Resources

For article submissions the following guidelines should be followed:

• The person writing the article must be a current student in good standing at Utah Valley University. Faculty, staff and community members can submit articles for consideration. In addition to being an open public forum for students, The UVU Review is also a vehicle for journalism education.
• The Review uses the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook for news formatting. All articles for submission should conform to this standard. The Review can assist new writers as they learn the AP style and can help them build a story that “reads like a news article”. Newspaper articles are almost always written in the third person and they follow typical newswriting conventions like the inverted pyramid.
• The Review upholds the standards set by the Society of Professional Journalists as outlined in that body’s Code of Ethics. You can find the complete SPJ Code of Ethics here. Students must remain objective in their reporting and avoid conflicts of interests. So for instance, if you were a member of a student club you could not write an article about that club—it would be a conflict of interest.
• All article submissions are subject to review, fact-checking, copy-editing and final approval by the Executive News Director,  editor-in-chief, and their staff.
• Students interested in submitting articles for publication should stop by the newsroom in SL 213 and meet with a member of staff or the Student Media & Publications Director, Grant Flygare in SL 213.

Letters to the editor and opinion/editorials (op-eds) can be submitted by any student, staff, faculty or community member. Submissions should adhere to the following guidelines:

• Letters to the Editor need to include the full name and contact information of the writer (email address, phone and current address), even if your preference is to remain anonymous *The decision to honor the request of anonymity of the person submitting the Letter to the Editor, is the decision of the Executive News Director.  The decision will be communicated to the submitting person before publication or broadcast.)   Also. the writer should indicate their connection to UVU (student, faculty member, staff, or concerned citizen, etc).
• The best letters are short and to the point. A 100 word letter is much more likely to be published than a 500 word essay.
• Op-eds are longer form opinion pieces from a particular point of view. So for instance if the English department on campus wanted to write an “open letter” to the administration complaining about the tenure process that might take the form of an op-ed. Or if the Student Body President wanted to inform the student body about a particular issue they were passionate about they could write an op-ed.
• Letters to the editor and op-eds are subject to review, fact-checking, copy-editing and final approval by the Executive News Director.

Students, faculty, staff, and community members are invited to pitch a story to the editorial staff. Pitches should adhere to the following guidelines:

• One of the most effective ways to pitch a story to a journalist is to give them a press release. Press releases are typically 1-2 pages and they take the form of a traditional news article—with headlines, quotes from people involved and written using the AP style guide. For examples of press releases you can check out the university’s newsroom blog here.
• Press releases and other materials can be delivered to the student newsroom in SL 213 or can be sent to the Executive News Director here.
• You can also pitch your story in person by visiting a member of the news team in the student newsroom. All story ideas are picked up at the discretion of the editors and producers. Basically, you need to sell your idea to the appropriate team member  who covers your topic.
• The best story pitches contain one or more of the basic news values: Impact—How will this affect the audience’s lives? Timeliness—Did this just happen? Prominence—Who are the big names involved in the story? Proximity— Is this story local to the audience? The Bizarre—Is there anything unexpected about the story? We sometimes call this “Man Bites Dog”. Conflict—What are the different sides of this issue, and what are their arguments? Currency—is the story of the moment? Is this currently trending? For example, a story about love has currency around Valentine’s Day, and a spooky story has currency at Halloween. Finally, Human Interest—Does the story say something compelling about an individual?

Finally, the best way to make sure your message will definitely appear in the paper is to buy an advertisement.

Find the current advertising rate card here.