Paper Curation Guidelines Overview of the News Sections The most-up-to-date news, ranked in Paper as it happens. Headlines, Tech, Enterprise and Score should reflect the most important stories of the day across the news landscape. It should be curated for a broad audience; the final presentation of who sees what and in what order will be personalized for users by algorithms.  The feeds are focused on news relevant to the U.S. and should feel as reliable and authoritative as possible. The sections are made up of link shares, status updates, photos, Fvideos and comments from public figures. Preparing for Your Shift You’ll receive an email from the preceding curator outlining major stories, trending stories, things to be aware of, etc.  Get yourself read-in on the day’s top stories: ● Browse through the last 50-75 stories in your section to see what’s been covered. ● Scroll through the other newsy channels to see if there’s anything that should be crossreferenced. ● Look through the Suggested Posts  tab to see if another curator has suggested anything for your section. ● You should also do a quick lap through the big  publishers and make sure your section isn’t missing anything. ○ ● → Recommended starting points: The New York Times, BBC, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, TechMeme and ESPN Check to see what topics are Trending at large: https://our.intern.facebook.com/intern/ trending Keep breakingnews.com up in an open window throughout your shift so you can stay on top of news as it’s breaking. Story-Selection Guidelines When you’ve identified a story topic that you want to rank, look for a post by one of the Preferred Sources first.  Pick the best version, where best is defined by: ● The quality of the article and the  source. Focus on stories from high-quality, reputable publishers. Here’s a list of approved sources. Review that      list carefully for a list of sources to AVOID. We’d also love to hear from  you on sources that you think should be added to the list. (Particularly      for Tech, Enterprise and Score.) ● The article’s headline. — We want clear, straightforward headlines that communicate the news in the headline. Avoid ‘teaser’ headlines. Try and stay away from specific death tolls or figures that will be quickly  updated. ● How timely and up-to-date the article is. — When you read the story, make sure you check the timestamp. News outlets often repost old stuff to social media, especially on weekends. ● The publisher’s caption/status. — Stay away from posts that have a snarky caption or one that will soon be out-of-date. DO NOT post stories with no caption (i.e. only ”Forbes shared this post” without commentary) unless it is an extremely time-sensitive breaking news story that you can’t find elsewhere. ● The originality of the source. — Cite the original source whenever possible. If the Verge shared a post from The New York Times, go back and find The      Times’s original post instead. ● The way the story displays in the app. — Images look terrific in Paper, so we want to use great photos whenever possible. Avoid awkward crops. How to Curate a Story 1. Pull up the post/story that you want to use. 2. Hit the dropdown arrow in the top right corner, and select “Add to Curated Section.” 3. Select the section and hit “Add to Drafts.” Alternately, you can hit “Add to Suggestion” and send it to another curator’s queue. Note: If you’re suggesting a story to a curator, it’s good practice to also alert them via FB Messenger or the PAPER Curators Team group. Add Story to Curator Tool Add the story to your chosen section. Headlines Add to draft 7 v? Add to draft Add to suggestion 4. Open the ?Curated Feed Editor? tool and navigate to your section. 5. Find the post in the “Drafts” queue, add the appropriate Labels and then hit “Update Labels.” (See below for more detail on how to use Labels.) 6. Preview the story in Paper Drafts. (Add the Drafts channel for your section by going to “Edit Sections” in the app.) Things to check: a. The story’s corresponding status. Every story should have a caption/status. It  should be clear, concise, not have any curse words, and not be snarky. DO NOT use stories without captions (ie, only “Forbes shared this post” without commentary) unless it is an extreme emergency, a must-have story,      breaking or extremely time-sensitive and no other options. b. Art/Photos. Make sure the photo looks centered, no one’s head is cut off, and the photo is sensible in the app. 7. If you’re satisfied with the in-app presentation, it’s time to publish! Hit “Approve Topic” and then assign a Priority if necessary. (See below for details on Priority Ranking.) If you’re not setting a pri- ority, hit “Submit” and the story will go live in the app and the post will move to the “Live Feed” queue. 