration for this.

To get a UPI byline and have the "Published on UPI.com" stamp on your story, you need to impress our editors. A good way of doing this is to make sure you conform to the following guidelines when creating your story:

1. Write on something newsworthy. Dog biting man is not necessarily news; man biting dog is probably news.

2. Remember your global audience. Don’t write about the local convenience store; or if you do, connect it to a larger issue, for example the socioeconomic impact of convenience stores in local neighborhoods around the world.
3. Check your grammar! Review review review.
Write tight. Keep your sentences lean and tight. Too many words will make your story drag.

4. Write simple. You should write to a fifth grade audience.

5. Headlines are crucial and can make or break your story.

6. Make sure your lead (opening sentence and paragraph) match the headline and address the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of the story.

You can find guidelines for improving the quality of your work in both the UPI Stylebook (link to stylebook) and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. The rankings other members give your work will also help the editors evaluate its journalistic quality, so the better the ranking other users give your work, the greater its odds of being published to UPI.com.

Although submissions of any length are accepted, UPI.com articles typically range between 500 and 800 words. All articles selected for a UPI byline will be copy-edited to accord to the UPI Stylebook which can be found in the "Stylebook" tab in the site's main navigation bar.

The ultimate goal of any UPIU post should be promotion to one of the news sites of UPI.com. Items are edited to conform to UPI style and content policies so that millions of Web site visitors can see the work of UPIU contributors.

To facilitate this process, we are recommending a limit of 800 words for items offered for UPI.com consideration. This is a standard feature length for news agencies and many other print media. This limit gives the item a great chance for posting on UPI.com, and it also teaches the discipline of brevity that is a core concept for any journalist to master.

Items exceeding 800 words, such as magazine or blog/commentary pieces, can be posted on UPIU, but in most cases they will not be considered for the main UPI.com sites.

Although we recommend referring to the entire UPI Stylebook, which will be available on the site soon, we've listed below some of the most basic style rules to remember when you're crafting your stories.

1. No serial commas (apples, oranges and bananas NOT apples, oranges, and bananas)

2. Capitalize first letter in headlines (Apples are healthy snacks NOT Apples Are Healthy Snacks)

3. No double spaces (Apples are red. Oranges are orange. NOT Apples are red. Oranges are orange.)

4. UPI style uses USD as the abbreviation for US currency

Anonymous sources are to be avoided and used only with consultation with an editor, who is usually informed who the source is and agrees there is a need to keep the source's identity quiet. Even this should be an extraordinary circumstance.

UPIU supports most common audio, video and graphic formats. Although users can upload any content they’d like to contribute to the UPIU community, content must conform to basic journalistic standards in order to be awarded a UPI byline, and any content that violates the UPIU Terms of Use may be removed permanently

Images should be standard web-compatible format (jpg/gif/png and several others) and should be no larger than 5MB.

The UPI Photo department recommends that UPI standard image be 3000 pixels on the long end, and jpg files should be compressed to the equivalent of 9 or 10 in Adobe Photoshop. This will result in a 1-2MB file.

The original digital image can be cropped, sized, color-balanced, lightened, darkened and adjusted for contrast – ONLY. No other manipulation of the original file is allowed.

The picture should give photo credit (Photo/UPIU Joe) and have a detailed caption of two or three short declarative sentences that describe the image in present tense, answering the Who, Why, Where, When and How questions. (See sample caption below.)

If the photos depicts breaking news and requires immediate attention before their relevancy decreases, please also send your photos to: photos@upi.com with the subject line "UPIU Photo submission.

U.S. President Barack Obama signs the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act at the SEED Public Charter School on April 21, 2009. Obama called on Americans to serve their communities and work together to tackle tough challenges. With Obama are Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-MA, (right) and other Members of Congress. (UPI/Roger L. Wollenberg)

All images submitted to UPIU need to have captions that adhere to photojournalism standards answering the who, how, why, where, and when questions. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Captions should be two or three short declarative sentences in present tense. The first sentence says what is going on in the image, the second sentence adds more detail so that the photo with caption can stand on its own. Please take a look at UPI news images at (http://webview.upi.com) for examples of proper captions. Note that the images list the date the image was made, the location and byline. Please put ‘Photo by "YourName” at the end of all captions.

