Introduction

On June 24, 2024, I set out on a monumental task. Combing through forum threads, dispatches, and files for the Eastern Pacific News Service, I set down a list of every single article ever written for the EPNS. With the title, the author, the edition date, and a link, I recorded all the news authorship TEP has seen in the past decade. When I was finished, I had recorded 335 articles. Now, after the release of the June 2024 Edition, there are 346 articles.

I will begin my analysis by considering the top ten contributors to EPNS. This leaderboard is, to me, a badge of honor for those who have dedicated hours of work to TEP. We will consider the circumstances under which each have accumulated so much and the implications thereof. Next, I will define the different periods and levels of activity within EPNS, and touch upon the causes of those trends. Finally, I will dive into article content and structure, which I will attempt to draw normative conclusions from.

Top Contributors

As of the June 2024 edition of EPNS, the top ten contributors of all time are as follows: Aivintis (40), Bachtendekuppen (37), Zukchiva (26), Tretrid (24), The Atlae Isles (16), Merlovich (15), Albrook (14), Vussul (14), Libertanny (12), and East Malaysia (11). There are 72 contributors in total, but only the top eleven have 10 or more, while only the top 36 have more than one. This suggests an exponential trend, with a top-heavy lean on the highest contributors.

Bachtendekuppen, Tretrid, Albrook, Vussul, Libertanny, and East Malaysia were all EPNS editors at some point. Three of them were also Delegates. For all six of these people, the vast majority of their contributions – if not all of their contributions – were made during a time when they were Editor or Delegate, where it might be expected of them to contribute regularly.

Out of the other four – Aivintis, Zukchiva, The Atlae Isles, and Merlovich – all were Delegates. While Merlovich has written 15 articles himself, only four of them were written before he was elected Delegate. Out of the eleven he wrote while Delegate, ten were Delegate Updates. The vast majority of contributions were made from an office where it might be expected of him to contribute regularly.

The Atlae Isles is precisely the polar opposite of this trend. Every single one of his own articles were written before he was elected Delegate. That said, he was indeed a member of cabinet for the whole period. Zukchiva, similarly, wrote only two as Delegate, with the other 24 being written outside of the office as a private citizen. One may still, again, consider him a part of the old guard nevertheless.

Most of my contributions were made during the last year. Eleven of the forty were expected of me as Grand Vizier. A twelfth was made from the Office of the UTEP Chancellor. A further ten were part of a different monthly series, the Foreign Newsstand – one might say it’s expected of me as a Foreign Councillor, but there are many foreign councilors and I note that the Newsstand has never been part of the Foreign Council, sanctioned by it, or discussed by it. The remaining 18 were written as a private citizen.

However, one cannot ignore the fact that former Editors and Delegates are the bulk of EPNS. Editors, while they hold the office, have much expected of them, and can sometimes keep EPNS alive single-handedly. Delegates might be expected to chip in at times, but considering most former Delegates on the list wrote mainly from the perspective of a private citizen, I think we can say that there is a very different trend here – high officials.

I do not think there is a political elite within The East Pacific, but I think it’s undeniable that current and former high officials are incredibly involved with the government. In EPNS and beyond, a small number of people are expected to do a lot of work, simply because there’s no one else to do it. When the various RPers and lower level staffers contribute only between one and four articles in their entire time in TEP, those who are higher level need to do more for EPNS for EPNS to work. Mostly, that falls on those officials most associated with EPNS.

Of course, in the case of many, that could be an endogeneity problem – Atlas was elected Delegate after contributing so much that he secured a place on the leaderboard, after all. It makes sense that those who make their mark on the region and work hard eventually count themselves among the high officials of the region – especially Delegates. However, in the case of editors, their contributions definitely follow their ascension to the position, and the success of EPNS is therefore entirely dependent on a single Minister doing a lot of work.

