Getting started at Wired Journalists

So, here you are.

You've signed up for Wired Journalists -- or come back after a long absence -- and now you're wondering what you're supposed to do here exactly.

One unique thing about Wired Journalists is that it's filled with smart, savvy, and knowledgeable journalists. Having an account on Wired Journalists is like going to a journalism school where everyone is a professor. There's a lot of people you can learn from.

Let's get started:

1. Edit your profile

First things first, round out your profile to share your own expertise and a little personal information to make it easier for your peers and colleagues to find you.

Look for your name at the top of the right rail and click Settings

• Photo: Upload a good picture of yourself that your fellow journalists will be able to recognize.
  
• Email address: Is it current? Any messages other journalists send you will go to this address.
• Full name: Make sure you're using your real, full name here to add credibility to anything you say or do here.
  
• Location: Set your Country and city or zip code to make it easier to identify where you're from.
  
• Title: Your job title goes here. Managing Editor? Reporter? Rockstar Web developer? Student? What do you do?
  
• Where I publish: The news organization where you work, or your blog, or the journalism organization you represent.
• Beat: Choose one of the options from this menu to make it easier to find each other based on the topic you cover most.
  
• Web site: A personal site, news site, or other place your fellow journalists can find you on the Web.
  
• Blog: A link to your personal or professional blog, if that's something different.
  
• Twitter URL: Be sure to complete your full Twitter URL here, not just your username.
  
• Publish2 URL: Let everyone know where they can find more of what you're reading. (Not signed up for Publish2 yet? Send Ryan Sholin a message to let him know.)
  
• LinkedIn URL: Include this to make it simple for your fellow journalists to find out where you've worked, and who else might be in your professional network.
  

2. Find your friends

Visit the Members page to search and browse through profiles.  Use the advanced search feature to find and filter peers and colleagues based on other criteria, including their beat, location, and Twitter URL.



3. Join a conversation

Check out the new forum and add your thoughts to any topic of conversation or start a new discussion of your own.

If you want to know what everyone is talking about, hit the button that says "Notify me of new discussions." When someone starts a new discussion, you'll get an email notification about it.



4. Join a group

See if there's anything you're interested in on the Groups page or start a new group of your own.

Here's a short list of some of our favorite groups:

• ONA09 - Are you headed to the ONA conference in October? Join this group to let other people know
  
• Get wired, get hired - The defacto group for journalism jobs.
• Content management systems - A group to discuss Web site content management systems from Ellington to Drupal to College Publisher to Expression Engine to WordPress and everything else. What's your ideal content management system?
• Brainstorming - You know those cool interesting articles that you can publish this week or even wait a year and it doesn't make much difference? This is a group for people who have ideas to share and people looking for ideas to write about.

5. Add your photos and videos

Round out your Wired Journalists page with a sampling of your photojournalism and video work, if that's your area of expertise. Upload photos and videos directly to Wired Journalists, or embed videos from elsewhere.

Thank you for making Wired Journalists the home of collaborative journalism on the Web.