Highlight is a cool tool, no doubt about it. If you're like me, it was your first intro to NowPublic and has brought you deeper into the workings of the site, and into contact with people like you, with a lust for sharing new stuff that you've found online and out in the real world. Highlight is kinda like a gateway drug, really: addictive, to be sure, but I promise you that it's legal.

When used to its potential, Highlight automatically sets you up to share news without falling afoul of plagiarism or vagueness: Your sources are automatically quotes, and the stuff you highlight just, well, looks different from the stuff that's in your own words. An ideal Highlight-generated article on NowPublic contains not only the highlighted text but also some additional info:

More detail, either via additional sources or eyewitness accounts;
Why you highlighted that particular story;
Mixed media: audio, video or photo support for your story.

NowPublic has an ever-growing body of images, audio and video that can be applied to your story via the crowdsourcing box below the main body of your published story. When uploading your own images, please make sure that you credit the source properly if it's a screen-grab, or, if the photo is All-Rights-Reserved, make sure to get permission to use that image, as nobody likes a lawsuit! To speed up the attribution process, many are now using a Creative Commons license, which allows you to share images with implicit permission: more info on that is available here.

To sum up, Highlight is meant as a springboard into the world of news sharing and user-generated content, allowing you to add your own voice to what used to be a one-way conversation. We all just have to make sure we're playing fair and acting in a transparent manner. If you have any questions, you may post them here.