Article 18: Claiming Your Bio and Author Linking

The Sinclair Digital team is excited to introduce a new feature that links an author’s bio page to their stories. This update showcases the valuable contributions of our content teams while also improving the search ranking authority of station webpages by establishing a direct connection between stories and the author’s bio page.

What's New:

  • Claim Your Bio: Easily navigate to your bio package and claim it.
  • Contributor Field: A new optional contributor field now appears in story packages, turning the author's name into a hyperlink that connects stories to the author’s bio page.
  • Audience Bio Page: Once set up, the author’s bio page will display their 10 most recent stories.

Notes: 

  • The contributor field is optional and can be removed by clicking the “X” next to the bio name.
  • The byline remains a freeform field. However, modifying the name in the byline will break the bio connection since the system matches the byline text with the contributor field upon publication.
  • To update your display name on stories, simply edit your name in the bio package and republish.
  • This feature applies only to new stories moving forward.

 

Step 1: Go to your bio package and claim it as your own.

If you haven't created a biography yet, you can do so without impacting the station's people page by following these instructions: Sinclair Storyline Instructions. Otherwise, you may create a bio page as usual.

In the bio package, you’ll find a claim option in the right-hand panel.

Click in the area to link the logged-in user to the bio package, then re-publish the package to save the changes.

Note: This is a one-time action that links your bio package to your logged-in account.

Step 2: After claiming your bio package, create a new story package. You’ll now see a new contributor field available.

Notes:

  • The contributor field is only visible within Storyline and not on audience-facing pages. It works alongside the byline field to establish the connection. You may also see other "contributor" tags in this feed, such as those associated with different AI tools—these can be ignored. They help us track the usage of AI tools.
  • The contributor field is optional and can be removed by clicking the “X” next to the bio name.
  • The byline remains a freeform field, but changing the name will break the bio connection, as the system links the byline to the contributor field based on an exact text match at publication.
  • However, adding text to the byline (e.g., appending “, News Producer”) will retain the connection, and the audience will see a hyperlink to the bio package.
  • You can add multiple producers to the package by including their names in the byline and searching for their corresponding bio packages in the contributor field.

Audience Experience: 

As Jeremy Harris creates new stories, the contributor field will automatically display his linked bio, as established in the previous steps.

When an audience member views a story, the author's name will be hyperlinked to their biography page.

Clicking the hyperlink will take them to the author's bio page, where a section will showcase the author's 10 latest stories.