How To
Get Every Story You Write Accepted on NewsBreak With High Ratings
Advice on how to get your stories accepted and ranked high on NewsBreak based on personal experience.
Writing for News Break has been a challenge for many of us. Part of this is due to the constantly changing rules, a stricter focus on local news, and altered earnings models. Initially, the contract said you were guaranteed a certain amount* per month if you published at least 12 articles, had 500 followers and averaged 500 views per article. The sign on for that contract for early adopters said that we still had to publish 12 articles, 3 each week of the month, but that we wouldn’t be held to the other criteria for the first three months.
This worked out well for many of us for those months but as they were getting close to an end many of us could see that we wouldn’t have 500 followers and average 500 views when the three-month period ended. Many of us lobbied News Break to do something that would make it worthwhile for us to continue writing there as otherwise we would have likely been making pennies an article.
Newsbreak responded with a new sign on bonus which was extended to those of us who were also early adopters from the first three months of the program and anyone who signed up at that point. For this one you received a certain amount* per article called base pay. There were two different prices* based on the ranking of your article from 1 to 10. Anything rated 5 and over received the higher price and anything 4 and lower received the lower price.
There was a limit on how much you could earn on the base pay, but it was 50% greater than what we received initially from the guaranteed amount. We also received money for each page view with the amounts also being based on the score for the article.
While initially Newsbreak accepted almost anything, starting April 1st they got back to their vision for creators, which involved local news coverage. They are continuing to refine this point and it appears they are starting to encourage “original content” meaning interviews and other news stories that we go out and get ourselves that won’t be covered elsewhere. I think there will be more about that in the future. Part of this focus on original content is video stories, but this is currently in Beta with only a few creators being invited to submit them.
Although it took a bit experimenting for me to determine what kinds of stories received good ratings and a lot of views, I eventually found the formula. This has been written about a great deal previously in many articles on and off Medium, so I won’t repeat that information here.
However, it seems to be a continuing problem for some writers that they can’t get their articles accepted, or they write articles similar to ones they wrote before and they’re rejected. People have questions about the AI system and what tricks they need to use to have the AI accept their articles. I’ve spent a lot of time gaining experience through my own trial and error and I want to include some of what I’ve learned here that here that will hopefully answer questions other people have.
Here are some paraphrased questions from different News Break groups I belong to that I’ve answered based on my experiences writing there.
* According to the News Break contract each of us signed, we are prohibited from sharing what they consider to be proprietary information which includes the amount we are paid, bonuses, sign on benefits etc. and disclosing these will lead to us being banned from the program. This has been very clearly spelled out in the new contracts.
1) I don’t understand how it is that certain types of posts that were getting accepted a week ago, are suddenly no longer acceptable.
This is something many of us have experienced. In part, it is because people aren’t familiar with the new guidelines posted April 1st or they aren’t taking them seriously and continuing to publish what worked for them before. Although NB has always said that a creator’s role is to provide local content, up until April 1st they were allowing almost any type of content’ including fiction and poetry, as well as personal opinions, editorials and blog style posts. Now, all of that is out. The announcement from April 1st which is on the Creator Page every time you open it states:
“We’re revising our policy and requirements on April 1! The program will be focusing specifically on local news and information, and especially on original reporting. We’ve written up a more detailed blog post to explain why we care so much about local information.”
From their Creator Requirements document:
“Articles should be grounded in facts and information. This means fiction (including science fiction), song lyrics, poems (unless the poem or song is newsworthy), and other types of posts without facts or information will not be accepted. Also, this is not the place to purely rant, post a journal entry about your day or air out all of your grievances.”
Additionally, anything that is not your idea must be linked to a source. This is by far what takes me the most time when writing an article as it’s best to go back to the original source or risk that whatever small media outlet where you may have found it got the story right. Often people intentionally “misunderstand” what an article is saying or a research report is concluding to fit the slant of their story. It’s best if you have an article that claims that a research assessment proved something, that you find the actual research report and confirm that it says what is claimed. When I do this, I often find that the results were misunderstood or at least misreported elsewhere.
“All information that is not accepted fact (i.e. The earth is round, Joe Biden is the 46th president of the United States, dinosaurs are extinct) or is based on first-person experience or personal expertise, must be attributed. Not properly citing and crediting your sources of information can be considered plagiarism and a serious violation. All information and research should come from verified, reputable sources and sites such as interviews, databases, academic journals and publications, etc. If possible, you should link to these sources when you mention them. When in doubt, always attribute.”
2) How can we know exactly what it is we are allowed to write and how to write it to get it past your AI?
Much of the first part was answered above. How to write is a topic that is far bigger than can be addressed her. That’s a matter of knowledge and skill which takes time to develop.
But I do want to comment on something that I’ve learned. Sometimes you just need to call NB on their policy. When the AI system flags something then rejects it, it can be a mistake in how something in your article was interpreted or something about the algorithm.
