Defines a date and time associated with this article.

There are several ramifications to consider then choosing a date: In general you would select the date and time (in the past) relating to when the event or happenstance being reported in the article occurred. In many cases if you are writing about some general information the current date and time (default) will suffice.

Future Dates
If you supply a date/time in the future the article will be considered to be "Scheduled" by the XDe and will not be visible to the public until that date and time. This can be very useful for providing automatic updates of news over time if you know of things that will occur in the future but will be too busy at the time to activate the article then.

Past Dates
If you have auto-archiving of news articles turned on in the preferences then you should also consider that supplying a date/time too far into the past may trigger the article to be archived. This all depends on your preference settings and if "Auto-Archive" is actually turned on (it is off by default)