Rewards for freelance galnet journalists... Possibly a new career path?

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

I've often commented on how with this being a sandbox game we make our own stories, wars are fought, alliances forged, pirate gangs and criminal masterminds erradicated, systems brought to their knees by criminal activity, ground bases assaulted, heroic rescues of hostages and downed pilots, economic booms / recessions managed and famines/outbreaks supported, yet galnet still insults us by generating only weekly statistical reports for health / security / tech difficulty / etc. Surely this has to be good justification for encouraging more freelance reports, specifically factual journalistic coverage of in game happenings rather than self serving PR press releases. Such pieces should be written from the perspective of a journalist recapping recent events and relaying information gleaned from statements by NPC's affiliated with the relevant BGS factions.

For example:

For the past three days the Exioce system has been ravaged by a war being fiercely fought between opposing local factions Exioce Imperial Society, and the independent Exioce Democrats. A spokesperson for the Order of Mobius, the systems governing faction, stated that they are relieved to see the two sides have came to a ceasefire while terms are negotiated and looks forward to the near future whereby peace will have been restored to the system. The Order of Mobius are still collating reports of damage and casulaties, but are confident that the era of post war reconstruction will instigate an economic boom in their system and as such are appealing for traders to bring medicines and auto fabricators to the systems starports to be assist in the reparation.

*This war may not have happened it was just an adlib with a randomly selected system name and then some minor factions from that systems name used to flesh out the example article*

So with the example above, which is the sort of thing I'd expect to see in a galnet article when something happened, a war, it gets reported, and a trading opportunity broadcast. It adds flavour to the galaxy, and could tie into local articles from exioce's local news feeds:

Exioce Imperial Tribune:
In a war that has plagued this system for three days, in the name of our much exalted emperor, loyal imperial citizens have repelled the attempted incursion into the Exioce system's governance by the contemptuously independant Exioce Democrats. Statements released by the Exioce Imperial Society thank pilots who fought on their behalf for their contributions and dedicated service to the empire. The imperial society are taking a moral high ground and have started repairs and treatment for facilities and people injured during the war. You can support their efforts by supplying them with medicines and autofabricators.

Exioce Independant Journal:
Despite the recent heroic efforts of altruistic pilots who fought and died for the cause in the conflict zones opposing our imperial repressors we regret to inform the citizens of Exioce that the Democrats forces were defeated. An unnamed source within the Exioce Democrats has said that they are now in a weaker position than they were and need support of local pilots and residents more than ever to assist them in recovering from the ravages of the recent war. While the credibility of unnamed sources is always questionable at best, given the amount of donation missions appearing on mission boards across the systems starports trying to raise funds for the Exioce Democrats, it is certainly plausible. This journal supports the democrats and urges its readers to assist them where they can.

Exioce Observer:
The Order of Mobius released a statement condeming futility of the recent war between the Exioce Imperial Society and the Exioce Democrats, citing all the collateral damage and lives lost as "the embodiment of petty politics gone wrong". The statement goes on to say that the Order of Mobius are glad to see the previously warring sides are now at the negotiating table and looks forward to the appropriate reparations being made. To assist this they are lowering the tax in medicines and auto fabricators to encourage local traders to bring them to the system.

So we have four little news articles, reflecting three BGS factions point of views, and a little insight into the system's current status. Now if every war / famine / economic boom or bust etc got reported in that manner we'd have a very lively galaxy wide press. Problem is that takes a lot of writing, those man hours have to come from somewhere, and almost everyone who plays the game would prefer that more developers were employed rather than authors.

SO... what I'm proposing is give players incentives to write news articles showing coverage of recent / current BGS events in game with viewpoints from multiple factions. Such incentives could be store credit for cosmetic items, or even exclusive cosmetics. Or give the journalists in game credits / rank progression. Better yet make journalism a new career path, or link it to superpower reputation. For example, if someone writes up and submits three or four articles covering an imperial BGS event telling the story from multiple viewpoints,they would gain some imperial reputation / progression.

Obviously these would need vetting, but after a year or so of collating player submitted news articles there would be a large repertoire of articles that were suitable and or had been published, they could be reverse engineered into templates to be automatically updated with faction, character and system names, to be reused as BGS events take shape.