December 7, 2012

Northwest Chess Blog to “Go Primary” for Tournament Reports in January

The Northwest Chess (NWC) blog, found online at http://www.nwchess.com/blog/, will “go primary” for most Northwest chess tournament reports beginning January 1, 2013.

What does this mean? Currently, short tournament reports for many USCF events in Washington and Oregon are posted on the NWC homepage at http://www.nwchess.com/, and eventually moved to the archived tournament news pages at http://www.nwchess.com/articles/news/tourn_old.htm. For the past couple years, many of these short reports have been supplied by former business manager Russell Miller. Under the new procedure, the NWC blog will become the “primary” online means of tournament results reporting rather than the homepage and archive pages.

Why the change? The change in reporting will free up time for the NWC webmaster (Eric Holcomb) to perform other tasks such as posting old magazine scans, while providing much greater flexibility in tournament reporting since blog posts can be longer and can be written by multiple bloggers with greater knowledge of the events they report on. In addition, blog posts can easily include photographs and/or links, for example to the USCF crosstable or to reports on other websites such as local chess club websites. Blog posts are also easy to edit if necessary, and are automatically organized in a database.

What if I currently report results on another website? No problem … if you currently report tournament results on another website or blog (such as the Idaho Chess Association does), simply make a short NWC blog entry with a link to the other website or blog, or ask the webmaster to post a link to the other website or blog in the list of completed tournaments, which will still be maintained.

Can I be a NWC blogger? Yes, if you are good at writing and reporting chess tournament results (both open and scholastic), you can request a blog authoring account from the NWC business manager. You will be expected to follow certain standards such as making only one blog post before the tournament, and one blog post after the tournament reporting the results.

How does this affect the magazine? The NWC editor will continue to solicit detailed tournament reports, including annotated games, high-resolution photos and the like, for publication in Northwest Chess. The magazine is still the best permanent record of important chess tournaments in the Northwest, and organizers and players are strongly encouraged to submit material to the editor promptly after events, by emailing editor@nwchess.com.

Northwest Chess is a non-profit organization which publishes Northwest Chess magazine representing the Washington Chess Federation (WCF), the Oregon Chess Federation (OCF) and the Idaho Chess Association (ICA).

Information: Northwest Chess: www.nwchess.com, e-mail info@nwchess.com.

Eric Holcomb
NWC Business Manager