Contributions

New Zealand Aviation News has a reliance upon it's readership to provide intelligence on what is happening in the New Zealand aviation scene.

A picture is worth a thousand words and with an accompanying caption is often all that is required. A colour print is fine for reproduction.

The paper thrives on briefs and new positions. These are useful items of news for our readers.
Contact Aviation News today.

Submitting your stories

Stories can be sent directly to the editor by email or post.
Email: editor@aviationnews.co.nz
Post: The Editor
New Zealand Aviation News
P.O. Box 10314, Dominion Road,
Auckland 1446, New Zealand

Use the below information to help you write your story:

Stories With Pictures
Often a picture with an extended caption of 100 - 200 words is all that is necessary. These are known as fat captions in the trade and need to be based around 5Ws and an H. Consider the following points:

What the picture is about
Who is represented
Where the situation is
Why the event is notable
When the event took place
How this event affects others

It is possible that several pictures will collectively make up a story about an event. In this case consider a couple of lead paragraphs detailing the activity and give each picture a standalone caption which adds to the initial paragraphs. Readers will often read the captions first and then go back to the lead sentences.

Stories without Pictures
If no picture is available or is not necessary the story effectively becomes a brief and again is based on the 5Ws and an H principle. Here the concept is to keep the information short and concise and use as many of the lead questions as possible. The order of the 5Ws and H principle is not important. That is left up to the author to provide an eye catching lead sentence.
Not more than 250 words is best suited for these stories. A quotation from a key character in the story often helps to give it a more personal touch.

Scanned Image Guidelines for Aviation News
Negatives or Positives sent by mail to Aviation News are preferred, prints are OK. If scanned; Images saved straight as TIFF files without LZW compression will produce the best results. However if there are time constraints involved and images are sent by email, they must be saved as JPG files at a ratio between 6 and 8 compression - check the resultant JPG file size doesn't exceed 800kb if possible, or just over 1MB if absolutely necessary.
The scanned image should be cropped only if there is excess background, and resampled DOWN (not up) to no less than a width of 12.5cm, and a resolution of no less than 200dpi.
Send the scanned images untouched as RGBs, with no colour corrections, or sharpening applied etc. as this helps keep the total file size to a minimum.

Digital Camera guidelines:
Most simple Digital Cameras have the option to save captured images at three settings: Small, Medium and Large. It is recommended that the camera be set to the maximum setting to capture as many pixels as possible, or at least 1024 pixels by 768 pixels which is the medium setting on a 2.1 Mega-Pixel CCD Camera. Lower setting result in less pixels captured per square unit, resulting in 'pixelated' and grainy looking images.
JPEGs are the preferred format when submitting an image to Aviation News via Email, but must be of an adequate size (at least 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels high, which translates to 13cm wide at 200dpi) and saved at JPEG 7 or 8
Depending on the complexity of the image, the resultant file size at the recommended Aviation News settings will range between 150Kb and 400Kb which will take an average of 5 minutes to send as an attachement using a 56k internet connection.
Picture files can be sent to the editor on floppy disk or Iomega Zip® Disks as Microsoft Windows format to the above address.
Your assistance following these guidelines would be much appreciated, as it is in all our interests to get the best results possible from your images.

Staff

Editor: John King
22B Willcott Street, Mt Albert, Auckland
Phone: +64-9 307 7849 
Email: editor@aviationnews.co.nz

Aviation News is published by:
New Zealand Aviation News Ltd.
PO Box 10314, Dominion Road,
Auckland 1446, New Zealand