It’s important — and easy — to let your fellow Hibernians know what the members of your division, or county or state board, are doing to live the motto of our Order. Whether you are marching proudly in a St. Patrick’s Parade, playing in a fundraising golf outing, presenting a scholarship check to your local Catholic school, participating in a pro-life event or loading trucks with collected food for a Hibernian Hunger project, spread the good news with your brothers throughout the country by submitting an article and photo to your Hibernian Digest.
Division- and county-level articles should be no more than 150 words. State articles can be as many as 300 words.
Articles should be concise: say only what’s required, say it only once, and stop.
Every article should serve two purposes: promulgate the news of actions your division, county or state has taken, and inspire Hibernians in the rest of the Order to take similar action in their own areas.
An action photo (or more than one) should accompany the article. Articles with clear photos are more likely to be read than articles without them. Readers find photos of Hibernians doing something much more interesting than a lineup of officers staring at the lens. The check presentation “grip-and-grin” picture is fine, but an additional photo of Division members doing whatever it was to raise the contributions is even better.
Cellphone photos are great for social media, but usually reproduce poorly when ink hits paper in a printed publication. So get a brother with any kind of real camera — set to high resolution JPG-format, and the highest image quality — to take the pictures. Submitted photos should be at least 1 megabyte (MB) big. Again, Hibernians taking action are preferred.
Each picture should have a caption that, without adjectives, quickly tells readers the Who, What, Where and When of what’s going on in the picture. A bad caption of three people attending an FFAI event in the state capital would be: “Hibernian FFAI leaders.” A good caption would be: “At the State Legislature in Albany on June 7th, Hibernians Mike O’Malley, left, Jerry Corrigan and Patrick Ryan helped to lobby senators to adopt the McGuinness Principles.”
When taking pictures, get close, fill the frame with the subject(s). At a division dinner, no one needs to see 30 feet of floor and all the chandeliers, we just want to see Hibernians. Make sure the subjects are in bright light.
Submitted photos become the property of the AOH and may be used for other Hibernian purposes.
Photo credits will be given, if provided. If you want your by-line on the article, say so. Sometimes the name of the person submitting the article will be placed at the end of the article, at the discretion of the editor.
DEADLINES are the first of every even-numbered month: Feb. 1, April 1, June 1, Aug. 1, Oct. 1, and Dec. 1. Submissions received after the deadlines will not be edited or included. If you miss the deadline, resubmit just before the next deadline.
Submissions should be emailed. The email address to send the articles and photos to is EditorHibernianDigest@yahoo.com. There is no other email address of AOH articles and photos. The subject line of the email must include the state and the words “Digest submission.” The headline or first sentence of the article should reveal state, county and division. It’s hard to know what to do with a submission that says, “Division 9 raised money for Project St. Patrick.” Division 9 where?
Make sure your article is in Word or txt format. It should be an attachment to your email. Same with photos: All photos should be JPG-formatted attachments. Do not embed photos into Word documents, attach them to the same email as your article.
All submissions must include the name, city, state, division and phone number of who to contact if the editor has questions.
Advertising is important to help defray the cost of publication. We’ll list the costs of ads, based on size, in the next email blast.
Email John O’Connell, the Digest editor, with any questions about articles or photos to EditorHibernianDigest@yahoo.com.
