To get news posted on Planet Princeton, please follow these simple instructions:

HAVE A STORY IDEA OR NEWS TIP?

If you have a news tip or story idea, please email tips @ planetprinceton.com or call (609) 375-8920 and leave a message. You can also text us 24/7 at the same number, (609) 375-8920. All tips are confidential. We do not charge to post relevant news stories about our community. We reserve the right to choose what to publish and to edit submissions. Thank you in advance for sending us your tips and news.

Please send news as soon as possible after an event or incident happens. Don’t wait too long or it is no longer news! (hint – more than a week is often too long. A month is definitely too long. The same day or following day is ideal. For breaking news, right away is best.) Your news should be relevant to Princeton area readers. We do not post content from SEO firms, infographics from companies, links or other content from marketing agencies. Our focus is on the people, news and events in the greater Princeton area.

If you are a business owner interested in becoming a Planet Princeton sponsor, please email ads@planetprinceton.com for information about banner advertising, social media options, and sponsored posts. Sponsored posts are clearly labelled for our readers.

DO:

Send your words as plain text within an email or as an attached text file. Send a photo or a few if you have pictures to go with a story. Please send photos as .jpegs. Please be patient. Also, we can’t attend every event, but we are happy to run photos or relevant events if you provide them and they render well on the website.

DO NOT:

Please do NOT send a Word document with everything formatted like you think it will appear on the website  (i.e.: with bold/italic or embedded photos). It’s a hassle to export everything properly from a Word document to our website. The text will not format properly for the web. Docx files in particular are a headache.

Please do NOT embed photos within any document. It is difficult to extract photos from documents and the quality will be poor.  Send us .jpeg files. Don’t send older formats like .tiff or .bmp (yes, people still try to give us those!). Do not send giant files of a few megabytes or more. Likewise, do not send tiny pixelated photos. A good file size range for JPEG photos is 80 KB to 200 KB. Photos that are about 700 pixels wide are ideal. Please don’t send or post PDFs if possible. 

Please do NOT email us files in other formats like Publisher files. We can read PDFs if that is all you have, but please make sure they allow for copy and pasting of text. We prefer plain text within an email. A plain text file as an attachment is our second choice, though we prefer not to open attachments because they sometimes contain computer viruses.

Please do NOT add us to an email list on Constant Contact or Mailchimp and expect us to pull the information from your newsletter. Those types of emails often go into the promotions or SPAM folder. They also often contain formatting that is problematic. You are better off sending your press releases as plain text in the body of emails and attaching photos. Make sure to include information about the subject of your release in the subject line of the email, including the topic and date of an event if the release is about an event. (The who, what, where, when, how and why. Yes, you would be surprised how many people forget to put the date, time or location in the news release!). Don’t forget to include a phone number and email for a contact at the organization. 

TO ADVERTISE:

To get your company’s marketing in front of our  60,000+ engaged, local monthly readers in the Princeton region and our growing social media network, please email ads@planetprinceton.com or call our office at (609) 375-8920.

We will be offering promoted event packages, a business directory, classified ads, and help wanted listings by March of 2020. Basic business listings will be free. Premium business directory listings with photos and links to social media will be just $75 per year. Classified ads will cost between $5 and $35 depending on the duration of the listing and whether you want to include photos. Help wanted listings will cost just $25 per post. This includes a cross-posting to our very engaged social media fans (as of January of 2020 – 24,000+ on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram combined). Stay tuned for more information.

OBITUARIES

Unlike most news outlets, we do not charge to post obituaries. We believe the ability to pay should not determine whose lives are chronicled in the news. Please send the text and a photo for an obituary to editor @ planetprinceton.com.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

We welcome letters and publish as many as possible, but do not post every letter we receive. If your letter is in reference to another media outlet, we encourage you to contact them directly. We may ask you to cite your sources if you’re making claims.Letters and editorials are posted on the home page in the opinionator section and clearly labelled. We pick and choose which letters to post to social media because of the large volume of letters we are now receiving. You must use your full, real name in letters and email the letter yourself or explain why you are emailing your letter on behalf of someone else. If  you send us a letter from you or on behalf of someone else, you must provide an email and phone number for the author for verification purposes, and cc that person via email if possible. We are not liable for the content of letters to the editor. We are protected under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

PETS

If you’ve found or lost a pet, please email text about the animal (where lost or found, detailed description, etc.) along with a .jpeg photo if possible to editor @ planetprinceton.com.

PHOTOS

If you have any photos for us (we LOVE great reader-submitted photos), please email them as a minimum 700-pixel wide .jpeg with a file size under 1 MB if possible to editor @ planetprinceton.com.

EVENT LISTINGS

We have a new and improved community calendar with a simple interface. You can upload your text and a photo in just a few minutes. Please make sure your listing includes text and not just a .jpeg of a flier. Text will make the event easier for our readers and Google to discover. Enter your events by going to the website navigation bar (hamburger menu on mobile) and select “add event” from the menu. In the near future we will be offering the ability to promote events on our home page. This will be a great way to promote registrations for galas and other events where tickets and registration are offered in advance. We will also offer the opportunity for regular contributors to log in and edit events as a premium feature. Stay tuned.

HOW TO SUPPORT US FOR HELPING YOU

THANK US PUBLICLY AT YOUR EVENT! A simple “Thanks to Planet Princeton” shout-out will make us all fuzzy and warm!

MAKE US AN IN-KIND SPONSOR! Email editor @ planetprinceton.com and we’ll send you a high-res version of our logo, which you can place on your poster, brochure, program or website.

BECOME A SUBSCRIBER! Your subscription will help pay local writers and college interns to do original reporting for us. It will pay for copies of open public records requests and legal fees related to those requests.  It will also help cover our technology costs like hosting. Subscription details can be found by clicking here.

Recommend/Share us with others who might enjoy our posts.

Be nice! Give constructive criticism and feedback. Be patient. Mean people suck, especially in the current political climate. We’re a small mom and pop indie local business in the community.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Email editor @ planetprinceton.com or call or text 609-375-9020. Please note that we receive an avalanche of email every day; if we don’t respond right away it’s not that we’re ignoring you. We can’t respond to all emails containing press releases.

Thanks for your consideration, for reading Planet Princeton, and for being a part of our community.

Krystal Knapp, Founding Editor