The Urban Twist is a state-of-the-art platform for everything journalism will become. Real time information, commentary, analysis and opinion are collaboratively provided by trusted individuals around the world using the power of the internet to distribute and participate within news stories. At its heart, The Urban Twist is a utility that provides hosting and distribution services to hundreds of valuable news sources across a range of devices.
Applying For an Account
To post an article, you must apply to become a contributor on the site before you may post any stories.
If your application is approved, you’ll then have access to our WordPress platform, which is our platform of choice, and is a staple in the blogging and journalism communities. WordPress is used by sites such as the New York Times, CNN, Mashable, and others.
In addition to a regular account that allows you to post stories, there are additional levels of accounts: author, editor and reporter. Only people who have demonstrated the highest professional standards or who have the appropriate experience will be elevated to these levels. Stories are moderated by authors, editors, or reporters to ensure they meet news story editorial guidelines to be considered for inclusion in the newsmap that is fed directly to Google News and other news feeds.
Editorial Guidelines
Stories accepted for inclusion by The Urban Twist must be newsworthy current events and will be determined in the sole discretion of our reporters and editors. Stories of a personal nature (unless ed-op or blog post) are not appropriate for The Urban Twist and will not be accepted by our reporters and editors.
We follow the Yahoo! Style Guide for online writing — the quick guide is available here:
In general stories of a length of between 500-700 words are best. Be concise and to the point and carefully choose a headline that explains what the story is about in clear terms. Who-What-When-Where-Why are good questions to ask about the story, from the viewers point of view. The UrbanTwist and its reporters and editors don’t take any particular editorial stance. When stories move into the area of opinion, they need to be placed in the Opinion category in addition to also being placed in a main topical category such as Sports, Politics, Tech, etc.
Article/Story Requirements
The first requirement is that your story must be news, commentary, analysis or opinion and placed into the appropriate category. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with what category it should be placed in as the editors will double check and make sure that your story is in the appropriate place. Carefully check for grammatical and spelling errors — they will lower the credibility of your story and could cause your story to be rejected by our reporters and editors. We will give grammatical latitude to writers who do not use English as their first language. Spacing should conform to standard web article spacing with a single space between paragraphs for easy reading.
Submitting/Posting Stories
To propose a story for inclusion in The Urban Twist, login with your account and password, then click the Submit News button found in the sidebar of every page. Write your story and then “Pending Review”. A more detailed explanation can be found here in our Writer’s Guide. When you open a The Urban Twist account, your stories are moderated…that is, we will not release your stories into the system until your initial stories are reviewed by our editors.
Policy on Republishing Articles
The Urban Twist will not republish any article ever! It’s as simple as that.
