Help

goleader.com/help - updated October 2012

This page provides help for using this website and for interfacing with the newspaper and staff. Please contact us and stop in if you need additional help or if you have suggestions. We ask that you subscribe. Thank you.

Conducting business: Please use the site menu to find the subjects and e-mail contacts you want. You can access details and pricing of advertising; see and place Classified Ads; place Legal Ads, Wedding and Engagement announcements, Subscribe and Renew, change address, submit articles, photographs, obituaries; retrieve the newspapers as far back as 1907, search this site, find organizations plus view our libraries of photos, videos and special features.

Guidelines are included here for writing and submitting articles, sending photographs and submitting Letters to the Editor to our newspapers. We love hearing from you. On this site, You can retrieve and search information, contact us - staff members and departments; learn about us. You are invited to visit us at our office. Let us know how we can help or of any questions you have.

Community Articles and News are given high priority for publishing by our editors for subscribers, local clubs, schools and organizations. Please note, our editors often receive more requests than they can accommodate. The editors forward commercial articles to sales. We are happy to publish commercial articles, please see here.

Community News Briefs are posted regularly on this web site and are given consideration for inclusion in the newspaper. To read the briefs and to post a community item, please see here. For commercial articles, please see here.

Special Services: Click on these links for publishing Wedding, Engagement, Anniversary -Obituary, Legal Notices and Classifieds.

Commerce Services: We provide a paid service for commercial, promotional and "all items that must be published". This service is welcomed by the readers and it guarantees your item to be published. Businesses, marketers, fundraisers, public relations, attorneys, professionals, promotions, authors, government agencies and organizations find this effective, convenient and economic.

Organizations Wiki is published here for public use. Clubs and organizations are invited to register and maintain their contact information.

Archives of the newspaper back to 1907 are available and are searchable on this website. Our newspapers, This Is Westfield, other publications and special features (videos, photographs and references) are available. The newspapers are in PDF format. The Westfield Leader editions back to 1907 are available here, made possible by a cooperative effort with the Westfield Memorial Library. The Scotch Plains-Fanwood Times editions back to 1963 are available here made possible by a cooperative effort with the Scotch Plains and Fanwood Public Libraries. Newspaper microfilms exist at the libraries.

Email notification: We notify those on our email list (weekly) at the time of the posting of the newspaper. Occasionally, emergency bulletins are provided. You can sign up here. We guard your privacy and do not "spam".

Writing Articles: If you are in our service area (generally Union County, NJ), consider reporting on your favorite club, sports or community event. Please include the 5Ws (who, what, when, where and why), spell check and grammar check your work. If it is a sports report, please balance the article by reporting both sides. Very important - Have fun! E-mail the article to the most appropriate department. Send Word docs or cut and paste your text into the body of the e-mail and attach color photographs with caption information. Please include a daytime phone number in case our editors have follow-up questions.

Submitting Photographs and see Photo Library: Digital cameras and most cell phones today produce resolutions high enough for publishing in the newspaper (not thumbnails). Send the photograph in color as a jpg. Do not crop or resize it. We will do this and make adjustments. Include caption information stating the 5Ws – who, what, when, where, why. Please include a daytime phone number in case our editors have follow-up questions.

Letters to the Editor: Your views are very important, and we encourage you to write (email to: editor@goleader.com). Include your name, address and daytime phone number for us to verify your authorship. We include the author's name and town with letters in the newspaper. Generally, letters are about 200 to 500 words. Letters that are too long plus grammar, punctuation, unclear wording, redundancies and spelling are subject be edited.

Upload to Server: Submitting multiple files, Ads or a file larger than 3 MB may not make it through e-mail. For these situations, upload to our server (call 908 232-4407 or e-mail for username and password).

Style guidelines and quality checks:

General: Don't write in First Person (not, "I did this and I said that"). Write from the readers' perspective, not from the author's or organization's perspective. Consider that the readers are perceptive and our editors take a dim view of "Guised Infomercials." Please don't start off with "So and so is proud to announce...." - unless of course you explain why you're proud, and why it is important that you are proud to the reader.

Put Headline in Subject of your email, otherwise email may be ignored.

Percent: Write it out: Do not use the % symbol (or other keyboard symbols). Use the number with percent.
Numbers: Write out 0 through 9 (one, two, etc.) For all others, use the number (12, 146, 1,345 etc.).
Mr. or Mrs.: replaces the first name of individual upon the second mention of the person in an article.
Time of day: morning or afternoon, write as a.m. or p.m. - small letters (not AM or not PM).
Dates: Write without subscripts or superscripts. Example: September 14 should NOT be written as September 14th.
Subscripts or superscripts: Don't use them (caution: Word sometimes does this automatically).
Capitalize only proper name (Westfield Town Council); Use small letters for the borough, council, town, board, etc.
Commas: Do not put a comma before 'and' of a list. Ex.: Boy, girl and frog.
Spelling: Spell Check all documents.
Grammar check all documents with Word, when possible.
Double Spaces: Eliminate them (replace function helps).
Photos: Send with caption information stating the 5Ws – who, what, when, where, why.
Underlining: Do not use all caps, underlining, italics (unless proper for magazine titles etc.).
Names: Use full name only once with abbreviation: Westfield Board of Education (BOE); afterwards use BOE.
Sentences: Keep them short, avoid run-on sentences; limit use of compound sentences.
Background: Reader may be reading this subject for the first time; reference matters, don’t assume they know.
Attribute the source of all information and statements.
Story: Has beginning, middle and end. Put most important things first, rather than chronologic.
Introduction: 1st Paragraph, list important happenings.

Email Blasts: Please do not email blast us (or anyone else for that matter). It is annoying and disruptive.