Overreliance on Editors is the single biggest danger of the EPNS. In the June 2024 Delegate Elections, I made a joke to incumbent Delegate Merlovich, who was running for a third term. I asked what he would do if the EPNS Editor “exploded.” The fact is, however, that when we lose an Editor, we tend to lose most of EPNS, if not the whole thing. When Vussul resigned, Merlovich picked up the slack and quickly found a replacement, but we’re not always so lucky. We need to be cognizant of this reliance, and combat it while the Editor remains. So far, we’re doing well, but we need to keep it up.

Eras of Activity

I consider December 2013 to April 2015 to be Active Antiquity. The first EPNS article was posted on December 2nd, 2013, by Prussia, a former Delegate of The East Pacific. In the coming months, editions were vaguely defined – at the very beginning, individual articles were posted separately in the EPNS forum thread. In this era, articles about TEP roleplay and gameplay were equally common, but most articles were provided by the person in charge of EPNS – Prussia, then Bachtendekuppen. Even when cohesive editions were introduced, multiple might be made in a month, and EPNS would not shy away from “breaking news” stories outside of these editions.

From May 2015 to October 2017 is the First Dark Age. In this period, there were no EPNS publications. Of the 57 articles preceding this Dark Age, 35 were written by Bachtendekuppen. Other contributors, like Xoriet and Severisen, only had a few to their name. The weight was on the Editor, or equivalent, and when that editor stopped contributing, EPNS fell apart. This Dark Age spans nine delegates, concluding finally with the appointment of Pendragonania as Editor by the Delegate.

In the period from November 2017 to October 2018, the Revival Period occurred. Although there was a much more eclectic mix of authors, there was a heavy emphasis on the editors of EPNS. When Pendragonania was Editor, most articles were written by him. When Libertanny was Editor, he wrote many as well. Tretrid was the only exception to this, as he was a major contributor without yet being put in charge of EPNS. Articles lengthened and increased in quality. Some experimentation, such as with the Interpacifican Media Office and the dispatch “News Delivery,” both of which ended quickly. However, this era immediately ended with the election of Fedele.

All three of Fedele’s terms, from October 2018 to October 2019, constitute the duration of the Second Dark Age, in which zero EPNS articles were published. As the literature suggests, government and community inactivity is the best environment in which to stage a coup d’etat. [1] [2] The inactivity of EPNS may be an attempt to bring about or exacerbate this state, or it may be a symptom thereof. The Second Dark Age ended upon the failure of the coup and the surge of activity colloquially referred to as the Second Reconstruction.

Starting during the Second Reconstruction and continuing into the as-of-yet undefined period which followed, I posit that the EPNS experienced a Renaissance, which would begin in November 2019 and last until January 2022. In this renaissance, we saw the return of high quality articles from a variety of authors. However, this remained, yet again, quite insular, with contributors like Tretrid, Zukchiva, and The Atlae Isles forming the bulk of EPNS. Other authors contributed, but rarely became regulars. In the Renaissance, media experimentation began again, with the Midnight Star Magazine pioneered by East Malaysia. Editors included Tretrid, East Malaysia, and Albrook.

The period following this Renaissance is a dappled patchwork of activity which I am tempted to call a Third Dark Age. However, unlike the previous eras fitting that title, there were EPNS articles, only few and far between. I will thus refer to it as the Gray Era. With the lack of willing contributors, once Tretrid, Zukchiva, and The Atlae Isles had stepped back, after EPNS had been too reliant upon them for too long, TEP turned to EPNS Lite. With shorter articles, framed as updates from different branches and ministries, EPNS Lite did not stick. Nor did a proprietary system in which articles were posted as they were completed, and then compiled into a monthly collection. Only two full editions were published.

The current period of EPNS, which started with the June 2023 issue, posted on July 6th, 2023, is what I shall dub the Golden Age. Now persisting for an entire year with consistent monthly editions filled with between six and eleven articles of great length and quality, averaging at about eight. Brought about by Vussul, and sustained by the efforts of Merlovich and Rosartemis, the Golden Age has been defined by branch- and ministry-centric reports and updates and experimentation such as with “sidebar content” featuring RPs, UTEP works, and more, as well as with the new Worlds to Build section of EPNS, run by East Malaysia. Thus far, this experimentation seems to be lasting.

