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Click-by-click: News Story

Please be sure you have looked at News Stories and Basics for fundamental information about icons, behavior and fields.

Starting a story

You can start in Grove or Nexus.

Start in Grove

Click News Story in the Quick Start bar on the dashboard.

Type something, anything in the Headline field. It doesn't have to be what you'll use. I suggest typing a few random words or characters.

Save the story (click the disk icon). Go to the Basics page for more about saving.

You will automatically be put in the revision. You'll know this because you'll see "You have been redirected to the Digital Story Presentation revision" at the top of the story.

You can click the word Nexus to go to the card. Fill in your sources!

If you need to add audio, starting this story in Nexus would have been easier. See below for how to fill out the card and add the audio.

Start in Nexus

Create a card. Depending on your Nexus settings, your card will have a Digital Story Presentation and/or a Broadcast Story Presentation.

We're looking at the Digital Story Presentation.

NPR ID: This will the same as the linked story in Grove. Use it to find stories, talk about stories, etc. It is the equivalent of the Seamus ID.

Headline: The title of the card will be the headline until you change it in Nexus or in Grove.

Teaser: This is your teaser. You can change it here or in Grove.

Section: Set this in Nexus or Grove.

Branding: Set this in Nexus or Grove. NOTE: If you're setting a brand other than NPR, remove the NPR brand. Stories can only show one brand at a time.

Published Date: When the Grove story publishes, this date will magically appear.

Users: Add your reporter and editor for the Digital Story Presentation. NOTE: These are NOT BYLINES. You must add bylines in Grove.

Dates: Add a Planned Date. NOTE: This is for planning purposes only. The story won't publish on that date.

Sources: Put your sources here.

Flags: Don't worry about flags.

Once you're done with all this, click View in Grove, which is directly under the Create Presentation button:

This takes you STRAIGHT to the proper page in Grove. Stay there. Don't move! You'll see this at the top:

Main tab

After you save, Grove will bestow upon you an NPR ID, a unique identifier with which you can search for and direct people to your story. It is at the top of the sidebar, on the right:

The character limit for the Headline is 85, though Grove will not stop you there.

SEO Title will default to the headline — don't let it! Write an actual SEO headline. SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization" and it is the headline for search/Google. 50-60 characters, don't go over 65.

In Permalink Text, type your custom URL, which is keywords-separated-by-hyphens:

In Teaser, enter your teaser: 200 characters. Keep an eye on that character counter!

Under Bylines, click the circle-with-plus in it.

You can simply type in the empty field to bring up your desired person:

You can also click the magnifying glass and search. When you find the person, click their name. You can add more authors if you want. When done, close the flyout pane with the X in the upper right:

Known issue!

This is how to handle duplicate bylines. If that doesn't help, file an IT ticket.

For station reporters, remove the NPR filter from the sidebar of the search window:

You may have to click More Filters to see it.

If you need to add a byline — for a staffer or freelancer — do these things:

  1. Click on the magnifying glass icon next to the Byline field.
  2. In the window that pops up, click the New Person button in the lower left. Enter the person's name under Name. Don't do anything else.
  3. Click the Publish button.
  4. Click the < Back link.
  5. Click the name — it will be at the top of the search box.

Primary Visual (Image/Video/Gallery)

Note: All the image instructions apply to both the Primary Visual and images embedded in the Body text. The Primary Visual is between the headline and the story text.

Choose Image under Primary Visual. Then …

  1. Click the magnifying glass.
  2. Click the NEW IMAGE button in the lower left, unless you're reusing an image for some reason:

  1. Click the CHOOSE button OR drag the file from your computer into the Grove window:

  1. If you clicked CHOOSE, pick the file from your computer.
  2. Edit or add Internal Name, Copyright Type, Caption, Alt Text, Credit and Source, as required. NOTE: Grove works a bit differently from Seamus here, at least for now. You'll often need to take the Source (Getty Images, AP, etc.) from the Credit field and paste it over whatever's in the Source field, so you have the photographer's name in Credit and the agency in Source.

Known issue!

Right now, you can't have an empty field if the image has metadata for it. The best you can do is add an empty character. Here's how. You'll still get a rogue slash, though.

  1. Click SAVE in the upper right.
  2. Click < Back in the upper left.
  3. You'll see your image's name at the top of the flyout pane. Click it:

  1. Go to the Styles tab — for the image, not the whole page.
  2. Choose your Display Size or leave it set to Automatic, which is Large. Small and Medium put the image in the margin with text wrap. X-Large is very large.
  3. Check each Image Crop by selecting it and looking at the preview. (If you don't see the preview, "poke it in the eye.") Automatic is the same as Custom. Wide is the promo image on the desktop homepage. Square is the promo image on the phone app. We don't know where Standard goes.