I can’t tell you how much of the process is performed by AI but from the start the site was advertised as “AI Powered” so I assume quite a bit of it is. (I can hear the tech folks disagreeing with my assumption — But I know if something is rejected in 3 minutes that it wasn’t an editor that did it, it was the AI system).
If you’ve carefully proofread the article again, are sure there are no mistakes and that it meets all the current criteria for acceptance then often, all it takes is a quick email to fix this. Document what you can, or present a logical reason your article shouldn’t have been rejected based on their policy (if you can quote their policy or content requirement all the better) and email them.
There was one article I wrote that wasn’t really news, but it was local and they accepted it despite it being after they published the new content rules and preference for local news. Three days later, I submitted a similar story for another state, and it was immediately rejected. When I asked why, they replied it was satire and not factual, which was not the case as it had to do with legal issues and laws, none of which I made up to use as satire.
I pointed this out along with the fact they’d published something similar just days before and sent a screen shot to show when the other one was published. The new one was then quickly published and given an 8 rating. Sometimes the AI system will flag something and reject it but if you can explain why the article doesn’t break the new content rules, they’re very reasonable about publishing it.
3) When they reject an article, they never say what it was rejected for. How can we fix it with no information?
This is a big frustration for most of us. Another quick word about rejections. I’ve had several articles that were rejected and despite contacting them several times, I couldn’t get them to respond for days about what was wrong. There was one in particular, that was local news and seemed to follow all of their requirements. As it was local news and would not be news the following week, I kept editing it and resubmitting it and each time it was turned down.
Finally, after 4 days I heard back and they said that there was a typo in the title. It wasn’t really a typo; it was a comma and was actually correct the way I used it, but it could also be correct without it. I removed it and it was almost immediately published. There were two other times I had articles rejected because of a typo or punctuation in the title. On one other occasion I wrote something when I was exhausted and didn’t edit it and when I went back over it there were several mistakes in the content that needed fixing so it should have been rejected and I just had to edit it and resubmit.
So, if they aren’t getting back to you (and keep in mind that there are very few staff working on weekends so don’t get miffed if the weekend goes by before you hear something) before doing an entire re-write, check you title for typos or punctuation mistakes. Then go through and carefully check the text.
From what I’ve seen if there is even a small mistake in the title it is automatically rejected. If there are a few minor mistakes in the text, that usually isn’t enough to get it turned down. If there are a lot of minor mistakes or a few major mistakes however, that will result in the article being rejected. I have no idea how many minor mistakes can get through, but it’s always best not to publish anything that you haven’t thoroughly edited and made mistake free (I’m not always an ideal example of this but I’m working on it.)
As a side note — Also makes sure, when you email them, that you include the name of the article a link to the draft and when you submitted it so they can find it easily. I’ve found that helps them get back to you sooner. Remember, your articles are clear in your mind but they have thousands of writers they are working with, so just saying, “My last article was rejected. Why?” isn’t going to get a speedy response.
The Bottom Line
It’s quite easy to get stories accepted with the higher ratings at New Break. In addition to what has been written in other articles here are the basics:
- Write stories about local news (they don’t have to be local to you, they can be about any city or neighborhood).
- Don’t write up things that are in every newspaper and that show up in online news feeds for weeks.
- If you do choose a story that has headlined all over the place, add something to your story to make it different, merge it with another story, find quotes about it from important people, add a historical perspective and include a video if possible.
- Pictures and videos can often be enough to take an article ranked below 5 and push it to at least 5 but possibly beyond.
- Try your hand at first person interviews that show something about a neighborhood or city that is unique and not necessarily carried by major media outlets.
- Try to make your story longer than 600 words (but without fluff). NB tends to like longer stories.
- If recounting a story that’s been all over the news (which you have added something extra to) make sure your headline is different enough from the ones on the million other stories that have been written, in order to catch a reader’s attention. If possible your headline should also point out how your story is different.
- Look for stories that haven’t been done to death and which may have been skipped over by readers because of big headlines. This is a good way to get high ranked stories. When something huge happens unless you have a genuinely different twist or take on the story that makes it unique, try to find other stories flying under the radar.
- If your article has been rejected, check for simple fixes first then contact support showing how it meets all of NB’s requirements.
- Always make sure to tag your article ideally with a city or if not at least a state, not only to point out that it’s local but also to make sure it’s distributed to everyone who follows the city or state.
A final note — remember the squeaky wheel gets the oil, so while I don’t recommend harassing the NB staff, I do suggest that if you need information from them specifically, such as why an article was rejected or asking them to fix some kind of snafu in the program that is affecting your account and ability to publish, then emailing them more than once if they aren’t getting back to you might be the only way you’ll get the information you need or have the problem fixed in a timely manner. Just use common decency and remember that there are hundreds of other writers many of whom may also be emailing them with problems they want fixed right away.
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