Content and Structure

Speaking now from a normative, opinionated perspective, I greatly admired the style of EPNS in previous active eras. The further back one goes in EPNS history, the more flare and identity one can see in the articles. There’s something special about “Greyghost appointed as Vizier” (Tretrid, 2017) that “Praesidium November Update” (Aivintis, 2023) can’t match. There’s something special about “Milestones Mark Mighty Military” (Severisen, 2014) and “EPSA And NPA Take Warzone Asia” (Xoriet, 2014) that are so fundamentally alive, which “The Delegate’s Update” can’t compete with.

EPNS is a news service. It should have the soul of one. What it has become is a platform of government voices. This has been a necessity of the service. To sustain itself, it needs to rely on offices over individuals, and that is understandable. However, the style does not have to reflect that. What if last month’s Grand Vizier Address was split into three, smaller articles – “Proscriptions Issued,” “EPPS is Hiring,” and “Calibrating the Citizenship Office”? What if the Culture Update was instead named with a play on words such as “Pride Matters”?

The EPNS has blood coursing through its veins, pumping strong. That’s way beyonds any metric during my own Delegacy, which fell in the driest part of the Gray Era. However, blood is not life. The life of EPNS is in articles like “TEP's Technology” (Vussul, 2024) and “The Eight Hours War” (Altys, 2024). The ones with catchy titles and themed writing. The ones that are not just mouths of the government. In my Delegacy, I tried the latter. The Executive Branch Report was met with lamentations that EPNS was no longer posted to the forums. Equally, “The Eight Hours War” could have easily been entitled “N Day Report.” However, it wasn’t.

The thing that made looking through ten years of EPNS enjoyable was the snapshot of history and culture. Bachtendekuppen’s articles were charming third person perspectives on the government. Even as recently as the Renaissance, articles were focused on the content rather than the perspective. I think we should bring that back. Scheduled articles from certain offices are good, but they shouldn’t be framed as such. They should be about the branch or ministry, not from the branch or ministry.

If this effort is taken, to alter the titles, tones, and themes of articles that are already being produced – only a slight shift in trajectory – it can represent a complete transformation of the Eastern Pacific News Service. We can pull in more readers for more stories, because they’ll no longer let their eyes skip over the boring titles of reports they may just assume to be boring as well. EPNS is our strongest internal program at the moment, and we need to show that off as much as possible. Giving each article a fun hook and a journalistic frame could improve upon the great work we are already accomplishing.

It’s the same principle we apply to EPSA reports. The Windows Defender raids were iconic, and we recognize that. Overseeing Officer Eastern Alksearia has returned to forum reports. Furthermore, we’ve seen the same charm applied to Worlds to Build. In the schedule, W2B includes “Valsora Feature” and “Urth Feature.” The content we get, however, is “Socializing and Etiquette” (Aivintis, 2024) and “Urthvision XX: Now Broadcasting” (American-Cascadia, 2024). What if we saw that from the rest of EPNS?

Part of this is more interviews and opinion articles. There are two new Ministries – Recruitment and Endorsement Affairs. If they do not have anything to report on, perhaps they can write articles on why it was necessary to create those Ministries. Perhaps their Ministers could be interviewed. If there’s little legislation in the Magisterium during a given month, perhaps the Provost can spend their EPNS time writing an article calling the citizens to action, to join the Magisterium and write legislation themselves.

EPNS is a brilliant platform and it has been brilliantly filled. Our greatest problem to tackle has always been getting content on the pages. Now that we have it, I am pleased that we are moving on to a different problem. However, I think it’s an important one. If the style of EPNS is done right, it can become the best news source on the site. It’s already well on its way. We just need to take the extra step.