If the crop is bad (like someone's head is cut off), or you want a different crop for one or more of the promo images, here are more steps!

Let's change the focus point first. Return to the Main tab.

  1. Click on the pencil icon at the top-right of the photo:

  1. You will see the image with the words "Click inside the image to set a focus point for all sizes" at the bottom.
  2. Click to set the point around which you want Grove to crop. For example, if someone's head is cut off, you might want to set the point on their nose or neck:

  1. Click the SAVE button.
  2. Click < Back.
  3. You should see the change. It might take a few seconds to update.

What if you want to crop something manually? You can change the crop beyond what focus point will do. This is how:

  1. Click the pencil near the upper-right corner of the photo.
  2. Click the paintbrush in the upper-right corner of the photo:

  1. Click the SIZES tab.
  2. Under Filters check Npr.org:

  1. You'll see, in this order: Brick, Custom, Slide, Square, Standard, Vertical and Wide. NOTE! The label for Wide is sometimes not visible. It's the image at the bottom that is ... you guessed it ... wide.
  2. Click the image you wish to manually crop. For example, make the Square a tight crop.
  3. Size and position the box however you want:

  1. When you have cropped all the images you want to crop, click the blue DONE button.

You can undo the crops on single images or all the images at once, by clicking Reset.

One more image thing: What if you want a different promo image on the homepage (or app, or whatever) than the one in the Primary Visual slot? That's an unusual use case, so if you want to know how to do that, go to the Images page. Or go poke around in the Promo tab.

Body text

Don't know/remember what the buttons in the editor do? Go look here.

Go to Body and add your text however you choose. You can paste from Google Docs, Word, Pages, etc.

Let's add a regular old hyperlink.

  1. Select the text you want to link. Press Ctrl-K or Command-K, or click the link icon in the body toolbar.
  2. If you're linking to something within Grove, choose Internal. If you're linking to something outside of Grove/NPR, leave it set to External.
  3. If it's internal, you'll see a search pane pop out. Find your story and click on it.
  4. If it's external, scroll a bit and put the URL where it says URL.
  5. Click SAVE & CLOSE.

Known issue!

  • Hyperlinks at the beginning of a paragraph make the rest of the paragraph disappear — sometimes.
  • Two hyperlinks in a row will squish together.

Add subheads as needed, by typing, selecting the text, choosing Format and selecting H3 - Small Subhead:

Ignore the weird box that pops up. Just hit Save & Close to banish it.

Promo link

To make a Seamus-style internal link, use Promo Link under the embed menu (mountain-range icon). This will bring up a search that works like all other searches in Grove. You'll can use NPR IDs (the replacement for Seamus ID) to go directly to what you want. Or use the URL (in quotes). For more search tips, see the Search page.

It will default to the classic right-margin link.

For other looks, go to the Styles tab for the promo and scroll to NPR Promo Styles:

Choose LEGACY Headline with audio for the other classic Seamus look. There are other types of promos now. Learn about them here.

To add a promo for a podcast episode page, file a ticket for the IT Service desk to migrate the episode from Seamus to Grove.

Images

Add images as needed by choosing Image in the embed menu (mountain-range icon). Follow the instructions above; there will be one extra step at the end where you must click SAVE & CLOSE.

Videos

Instructions are here.

Embeds

Instructions are here.

Brandings

Set a member station branding here if you need that to appear on the story.

Contributors

In the Contributors field, enter the text that would go something like "This post was edited by X with additional reporting from Y." You can add links here, if you want to link their names to their bio pages:

Display Transcript?

This displays the transcript under the story — not something that's usually done. It will still be accessible from the audio player, as usual.

Corrections

If you need to add a correction later, choose Add under Corrections & Major Updates. Fill out the Note field:

While it appears that you can add multiple corrections, don't. Add more by typing them into the currect correction. Follow the Corrections Guide.

If you leave the Title field blank, the item will be labeled Correction. Whatever you type in the Title field will override that. So to add a clarification, type "Clarification" there.

Major Updates

Under Corrections & Major Updates click Add and chose Update(s):

Leave the update fields empty (or add text — it won't show on the site):

Republish. For each subsequent update, do the same. This is the same as Major Update in Seamus.

Embargo

This is a method of scheduling. Given how tetchy regular scheduling is, please avoid Embargo.

Subtitle

Some desks use these, some do not. If you use them, here's where they go.

