Best practices for sharing news from other sites
Here's how to do it effectively, easily, and ethically.
You must credit your original source
You never want to be accused of stealing someone else鈥檚 work, so always credit your source.
Ideally, your news story headline should start with 鈥淔rom (news source): (Name of Article).鈥 It makes it clear that you鈥檙e getting media coverage from other outlets, but also gives credit up front.
Once you鈥檙e working in the body text of the news story, provide a link back to the original story near the top of the news entry on your site.
鈥楥opy and paste鈥 everything isn鈥檛 necessary
You can copy and paste a news article into your site, as long as you give credit and get approval from the original publisher to do so. However, that鈥檚 not what we recommend.
Carrying duplicate content on your site is considered poor form in the web world, and you could be punished by search engines if your site has too much duplicate content.
Instead, we suggest writing 2-4 original sentences about the article, and then linking back to the original news story on the media outlet's website. That way, you鈥檙e not hosting duplicate content, plus you鈥檙e providing context while simultaneously giving credit to the original source.
Use photos with caution
Because of how our templates are set up, it鈥檚 not best practice to upload the news story photo with the 鈥淎dd media鈥 button. That鈥檚 because it doesn鈥檛 allow for photo crediting, and we already know that giving credit is crucial. We鈥檙e working on a fix for that, but it hasn鈥檛 been implemented yet.
It鈥檚 best to embed the photo in the content body and then give photo credit at the bottom of the article, if you use it at all. If you have your own photo to use instead, that鈥檚 even better.
Use University articles when possible
Keep an eye out for articles about your department or college on the main University website at . You can share those articles on your site without asking for permission beforehand.