We gladly print your news items and photos

We only ask that your items involve Branchburg or Readington in some way. Examples would be upcoming events; citizens’ achievements; news about hometown businesses, clubs, churches and schools; friendly neighborhood gossip; etc. Look through our current online issues and you'll get the idea. Our tone is friendly, non-political and enthusiastically pro-hometown.

Items involving Branchburg should go to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Items involving Readington should go to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Deadlines

We specify our deadline for news items and photos for each paper as the 15th of the month previous. This means if  if you want something in the January issue, please submit it by December 15. Items received after the 15th of the month become iffy -- sometimes they get in, sometimes not. 

Emailed text is best, as simple as possible

The best way to submit news and photos is by email. The best format is just plain text in an email message, just as if you were writing to a friend. “Microsoft Word” and other word processing attachments are often time-consuming for us to work with. If you write your news item in “Word” or a similar program, it’s best to just copy and paste the text into your email message. Then we can just copy and paste your text into our system for editing.

Send photos as simple JPG attachments

Most digital cameras and scanners save photos in the JPG format. That's just how we like them! Please attach photos to your email message just as they came out of the camera or scanner. There is no need for cropping or resizing on your end or turning them into black and white.

The fewer photos you attach, the better. In most cases, it's best to send us just one per news item.

When taking or choosing photos for the paper, please remember to consider how the “lighting” looks. If the sun or a bright light is behind your subject, the subject will often appear dark, especially the facial features. We try to fix photos like this, but sometimes it’s difficult.

Three specific “Photo Don’ts”

• Please don’t send photos that have been inserted into Word documents or other programs. Those photos just turn to dots when we process them.
• For the paper, please don’t use photo-sharing programs like Snapfish or Kodakgallery, etc.
  
• Please don’t send photos taken with camera phones. (Well, unless you spot Bigfoot or a UFO…)

Why didn't your news item get in?

The most common reason is a "space problem." One of the little secrets of printing our papers is that we can't just add or subtract one, two or three pages if we receive too much or too little material for a particular month. We have to add or subtract pages in multiples of four -- that's how the printing press works.  Things don't always add up, so sometimes we have to make tough decisions on making the paper bigger or smaller. We try to base those decisions on timeliness of your material.  Please don't take it personally if your stuff doesn't get in a particular month -- it'll probably be in the next month! And of course, we try to be perfect, but sometimes we lose or misfile stuff.

About "negative" articles and letters to the editor

Our newspapers run very few negative opinion items. As monthly publishers, we can't provide timely opportunity for rebuttals.  But we're glad to hear your opinions -- sometimes we can turn opinions into articles that wouldn't require rebuttals.

Don’t have email capability? Use regular mail or fax

Again, email is best, but you can send news items and glossy photo prints by regular mail to:

The Branchburg News, PO Box 5351, Branchburg, NJ 08876

or

The Readington News, PO Box 153, Readington, NJ 08870

News items can also be faxed to 908-526-5558. Of course, faxed photos can't be used in the papers.