austraLasia 1492
Would you like to win a DVD on St. Francis de Sales
and Annecy?
ROME: 17th March 2006 -- Given that today is St. Patrick's
Feast day, and that here in Rome someone said to me "St. Who?", and
that we ought to celebrate even though it's Lent, and that I don't have
a DVD of St. Patrick, but one of St. Francis de Sales...... here is
your chance!
Within the week, austraLasia should reach
#1500. It seems a good opportunity to mark that as a minor
milestone, in the following way. Send in an item of news before
or up to March 22, that's next Wednesday. The item which is
chosen from any news writeup which arrives between the moment of
publication of this number #1492 and next Wednesday 22 March, 6 pm Rome
time, wins the DVD.
Some indication of the criteria which will be used
for the choice:
1. The quality of the content - not of the
language. Given that there are many readers of austraLasia who
have English as a second, third, fourth.... language, it would not be
fair to include quality of English as a criterion, but it is fair to
ask that the content be (a) of Salesian interest (b) newsworthy.
2. The news 'shape': no more than 3 main
ideas, no more than 7 lesser details. This most likely means three
paragraphs, but that is only a guide.
3. The length: guided by criterion 2, the
total length should not be longer than 20 lines. It may be
considerably fewer.
4. Headline, total length not exceeding 70
keystrokes. The headline to this item, for instance is a little less
than that. It doesn't give you much room, I realise, but part of
the test is to come up with just a handful of striking words which give
the essence to the news item.
5. A one or two line summary of your news item
or, rather, of the key point. Why this? For those of you
who receive austraLasia by RSS/XML, you will realise that part of the
trick here is to provide a one or at most two sentence summary which
people see in their 'reader'. It is on that basis that they
decide to read on or not. It's like picking a book off the shelf
because you like the cover or the short blurb.
No other criteria! Should you have an item of
news that can't wait until 22nd or until #1500, that's fine. We
can publish it earlier - and if is still the best by the time #1500
comes up it still wins. Fair enough?
I look forward to responses. The last winner
(who came up first with the three 'capitals' in South Africa, was from
China Province and is now enjoying his 900 pages plus 'Unpublished Don
Bosco'.
As they say in the classics, 'Ya gotta be in it to
win it!'
_______________________________
AustraLasia
is an
email
service for
the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an
agency
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