JTM Online has been designed to assist JTM members by providing social networking technologies including member profiles, a searchable / sort-able members directory, friend connections, and public and private messaging between members.
Interactive activity streams
At the social heart of JTM Online are activity streams – one for each member and one collective activity stream for all members. Members can publish updates directly to their activity streams, reply directly to others’ updates, collect a list of favorite updates, recommend others’ updates, and so on. Activity stream updates are also published automatically to mark events such as a member joining JTM Online or two members becoming friends.
Multimedia including photos, videos, and documents can be directly embedded, i.e. viewable within JTM Online, simply by pasting a link into an update from popular sites like YouTube and Flickr.
Each activity stream update has its own permanent URL, useful to people and to search engines alike, enabling direct references and a well seen architecture.
JTM Online will enable members to:
- Have a member profile
- View all public JTM sessions and the rest of JTM Online
- Mark activity updates as favorites and build a list of favorites as references
- Be listed and “discoverable” by others in the JTM members directory
- Create online sessions to discuss topics
- Create sessions to organize and develop projects and initiatives
- Share interests and membership in other organizations
Each online session has its own activity stream, which is both the primary means of communication within a session and a record of all that has occurred in a session. JTM Online members can publish updates to either their own profiles or directly to any session of which they are a member. Each update is given its own URL.
Sessions members can:
- File share documents, images, audio and video files, and archives comprised of other files.
- Categorize documents
- Receive notifications of session activity via email, including weekly digests and receiving an email for every update
- Create a session events calendar for meetings and other events
- Track one or more outside RSS feeds, creating activity stream updates automatically for each new item in the RSS feeds. Sessions may thus act as virtual water coolers, created to discuss the items in one or more RSS feeds, or as official, JTM-based representations of outside organizations.
JTM Publishing
JTM Publishing is a network of WordPress-based blogs and websites hosted within, and integrated with, JTM’s own website and JTM Online. Developed to support JTM members, their initiatives and the JTM organization itself JTM Publishing gives members the opportunity to create a blog or website for their own work and use. Initiatives can develop their own web sites for promotional purposes and/or create a blog to report project progress. Future unconferences can use JTM Publishing to provide custom domain names and host and publish their own web sites integrated with JTM’s main site and JTM Online.
With no technical knowledge beyond regular operation of an Internet browser, individuals and groups can use JTM Publishing’s web content management system with its multiple offering of themes created by WordPress, customized themes and various levels of technical support. As one of the most popular, interactive and flexible content management systems available, WordPress is used on tens of millions of blogs and websites wordwide.
Why blog or host with JTM?
JTM’s version of WordPress is customized to the needs of journalists.
Journalists should not need to become “web masters” just to have an online portfolio or professional site. Depending on what level publishing package you need, hosting with JTM can relieve you of the technical headaches associated with hosting, security, upgrades, backups, database maintenance, and so on. We also plan to provide to special themes for journalists.
JTM Publishing provides specific features to support journalism found through WordPress.com. One feature set, called “After The Deadline” adds contextual spelling, style, and grammar checkers. Another is “Reference Maker,” which helps in adding citations, captions, and footnotes. You can print cited works within a post or page, and decide which citation style you want from MLA, APA, Turabian, Chicago, … and you can even define custom citation styles.
Most of all, if you publish with JTM, your work will not be lost in a sea of millions of other blog updates by non-journalism oriented writers.
You can go to WordPress.com and develop a blog or website. But WordPress.com serves more than ten million customers, most of whom do not have a professional interest in Journalism.
Because of integration with JTM Online especially, updates to a blog or site in JTM Publishing flow directly into a relevant, supportive, and interested community. Opportunities for both professional social networking and discussion and incubation of new ideas in Journalism can be pursued in the same space.