Writers, bylines and columnists

Everyone who writes for the newspaper has a profile in the writer register, whether or not they have a WordPress account. A byline is then more than a line of text: readers can reach a writer page with portrait, roles, biography and published work, and editors choose for each article how the writer is presented.

The writer register

Open Posts › Writers. The list shows every writer with type (internal or external), title, roles, status and number of articles. Internal writers are linked to a user account; external writers, such as guest columnists and letter writers, need no account.

The writer profile

Field	What it does
Title	Shown after the name in the signature, for example “economist”. An article can replace it with its own Title in this article.
Signature	Automatic: staff sign standard articles with the signature box, guest writers with name and title after the text. Name and title after the text: always that short line. Signature box with photo: the box with photo, name and title, also for a guest writer, without an e-mail address.
Contact e-mail	Shown on the writer page. Leave it empty to use the linked account’s address, or tick Do not show an e-mail address. Addresses are protected against harvesting.
Roles	Editor-in-chief, News editor, Editor, Leader writer, Columnist, Reporter, Reviewer, Contributor. A person can have several; the most senior is shown above the name.
Status	Active writers are featured. Inactive writers keep their page and archive but are not featured among columnists or at the top of the writer list. Archived writers still sign their old texts but have no page and no link.
Quote and Biography	A short line under the name and the biography on the writer page. A “Read more” break shows the first part until the reader expands it.
Cut-out portrait	For the columnist format: a PNG with transparent background, at least 900 × 1000 px, cut at the chest, facing into the page.
Square portrait	Used when there is no cut-out portrait, shown round. At least 800 × 800 px.

Writers in the article

In the article, Genre & writers has a search field: type part of a name and pick the writer. Staff are listed first. Add several writers and drag them into order; the first is the main writer. Add guest writer creates an external writer directly from the article. See the field map for every field in the box.

Guest writers with the signature box

A regular guest, for example an expert who writes now and then, can sign like staff. Set Signature to Signature box with photo. The box then shows photo, name and title and an arrow to the writer’s page; guest writers get no e-mail address in the box. The biography follows as a short footnote under the box, so write it as a full sentence, such as “Lena Holm is a marine biologist and writes about the coast for the Coastal Review.” If the text was first published elsewhere, the line about the original follows the biography; see republishing.

Byline presentation

Presentation	What readers see
Default for the genre	The genre’s usual presentation, for example Columnist for a column. The default for new articles.
Standard byline	Name and title, with the signature box above and after the text according to the site setting.
Standard byline, signature box after the text only	A clean opening, often with a drop cap, and the signature box with e-mail at the end.
Columnist	The writer’s name in the article head and a writer box at the end, with no hand-written signature needed.
Columnist, portrait on the front page	As Columnist, with the portrait on the front page.
Guest writer	Marked as guest, for example “Guest column”, from the register automatically.
Unsigned	No byline. Use sparingly and according to the newsroom’s accountability policy.

Each genre suggests a presentation and drop cap, which can be changed per article.

The writer page

Each active writer has a public page at an address in the site’s language, such as /author/name/ in English or /skribent/namn/ in Swedish. It shows portrait, roles, biography, contact and articles, with news separated from editorials, comment and reviews.

Old signatures in the archive

When the register was introduced, hand-written signatures at the end of older articles were matched to writers. Where the platform now prints the byline itself, the old line is hidden on display; the text in the database is not changed and every change can be undone. Pseudonyms and one-off signatures stay as they were.