As with many things on The Local, with comments we have to hew to several guiding principles, the first being New York Times standards, the second being web best practices. In this case they largely overlap. Here is the official New York Time Comment Policy. We follow this very closely — every comment is moderated and we evaluate based a variety of objective and more subjective measures, including language use, general tone and how productive the comment is to the conversation at hand. We DO NOT modify comments in any way. To do so makes us more legally responsible for them, so it’s all or nothing. The bottom line for NYT policy is that comments should move the conversation forward and that is definitely a best practice to keep in mind at all times. On a non-Times blog tho, loosening the restrictions on non-name-calling obscenities could be considered. Also, one place where The Local diverges is in cheerleader-type comments. On The Times, if 100 commenters say “Aw, the CUTEST” to a post about kittens, only the first such comment will be approved — the following comments are not moving the conversation forward. On The Local, we will post every single comment that says “congrats!” to a post about a local student who won a scholarship. It’s a community site and well wishing builds community. We have four basic types of commenters on the blog: happy, upbeat folks who say nice things when they see their neighbors on the Local; super neighbors who like share information and ask questions about what’s going on in the neighborhood (lots of overlap in the first two categories); old school grumpers who read the Local but sort of hate us, and thus point out every mistake no matter how...

News stories are structured differently from essays, poems or short stories. It’s useful to understand the pieces that make up a news story, and learn the terms we use to describe these elements. HEADLINE: The headline is like an advertisement for the story. It attracts readers while telling them briefly what the story is about. LEDE: All journalistic stories start with a lede (pronounced like “lead”). The lede is the first sentence or two of the story, and it leads the reader into the story, hooking his or her interest. If you don’t get your reader interested, they’ll skip right over your story and read another instead. There are many different types of ledes – straight, anecdotal, historical, and the list goes on. Usually, the lede is the fact, moment or tidbit that you find most interesting about your story. We say “Don’t bury the lede,” meaning, don’t hold out on your reader by saving your most interesting information until halfway into the story – hit us with your best shot up front. Think about what facts have the most “news value.” Journalists use the image of an “inverted,” or upside-down, pyramid to remind themselves that the most important and newsworthy information should always be at the top of a story, and the rest of the information goes in order of most important to least important. NUT GRAF: The nut graf is the main point or the “nut” of the story. “Graf” is short for “paragraph.” It should tell you all the basic information about your story. The Five W’s and H – Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? WHO? Who are the main characters of the story? Who is the story about? WHAT? What happened? What is the story about? WHERE? Where does...