Headlines, Photos and the Boring Stuff That Makes It Look Professional

Your article is written and edited. It's a good article. And if you post it as a gray wall of text under a headline that says "Water Article Draft FINAL v3," no one will read it. Not even your mom. She'll say she did. Moms are allowed.

This lesson is the packaging. Headline, photo, caption, credit, links, sources. It's the difference between "some guy's blog post" and "huh, this looks legit."

Headlines: say what happened

The headline is the most-read part of your article. For a lot of people, it's the only part. So the headline has to be honest about what the story says, all by itself.

Rules Marge enforces with the red pen of doom:

• Be specific. Name the place, the action and, if you can, the number.
• Use an active verb. "Council raises rates" beats "Rates are raised by council."
• Match the story. If the article says "might," the headline can't say "will." If the story is about one council vote, the headline can't say "Pickleton in crisis."
• Keep it short. Many outlets aim for roughly 6 to 12 words. Long headlines get cut off in search results and social feeds.
• No questions, mostly. "Is Pickleton's water safe?" makes readers assume the answer is no. If you know the answer, say it. If you don't, you're not ready to publish.

Opinion headlines can argue. They should still be clear about what you're arguing: "Pickleton Should Have Let Voters Decide on Pipe Repairs." The reader knows the position before clicking. That's fair. They might click to agree or to get mad. Either way, they know what they're getting.

Subheads

For 600 to 900 words, you might add two or three subheads inside the article to break it up. They work like mini headlines: short, specific, telling readers what the next section covers. "What the money pays for." "Why one council member voted no." Readers scanning on a phone use them as stepping stones.

Photos: one good one beats five bad ones

An article with a relevant photo looks finished. Take your own if you can. For the Pickleton story: the water tower, a crew working on a broken main, the council voting, Rosa Delgado in her garden (with her permission).

Tips for beginners with a phone:

• Get close. Then get closer. Most beginner photos are a tiny person standing in a large parking lot.
• Show people doing something. A person pointing at a cracked pipe beats a pipe.
• Hold the phone sideways for a website header. Vertical for social stories.
• Don't use photos you found online. Photos are protected by copyright from the moment they're taken, according to the U.S. Copyright Office. Ask the owner, or use an image whose license allows your use, and credit it properly.

If you need an illustration rather than a photo (a concept, a chart-like graphic, an image for a headline card), ImageStudio makes AI images at 1024x1024, 1080x1920 or 1920x1080. If you use an AI image, label it plainly: "AI-generated illustration." Never use an AI image to show something that looks like a real event or a real person. Readers will assume it's a photograph, and that's a trust problem you can't fix later.

The hidden stuff inside your photo

Here's a thing most beginners don't know: a photo file carries information you can't see. It's called metadata, and the most common standard for it is Exif. It can include the date and time, the phone model, camera settings and, if location was turned on, the GPS latitude and longitude where the picture was taken. Exif has dedicated tags for exactly that.

So that nice photo of Rosa in her garden might contain the coordinates of Rosa's house. Some social platforms strip this data when you upload. Plenty of websites, blog tools and email attachments do not. Don't trust the platform to protect your sources. Strip it yourself.

• AVPrep runs in your browser and includes a metadata strip and an images tab. Run your photo through it before you post.
• ImageStudio for images you generate, so you start with a clean file at the right size.

Captions and credits

Lots of readers look at the photo and caption before they read anything else. So the caption has to stand on its own.

A good caption is a full sentence that says who or what is in the photo, where, and when. Present tense for what's shown, past tense for any extra context.

Spell every name in the caption against your notes. Caption errors are the sneakiest errors there are, because nobody edits the caption. Marge says captions are where accuracy goes to retire.

Links and a sources list

Online, you can do something print never could: let readers see your evidence.

In the text, link to documents when you mention them. Write "The city's rate memo shows..." and make the words "rate memo" the link to the actual memo. Link the words that describe the thing, not "click here." Nobody has ever wanted to click "here."

At the bottom, add a short sources list. This is your source log from lesson 3, cleaned up for the public.

If you got documents by records request and can post them, post them. Readers who see the actual contract trust you a lot more than readers who have to take your word for it. And when somebody yells "fake news" in the comments, you can calmly point to page 2 of the contract, ideally over a cup of tea.

The byline and date

Put your name on it, and the date it was published. If you update it later, add "Updated" with the date and what changed. Readers need to know when information is from, especially on a story that keeps moving, like a water rate fight that has been going on since roughly the Bronze Age.