In terms of quality, the standard in the news photo industry at this time is approximately six megapixels, or 3000 pixels on the long side, at 300dpi. At a minimum, photos can be 2000 pixels on the long side at 200 dpi. The compression in JPG should be Good or Excellent, lower compression the better.

UPI.com and UPIU.com can support most common video/audio formats with sizes up to 100MB. This includes Flash presentations and movies.

Standard acceptable video formats include: MOV, AVI, WMV, FLV and MPG, MP4.

For Viewing & General Interaction with UPIU:

Just about any browser released in the past 5 or so years should work. This includes IE6+, Firefox 1.5+, Opera, Safari, Google Chrome, Most mobile devices, etc.

Browsers that have been tested and proven for posting audio & video include: IE6,7,8 Safari 2.5,3,4, Firefox 1.5,2,3.

UPIU recommendations for best overall appearance and experience:

As with many modern web applications, UPIU takes advantage of many recent advances allowing for improved appearance and better user experience. To get the full benefit of these advances, and to see UPIU at its full potential, it's recommended that the current versions of the major browsers be utilized.

These include: Firefox 2.5,3, Safari 3,4, IE 7,8

*Note: UPIU cannot at this time support soundslide packages.

The rankings are one way in which other users may give you feedback on the journalistic quality of your work. UPIU uses a 5-star scale, with “5” indicating impressive journalistic quality, including balance, fairness, factual accuracy, completeness and good style.

"A picture is worth a thousand words." While articles engage people on an intellectual level, a photo essay can move a person's emotions with its powerful images. A photo essay is a series of photographs that tell a story, address an issue or capture the character of people, places or events. The photos can be sequential or random and can be accompanied by short, descriptive captions or long essays telling a more complicated story or can simply speak for themselves. Photo essays can be taken in a single day or can be taken over a long period of time, allowing the photographer time to intimately get to know the subject. Good photo essays will have enduring images that stand the test of time.
Remember that the photos should be your original work.

Please see our Flagging Policy in the tag line at the bottom of the UPIU.com Web site for this information.

UPI is creating Features on its official news site in order to give prominence to your work. Current Features include “The Voice of Young Voters” and “Culture & Society.” More are in the works, including “Public Health,” “Global Politics” and “Human Rights.” UPI.com averages 5.7 million views monthly, increasing the reach and potential impact of your work.

Your content is quarantined when somebody has flagged it for review. It is removed from the site until a UPI editor has reviewed its compliance with UPIU Terms of Use. If it does, the editor may ask you to make specific changes, after which the content will be restored to the site. If the content is determined to be in violation of the Terms of Use, it will be removed from the site permanently.

Since content uploaded to UPIU is not monetized, and due to the high volume of submissions we receive, UPI is unable to offer monetary compensation for works we publish at this time. However, UPIU does offer you several tangible benefits. For one, you can receive a UPI byline for your quality work, work which might otherwise receive no more recognition than a good grade. Secondly, as our editors vet work for UPI publication, they will frequently offer suggestions for revision. This in addition to peer reviews offer you the constant potential for training and improvement. Moreover, we will consider hiring consistently good writers, photographers and video-journalists for internship, stringer and other positions as they arise.

When you register with and upload content to UPIU, you agree to grant UPI unlimited, non-exclusive rights to your work. This means that you give UPI the right to publish and distribute you work as it will, but that you maintain the right to license your work to other organizations. Please see our Terms of Use (link to Terms of Use) for more information.

The UPIU program currently exists in English and Spanish, with plans to soon develop programs in French, Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

If English is not your native language, you may indicate this to our editors and other readers by selecting “No” in response to the question “Is English your first language?” in the Edit Profile section. After selecting No, an icon will appear next to your profile indicating that English is not your native language. Our editors will factor this into consideration of your story for a UPI byline. This feature is optional.