Promo tab

What if you want a different promo image on the homepage (or app, or whatever) than the one in the Primary Visual slot? That's an unusual use case, so if you want to know how to do that, go to the Images page.

Aggs tab

Before you publish, make sure to add:

  • Primary Section
  • Apple News (Secondary Section), if you want the story to go to Apple News
  • Helper Collection
  • At least three Tags that are related to the story

Here's more guidance.

The Primary Section is the word that will appear over headlines; it is also an aggregation. (In Seamus, this was called a topic.) Put your cursor on the blank line and type — if the section comes up, great. If not, click the magnifying glass and use a keyword search. This is the same process you used to add bylines.

Secondary Sections are also aggregations, and you can add more than one. The parent of your primary section will be added automatically.

To add the story to Apple News: Add the section NPR Stories for Apple News as a secondary section.

If the story is in a Series, choose that here.

In Helper Collections, choose your desk's collection (if it has one).

But why? Read this for an explanation of what they are and aren't.

Add one in the same way you add any other agg.

Here are all of them:

All Things Considered Digital
Business Desk
Climate Desk
Culture Desk
Disinformation Team
Education Desk
Growth
International Desk
Investigations Desk
Morning Edition digital
National Desk
Newscast Digital
Newsdesk Reporting Team
NPR Music Digital
Religion Team
Science Desk
Visuals Department
Washington Desk
Weekend Edition Digital

Tags are tags. Add some. There is, alas, no Suggest Tags feature.

You can easily add multiple tags, series and secondary sections. This example uses Tags, but the steps are the same for all:

  1. Click the magnifying glass.
  2. Find and click each tag you want. You'll see them stacking up on the left.
  3. Close the window using the X in the upper-right corner of the search window.

To add a Tag, fill in just the Display Name. Permalink will fill in on its own:

If you aren't sure which tag is used, or used most often, use the tag with the highest # Of References. To show the # Of References column, click on Select/Hide Fields, toggle the # Of References to blue, and click the Update button.

Franchise you can leave blank unless someone has told you to use it. Details here.

Audio tab

Primary Audio will usually be added automatically, via Nexus. (For more on that, look here.)

You can add audio manually via Grove if it published on a DLP. Click the magnifying glass and find the audio. Having the audio title will help:

SEO tab

If you see anything here labeled Canonical URL or Robots … walk away. There's nothing the average user needs to do here.

Styles tab

The only thing you can do here is under NPR Story Layout Styles. You can change the story template here.

Publishing

HERE IS A LOT OF DETAIL ABOUT PUBLISHING, SCHEDULING AND ADJACENT ACTIONS.

Check over your fields and copy. Preview the page outside of Grove.

Save the story one last time. Send it to your editor or proceed as detailed next.

Click the WORKFLOW button and click the Ready to Publish or Schedule button.

Click the green PUBLISH button or the schedule icon (the calendar). If you want to schedule, choose the date and click SET, then the yellow SCHEDULE button.

Known issue!

Scheduling is known to be buggy. Here is advice:

  • Continue using the scheduling function to set stories for future publication.
  • Ensure you are scheduling from the Revision.
  • Always select the desired schedule Date before the Time.
  • In cases where a story is already scheduled and requires additional editing before publication, it is OK to make your changes in the scheduled revision and click the 'Schedule' button to save the updates. However, you should doublecheck that the scheduled date/time is still correct before clicking 'Schedule' again just in case.
  • After scheduling, check the status to make sure the "Scheduled" label is there with the correct date and time.

This is the PUBLISH button:

Watch out!

A digital story CANNOT BE PUBLISHED FROM NEXUS — even via a rundown. That means you need to SCHEDULE IT YOURSELF if you want it to publish with the rundown.

Yay. You're done!

If you need to make changes after scheduling, make sure you're in the revision, make the changes and click SCHEDULE again.

If you need to make changes after publishing, make sure you're in the revision. Make your changes, click the WORKFLOW button and click the Ready to Publish or Schedule button, then Publish.

If you intend to leave the story and come back later to publish or re-publish, just make sure to click the disk before you go!

If you don't see that yellow box, the disk icon and the Workflow button, you aren't in the revision.

Help! I've lost track. How do I know if my story was published?

Look in the Revisions part of the right rail:

You'll see a green dot on the version that published.

To LEAVE the story:

You can close a story in a variety of ways, but two sure bets are clicking the hamburger icon, then Dashboard, or clicking the NPR logo (to the right of the hamburger icon:

Save first! Don't take a risk blah blah blah disk.