8. Not done yet. You’re also responsible for keeping a running list of stories that you have ranked. Add a hyperlinked headline to your section’s archive document Headlines: January 2015 . The documents are organized by day and then by curator. 9. You should note the headlines as you add them to Paper, not at the end of your shift. No worries if you get busy and fall behind on the document, but keep it as close to real-time as possible. a. A few small things on format: i. Style should be: Source - Headline. ii. Hyperlink the headline (with the link going to the FB post). iii. Newest items should go at the top. iv. If a story’s headline doesn’t contain all the relevant keywords, feel free to add additional ones. The idea is to make the documents as searchable as possible. Labeling Stories Tagging is an important part of the curation process and a crucial element of our personalization strategy. The challenge is to be smart and — most importantly — consistent with our labels so we can produce an actionable data set that the algorithm can learn from. There are two fields for labels: Entities and Topics. ● Entities are named entities, or proper nouns, ONLY. These should include specific people, places and organizations mentioned in the story. Pick the entities that are central to the story’s “aboutness.” Think about the key elements that a reader might search for, whether it’s “Lakers” and “Kobe” or “ISIS” and “Syria.” Do not put words like “dog” or “taco”—only the names of specific famous dogs. Tacos would not be labeled. NOTE: This field will be automatically populated with suggestions, many of which will be inaccurate and will include common nouns. It is just as important to delete bad labels as add good ones before you update! ● Topics are the broader subject categories that classify the story, from top-level categories like “Entertainment” and “Business” to finer-grained interests like “Stand-up comedy” and “Petroleum industry.” ● IMPORTANT — The topic labels available to you (also sometimes referred to as the “subjects”) are currently locked in, so you must choose from the suggested options.  These options correspond to the nodes in the subject hierarchy, a family-tree style taxonomy. Only include the relevant top-level category and the narrowest applicable topic(s). There often will be multiple relevant topics, because many stories are potentially of value to readers with different interests. ○ For example, a story about fines levied against BP over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill could spark interest in both business and environmental audiences, as well as a regional Gulf Coast audience. The current version of the subject hierarchy is an Excel doc posted in the Paper Curators group.   If you feel a story needs a new label that isn’t available, please note it in the handoff document next to the hyperlinked headline. We are also gathering suggestions for labels (and offering feedback on workarounds) here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ 1H8-9MDab_oyUE6SZ6LGyjAJ7xAkdkg76_uarwJUxtAQ/edit?usp=sharing. An editor will regularly review those suggestions and add them to the database if appropriate. We welcome all suggestions! We are trying to improve the interest set, so we’d like to hear any and all of your label suggestions. Don’t hold back. Time-Sensitive Labels Stories with time-sensitive labels will preserve their chronological order in the Paper sections. This is important for ongoing hard news stories. The list of time-sensitive labels currently in use is dis- played in the Labels Editor tool. If you want to begin using a NEW time-sensitive label, type the label into the field and hit “Update Labels.” Sometimes a label may not auto-fill for you, even though you know it exists. Try use the Facebook ID for the label instead. Priority Ranking Note: Prioritization is enabled only in news sections. Stories with priority rankings should always appear ahead of non-prioritized stories in the Paper sections, with rare exceptions.  We should use priority rankings on stories that are breaking or stories of great importance with significant updates. These stories should be ones that make the app authoritative and timely. Think of these as the stories you need to know. ● House Majority Leader Eric Cantor loses his primary election ● California judge rules some teacher job protections violate the constitution ● Two killed in shooting at Oregon high school We should NOT use priority rankings on stories we think are interesting or stories we think are important for people to read. We have to trust the algorithm to serve these types of stories to the most relevant users. ● Hillary Clinton says she and Bill Clinton were “dead broke” when they left the White House ● Syrian woman survives 700 days during government’s siege on Homs ● How ISIS became powerful enough to capture key Iraqi cities Scale for assigning priority: ● N/A = Regular importance. The majority of stories should not be prioritized. ● 1 = Important (e.g. News that is among the most important of the day) ● 2 = Very important (e.g. News that will lead websites and TV broadcasts) ● 3 = Super important/red alert (e.g. Breaking stories with HUGE national/international significance. These will be rare.) Priority rankings stay in effect for 12 hours. After 12 hours, they’re treated like any other 12-hour-old story.   