49.9% PRIVATISATION

In a change from the usual netcast, we thought you’d like to know a little bit more about how the ‘cast gets compiled.

The Top Stories
The top stories usually get done by the strange and mysterious entity known only as Newswire at some point in the early hours of the morning, and then scheduled to post at 9am. If Newswire has malfunctioned, one of the blog reviewers will do the top stories.

This generally involves trawling through the websites of the various mainstream news sources – not just papers and TV, but stuff like Reuters, and respected foriegn sources like the New York Times – and picking out things that look interesting. They might not always be the biggest headlines, but they’ll always be stuff we think will be of interest to LC’s readers.

The Blog Review

You may or may not have noticed that there are several of us who do the blog review part. Each of us has our own little quirks, and thus, each day’s ‘cast is slightly different, and may appear at different times, and might lean to one sort of blogging or another (much to the exasperation of our beloved Editor in Chief).

Method, however, is much the same for all of us.

1. check inbox for emails to TIPSatLIBERALCONSPIRACYdotORG – emails to this address come through to all of us, and we often use it to discuss stuff too – and look at what the tipsters have sent us.
2. check bloglist/RSS feeds to see what has been posted since the last netcast went up. Jennie’s bloglist for LC, for example, has 250 or so blogs on it, and they quite often link outside and she follows the links…
3. Decide which of the many posts to link to
4. Code the post.

Number 3 is often the trickiest bit. In 24 hours a LOT of good posts can be made, and often you have to trim more than you would like – we have a loose limit of 8 posts per day to link to, which is sometimes very hard to stick to. It can also be tricky to decide which order to put the items in, and sometimes whether something goes in the blog review at all, or whether it needs to be in the Top Stories (something on CiF or the BBC might fit in either section) or even to be the subject of a special post…

But you don’t want to hear about how tough netcasting is, do you? Here’s what you REALLY want to know:

How to get YOUR post included in the netcast

1. Write something interesting, informative, novel or amusing (and preferably well-formatted and properly spelt)
2. Email us at TIPSatLIBERALCONSPIRACYdotORG
3. Hope we like your post enough to include it over whatever else has been posted that day.

It’s important to note that if you’ve been linked to a couple of times, it’s likely you’ll get put on one (or all) of our watch lists, so you don’t have to email us every time you post – after all, none of us like spam. And because we like mystique, it’s unlikely you will get an email saying why if we decide not to include you. But don’t let any of that put you off emailing if you especially want a particular post to be linked: we’re always happy to accept special pleadings, or even bribery!

(Aaron likes a good Single Malt or backrubs; Jennie prefers Cognac VSOP or XO; Lee will go for hard currency – preferably Chinese or Japanese, while he’s on his trip; Sarah wants more hits at her blog, Same Difference; and Doug needs someone to do all his studies for him and get a first…)

Netcast as usual will resume tomorrow; you can, as always, browse through previous netcasts.

Reader comments

1. Liberal Conspiracy

   New post: Top Stories – 2nd March http://tinyurl.com/bfccqm

   [Original tweet]

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