Sum It Up: The Meaning of Things

Though we haven't been calling much attention to it, there have been scads of very minor website upgrades happening behind the scenes here at The Rapidian HQ. But recently we launched something so we big we just need to make mention of it.

Summary. 

There, I said it.

Summary is a new field that all reporters will soon be required to fill out along with the rest of their article. The summary is a short description of your article's contents, like the promotional copy on the back of a book. But short, very short. 200 characters or less. This description is meant to make articles on The Rapidian more accessible to our readers and will be used when an article is featured on the front page, in various Rapidian highlights (such as the Weekly Digest), when sharing an article on Social Media and countless other ways that we haven’t even thought of yet.

FYI for the Rapidian’s Reporters, the form looks like this:

A screenshot from a recent article by Lisa Rabey. Way to be a summary trailblazer, Lisa!

You will find it right above the main body field of the article.

Consider this a soft launch of the feature, but very soon it will become a required field that must be filled out to submit an article. To reiterate what I said before, we believe that this will help our readers get to the core of what’s going on, but it will benefit Reporters as well. As our Content Editor Holly Bechiri put it, “This description is important to gain interest from Rapidian readers and help you focus on what's most important to cover in your article.”

It will also be an essential element in the iteration of The Rapidian’s design. It’s definitely a ways off, but oh yes, it’s a’comin’! Eventually.