Remember to deprioritize stories that should not appear at the top of readers’ feeds if they have lost traction or been superseded within 12 hours of first publication in Paper.   Grouping Stories Grouped stories will remain adjacent to each other in all users’ feeds, overriding personalized ranking. This can be useful when two or more related stories benefit from appearing next to each other, e.g. contrasting opinion pieces; a backgrounder or video reportage that complement a major news story, or a sports video highlight that goes with game wrap-up, etc. We also group all the stories and the blue title card in every day’s edition of Ideas. Use the Add to Group feature only when it will result in a necessary or significant editorial improvement. You run the risk of holding back high-engagement stories if they are grouped with laggards or of pushing not-so-great content to the front of feeds when linked with top-performers. Click on Add to Group. Copy the ID numbers. Paste the same numbers into the Add to Group field in any stories you want to cluster.   Scheduled Posts Should be used sparingly and only in certain sections. Check with an editor if you think you need to schedule something.   The exception to this rule is weekends for the Tech and Enterprise sections, where the Thursday and Friday Biz/Tech curators are responsible for selecting a handful of feature, evergreen and other soft stories to schedule ahead for Saturday and Sunday mornings (see “Tips for Specific Sections,” below).   Approved Source List The list of sources is located in the Paper Handoffs folder. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eYCmBfvLJlZDMOI-jsoVvusW3w0Km1H54XGBZMLGIlk/ edit#gid=0   You can also sign into the team FB account, and follow Interest Lists with these sources collected.  (Username: papernewsteam@gmail.com  //Password: fb062014)   Three other shared accounts with useful, thematically grouped Interest Lists:   Margaret Zimmerman (Username: papernewsteam2@gmail.com //Password: fb062014)   Wembly Mishka (Username: papernewsteam3@gmail.com //Password: fb062014) Hilary Moresby (Username: hilary.moresby@gmail.com //Password: antigone)   These accounts also features Graph Search, in case that feature is not working on your personal account. [[6/30: Update: Graph Search is not working on any accounts.]] Handoff Workflow At the end of your shift, you need to send a handoff email and also review your Drafts queue.  fcu The handoff is just a brief email that you send to the editors and to the other curators working on your section. Things to include: Latest updates to ongoing news, big or breaking news, stories that were purposely not included, and a look ahead if applicable. Message one of the editors if you’d like to see an example email, and we can forward you some of the past Headlines handoffs. It should be written in this format: https://fburl.com/76614780.   You should also review the Drafts queue for your section, and remove any stories that you aren’t intentionally leaving for the next curator to use. Apps You Should Download To start, you should download the following apps and turn on push notifications. You should also look into adding additional hard news apps or others relevant to your beat. We want to be proactive in seeking out stories on Facebook and not just waiting for them to bubble up. ● NYTimes or NYT Now ● Breaking News ● CNN ● BBC News Tools We Use Curated feed editor: https://www.intern.facebook.com/pubcontent/curated Approved source list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ 1eYCmBfvLJlZDMOI-jsoVvusW3w0Km1H54XGBZMLGIlk/edit#gid=0 On-Call Procedures Weekdays: If you have an editorial question or a problem with the tool, ask an editor or post in PAPER Curators Team. Nights and Weekends: If you have an editorial question or a problem with the tool, use FB Messenger to contact all three editors. If you can’t reach us on messenger, call one of us on the phone. IMPORTANT: Please do NOT post in PAPER Technical Emergency Response Team unless it’s a dire emergency that is preventing you from ranking an important, breaking news story. Reach out to an editor before getting the eng team involved.   Tips for Specific Sections ● Score Section Guidelines  ● Enterprise and Tech Paper Guidelines  ● Paper Discovery Sections Guidelines