Frequently Asked Questions
Okay, I love the mission, how do I jump in?
Great! Anyone can publish to this blog by simply signing up for the Journalism that Matters community and joining the Seattle Journalism Commons group.
While we want the group to be as open as possible to the public, please keep in mind that our goal is to advance quality, skilled journalism to enhance citizenship in our region, and we are looking for ideas and experiences that advance us toward that outcome.
Please don’t be shy though! Journalism that Matters first and foremost exists to promote a safe environment to share ideas and experimentation.
Also, if you’re not getting the right flavor here, go ahead and start you’re own group within JTM Online, it comes with the ability to create a custom collaborative blog just like this one! Read on for more info.
What is Journalism that Matters?
In our own words, we are an evolving collaboration of individuals supporting the pioneers who are shaping the emerging news and information ecosystem.
Since 2001, JTM has hosted 14 vibrant and catalytic “unconferences” that have inspired hundreds of widely varied media initiatives around the nation. We are now bringing our successful unconference format alive online by providing a place to connect and publish ideas, examples, and action to support robust healthy journalism in the new era.
feel free to read more about our mission and check out some of our accomplishments, but make sure you come back and join us!
I am starting up an awesome project, how do I connect with others who can help me make it a success?
So glad you asked! That is precisely why we are here. Here’s the juice:
Anyone who joins JTM Online gets the ability to engage right out of the box. You can do things like
1. Create a profile
2. Join a group
3. Post updates in the community activity stream
4. Add friends, send instant messages, and ping users with an @username mention
But the real sauce is in your ability to create your own group and start a collaborative blog on the JTM network. Instead of putting up with dry disorganized message boards, you can can use all the powerful features of a custom WordPress blog to connect with others and get your work done.
Creating a group is easy, just click “create a group”
Creating a blog is just as easy, when you sign up for your group, check off “create a blog” and blammo! You’re ready to publish and get down to business.
You’re blog can be public, private, or hidden. You can invite others on the JTM network to publish with you, or you can restrict it to only those who join your group. If you only want selected members to blog with you, there are ways to set those permissions too.
You can make it pretty, you can make it plain, but please, come on and make it!
Managing another profile on another social network…sounds like a headache.
Yeah, we hear you, managing your digital identity can be a monumental burden. Luckily there are great solutions out there for keeping track of all accounts, passwords, and other digital bits in one place (1Password and LastPass have a good reputation).
We are doing research into integrating with Facebook Connect so you don’t need to register, but there are some important features that would be lost with your profile, which is an essential part of the interaction tools we built for the community. For example you wouldn’t be able to find fellow entrepreneurs, community activists, media consultants, etc. in one click like you can now.
For now we ask that you take the few extra minutes to register, make yourself a nice lemonade, and then dig in and put the great tools we built for you to use.
P.S. We are always looking for savvy WordPress developers to help us find better solutions for this, please give us a holler if you have suggestions.
What if I don’t want every discussion to be out in the open, how can I control my privacy settings?
Groups and their associated blogs can be public, private or hidden. Public is as it sounds, private means that the content published can only be seen by members but the group, and hidden means that the group contents are not only private, but hidden from the directory so people in the community won’t know it exists and therefore can’t request access.
So you’re telling me I can create my own group blog with a few clicks and have it listed in a network of like-minded journalists and news enthusiasts?
Yes!
Can I really invite others to collaborate, share documents, send instant messages, host images, embed video, manage an email listserv, and show the world how important I am?
Oh Yes!
What can’t I do?
You can’t refuse the urge to get involved and become part of something wonderful.
If you have more questions, contact us, or post in the Help group. Please keep in mind that we are a lean operation with no full time staff, so we encourage you to play around a bit to help get your question answered.