Drafts and publishing
Photos
Where article photos come from, which licences Sudwire allows, how photos are credited and how to choose.
Sudwire adds a photo to each article when it finds one it's allowed to use. It looks in this order:
- The photo that came with the announcement, from official sources only.
- A free photo: Wikimedia Commons and Openverse (public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA), or the stock libraries Pexels and Pixabay. For a named place, like a town hall, Commons and Openverse come first. For a general subject, like a police car, stock comes first.
- No photo found: your default photo is used.
What's never used
- Licences that forbid commercial use or changes (NC or ND).
- Photos from other media outlets, and YouTube thumbnails.
- Logos, maps, flags, posters and portraits.
- Searched photos smaller than 1,000 pixels wide, or not wider than they are tall.
- A free photo already used on your site in the last 30 days.
Sensitive stories
Sensitive stories never get stock photos. A photo from the source is only used when a check finds no recognisable people in it, and free photos whose title or tags mention people are skipped.
Credits
Every photo is credited as Photo: followed by the author, the licence and where it came from, linked to the photo's page and, for Creative Commons, to the licence.
- WordPress: the photo is copied into your Media Library and set as the featured image, with the credit as its caption and in the credit line at the end of the article.
- Ghost: the photo is the feature image, with the credit as its caption. Pixabay photos only go to WordPress sites, because Ghost links to the photo rather than keeping a copy.
Choose which photos
In your site's Settings, Writing, Photos has four choices:
- Any free photo (the default).
- Free-licensed photos, no stock: the source's own, Wikimedia Commons and Openverse.
- Only the source’s own photos.
- No photos, use my default image.
Default photo
On WordPress, set a default photo in the plugin's settings (Newsroom, Settings, Default photo, Choose photo). It's used for every article without a suitable photo. On Ghost, those articles arrive without a feature image.
Each article's page on your dashboard shows where its photo came from.