News Centre 1.1 Logging into the News Centre and creating your release LPO indirect

1. Open Internet Explorer and type in the following URL: 2. Select Windows Authentication from the dropdown menu 2. Select Windows Authentication from the dropdown menu

3. When the Windows Security box appears, please enter your full username and password and click ok You need to enter the full username so it should look like this: Please note your login is case sensitive You need to enter the full username so it should look like this: Please note your login is case sensitive

This is the News Centre dashboard You can set your preferences – this saves you work later. The system remembers some key data, including your location, station or beach name

Set your preferences – and click Save at the bottom. You can change these at any point or tailor them to individual news stories if you need to

Type in your headline – 80 characters max – and click Continue

The spellchecker reviews all text on the form The first sentence is automatically formatted in bold and is limited to 255 characters, around three lines in Word on the standard template Type in your news release. Alternatively, you can copy-paste from Word, etc, by clicking on the Paste button top left or by right clicking on your mouse and pasting. You can use bold, italics and bulletpoints from the menu above Use the blue ? help buttons for handy tips To get links to work, re-type the address in full. Dont worry if the font appears bigger – it will correct itself when published

Click on blue Select Location link.

Type in the location of the event or incident and click Zoom to place then OK, below

The lat-long coordinates will appear next to Select Location – this allows the RNLI website to tailor news stories to the readers location Select regions and topic fields Start adding photos at this point – the primary photograph appears at the top of your news release. If you plan to add a video, your first photo will appear below the news release

Complete the fields and click Upload. A progress bar will appear. Then click OK at the bottom of the pop-up box

You can add up to six photos You can add up to two videos – the primary video will appear at the top of the news release, the second video at the bottom. Insert the link from the video player (see next page)

Click on the Link symbol on the video player in the News Centre. This displays the full link - copy this and paste it into the video box. You can also use the Copy to clipboard button

Paste the video link into this box. Add a second video if necessary Put an interesting quote or fact into the Key quote field – copy it from your text, above. There is no need to use quotation marks If applicable, select lifeboat stations and beaches You can add a photo of yourself - a small JPEG is best, cropped to a square. Warning – the photo should be appropriate – a smiley face linked with a tragic story will be offensive. You can also upload for other people and overwrite names

Next steps – choose when your story is published – either immediately or at a point in the future – once it has been checked and approved by Communications Then click Save as draft Save your work!

News Centre 1.1 Publishing your news release

Save as draft puts your news release into your own work basket – but you still have to send it to Communications You can check how your news release will look by simply clicking on the headline – this throws up a full preview version. You can also print this version

Find the dropdown menu with your mouse and click on Publish/Send for approval. (The status will change to Pending as Communications reads your story)

Once Communications has approved and published your news release you will see the status change to Approved Dont worry if the headline has added a 1 or 2, etc. This will not appear on the published version

News Centre 1.1 Making changes to your published news release

To change, remove or delete an approved and published news release, click on the dropdown menu Unpublish removes the news release from the website and changes the status back to draft – this is useful if there is suddenly a question mark over the contents Edit leaves the news release on the website but allows you to make changes. But remember you will need to resend it for approval again Delete destroys the news release entirely Unlock can be used if the system says the news release is locked for editing. Sometimes this occurs as a technical glitch but it may also mean somebody else is editing the document – proceed with care!

News Centre 1.1 Sending your news release to journalists

First create a new and write an introduction to the journalist and add a link to the press release. Method 1 – copy paste your news release into an Warning: this may not work with all and browser combinations. See Method 2

Go to your published news release and click on Print this page

Press Ctrl and A to mark the entire text. Then press Ctrl and C

Press Ctrl and V to paste your news release into the body of the

First create a new and write an introduction to the journalist and add a link to the press release. Method 2 – if copy paste does not work

Go to your published news release and click on Print this page

Then press Ctrl and PrintScreen to effectively take a snapshot of the screen Tip: enlarge or reduce the size of the screen with Ctrl and - or +. Tip: remove the webpage header with F11 Tip: enlarge or reduce the size of the screen with Ctrl and - or +. Tip: remove the webpage header with F11

Press Ctrl and V to paste your news release into the body of the