Yes, it’s a new year for so many people in the county: students and teachers. With new years, come new things. This school year, teachers will be sending their school news in directly to us, so we at the Daily News thought it may be a good idea to give a few guidelines to our new contributors. For those reading this who aren’t teachers, this same advice applies to anyone who wants to send in photos to be printed in the paper.

• Send your school news to news@thewashingtondailynews.com. In the subject line, write School News: The name of your school (i.e. School News: John Cotten Tayloe)
• Make sure you email photos as attachments — please don’t embed them in any type of document. Text should either be included in the body of the email or as a separate document.
• When writing a caption for a photo, include the basics of who is pictured, what is happening in the photo, where it was taken and when it was taken.
• Identify everyone in the photo clearly (i.e. First row, left to right, followed by names). Include first names and last names, but avoid titles like Miss, Mrs. and Mr.
• Avoid sending in out of focus photos.
• We love photos that show action (i.e. children reading, playing games, etc.), but they are not required — shots of smiling or industrious faces are good too. If you do send in an action shot, avoid pictures of the backs of people’s heads — our readers love to see faces!
• If you are taking photos on a smartphone and are sending them from the smartphone — either to yourself to forward to us or directly to us —please make sure you send the image in the largest possible format. Often phones will give you the choice to send photos in a small, medium, large or original size. Original or large is fine.
• The same thing goes with any program you use to upload photos from a digital camera to a computer — or, you may be asked whether the photo is to be emailed or printed. Choose the option for printing. In both cases, we get a larger image, which means it will print better in the paper.
• We will print your image as soon as we possibly can, but we are unable to give an exact date of when your school news will run. If you have sent something to us but haven’t seen it in the paper after two weeks, you are more than welcome to send us an email checking up on your school news.

We love to get your school news — and any other news — and look forward to having a great year in print with the help of our newest contributors.