Recently I published an article about some things that could be done in order to make the journalist module better. I will link the article below, but here are some proposals:
1) Charge for newspaper subscriptions, at least a minimal sum, and tax that money. This could diminish, if only a bit, the influence of sub4sub actions (that, btw, make the MM medal completely pointless), and would make newspapers a part of the economy.
2) why would there not be organizations for journalists? As the political module has parties, the military module has units, so too could the journalists have unions with their missions and tasks.
2.5) - the missions of journalists union could be daily or weekly, for instance, to gather a certain number of votes, comments, subs or tips (endorsements); if the union meets the goal, it could be rewarded with a bonus, and if not, it should pay additional taxes (within reason!)
3) working in a newspaper could be possible - maybe part-time? A newspaper could hire someone as an editor, a lector or a research journalist (to conduct additional interviews, gather information relevant to the article, contact the eAdministration etc), and the work would be priced differently if the person is a freelancer, a member of the same, or a different union than the paper they are working for.
4) have notifications for new articles from the paper one is subscribed to
5) maybe a small thing, but: in the Top5 articles we should see the name of the newspaper, not the owner; also, it wouldn't hurt to show the number of endorsements (as it is in the mobile app).
About the articles themselves...
There are a couple of "trinkets" that could be introduced relatively easy IMO:
- To make it possible (again) to change the size, colour and font of the letters!
- Audio clips, activated at least by clicking on them!
- Resizing images in the article, maybe by BBCode
- Reader counter - if it could've been made independently, it would be a piece of cake for eRep Labs!
- A BUTTON TO SHOUT THE ARTICLE ON THE FRIENDS WALL!!!
Formating could also be a bit more competent. For instance, if there already are codes for left, center and right alignment, as well as those for columns, why is it so difficult to actually make an article in two columns??!
Likewise, it would be of great help if the preview would be realistic - sometimes*, when the article is published, it's not formated the way it looked in the preview.
*yeah, righ, sometimes
An extravagance - if it wasn't a chore for someone, it would be very useful for articles to have pages, if need be. As a journalist who is in habit of publishing an occasional TL;DR, I would very much appreciate if the site would not force everyone involved to infinite scrolling.
An extravagance 2 - imagine if articles had tabs with different versions?! Like, one with and one without images (or with and without text); tabs for different language versions (instead of the "wall of text" this article will be); and so on...
I would love to know what others think about these proposals!
Here is my original article (serbian & english):
erepublik.com/en/article/2692246