Guidelines for Contributors

Become a scout

We’re looking for analysts, journalists, designers, entrepreneurs, executives, technologists, multi-media story-tellers, bloggers, photographers and data visualizers worldwide to help us chronicle life in the connected culture.

We call our contributors scouts.

If you’d like to contribute, send an email with your background, areas of interest and links to your past work to: help AT wemedia dot com. Read on for more about the topics that interest us.

Wanted: Global media analysts, story-tellers and trend spotters

Thanks for your interest in contributing to We Media. We’re eager to include new voices and new ideas. We hope these guidelines will help you produce creative, compelling and useful stories and visual experiences to share with our community.

Read On To Learn More About:

• What’s We Media?
• Who’s it for?
• Story Guidance and Themes
• Author Responsibilities, Values and Conduct
• Promoting Your Post After It’s Published
• More on The Big Idea

What’s We Media?

We Media is a media innovation company. We publish the We Media web site, organize a global network of media innovators, leaders, practitioners and investors, we produce conferences, workshops and other events, and we manage a non-profit media think tank and futures lab.

We Media is also a big idea and a global movement to make the world better through media.

The We Media web site provides news and analysis to help anyone create, operate and sustain ventures in a media-centric culture powered by everyone.

We Media features analysis, trend spotting and commentary on business models, partnerships and opportunities for innovation – and on media’s role in the connected culture. We write about transformational ideas, brands, activities and people, design and cultural ideas, as well as businesses, policies and breakthroughs that influence how we access and experience media.

Last but not least, We Media offers inspiration and ideas on how to use media to change the world for the better – and it shines light on creative individuals, businesses, social ventures and boundary-shattering experiments built to do so.

We Media is designed to inform and provide practical knowledge for professionals in a wide variety of industries and sectors that produce, use or invest in media products and services. It’s also designed to inspire dialog and connections among readers, contributors and members of the worldwide We Media Community. That’s an eclectic and ambitious network of executives, entrepreneurs, creators, investors, funders, community activists and innovators who share our interest in the unfolding story and applications of We Media – and in learning from, connecting and working with each other. You can learn more about memberships here – or get started with a free membership in the community’s online social network, wemediacommunity.org.

We Media is a privately held media and information company founded in 2007 by media analysts Andrew Nachison and Dale Peskin. The company produces media, strategic insights, live events and provides business planning and strategic consulting for commercial and nonprofit clients worldwide.

The web site also provides information about the We Media conferences, awards and community organized with iFOCOS, the nonprofit media think tank and futures lab founded by Andrew and Dale in 2006.

Who’s it for?

We Media is for the new creative class of technology entrepreneurs, dreamers, inventors, investors, story-tellers, journalists, business leaders, social activists and digital media producers who are fueling a relentless cycle of innovation in communications. The outcome is uncertain. New companies, systems, designs, metaphors and knowledge networks are emerging to serve the We Media culture. Old companies and systems are straining under the relentless pressure to adapt, innovate or vanish.

We Media is written for three overlapping audiences with mutual interests and shared destinies:

1. Executives, leaders, producers, creators, story-tellers, marketers and investors in media-related businesses who need an efficient source of relevant analysis, ideas and inspiration to keep up with industry developments, trends, deals and opportunities collected from a variety of sources and industries worldwide.

2. Leaders in other businesses who want to apply We Media concepts to their companies. Key idea: In the connected culture, every company is a media company.

3. People from all walks of life who care about how media is created, distributed and sustained, who creates it and how it influences our understanding of the world and the quality of life in our communities.

We’re interested in media in the broadest sense, whether it’s journalism from big-budget mainstream media companies, technology platforms from investor-backed startups, non-commercial story-telling and organizing from NGOs, activists, community groups and philanthropists, small-scale alternative, independent or experimental media from dreamers, artists and entrepreneurs, or media produced by companies and groups that don’t even think of themselves as media. We Media is about the interplay of all these activities and worlds.

Story Guidance and Themes

We’re looking for analysis, profiles and articles that focus on innovation, best practices and opportunities. We’re also looking for reporting on big ideas, trends, controversies and challenges. Vignettes, photos, videos, graphics and data visualizations are welcome. Our perspective and interests are global – and we’re trying to connect ideas and innovators worldwide.

We Media also aggregates coverage of business, editorial and creative developments in this evolving landscape and provides timely analysis and practical insight on how to use and sustain media in the connected culture.

We Media is published in English.

We’re looking for two types of contributions:

• Short: 50 to 200 words. This could be a brief comment and link about a trend, news, data, quotes or a big idea. This may be original or point readers to something posted elsewhere. We’re also looking for concise collections of themed links, insightful graphics, beautiful design, videos, photos and short analytic briefs.
• Long: 400 – 1,000 words. These are longer contributions of original reporting, analysis and commentary.

All contributions should include some combination of interviews, links, multiple sources of information, data and reporting, graphicss, images, videos or other elements.

You should should aim to include a minimum of TWO links to other sources.

Our articles are organized around the following themes – and we’re open to suggestions for others:

• Brands: Identify changes, trends and thought leaders among businesses that use social media to meet business objectives. How are businesses rethinking their marketing, advertising and public relations aspirations and investments, WHY are they using social media, and how are companies rethinking their relationships to engage and connect with customers and partners empowered by media? How are brands becoming trusted sources of knowledge? What challenges do businesses face in a culture in which information floes more freely and rapidly – and how are they adjusting?
• Causes: How are advocacy groups, political and cause marketers expanding their influence and impact through We Media?
• Communities: How are communities of geography and interest shifting and adapting to new networks of information, knowledge and action?
• Creativity: How are the tools, techniques and processes of media production, distribution and sharing influencing creative processes in everyday life?
• Culture: How are human habits and behaviors adjusting to a culture infused and immersed in media produced by everyone? How is art, pop culture and every day life reflecting changing human behaviors in the connected culture?
• Design: How is the rise of the creative We Media culture influencing media, product and architectural design, and how does design influence the culture?
• Journalism: How is We Media influencing what we know, how we know it and how we apply information? How are traditional journalism institutions and new networks of knowledge transforming how society is informed?
• Deals & Partnerships: Who’s investing in We Media ideas and opportunities? Who’ collaborating to take advantage of open networks, crowdsourcing and new opportunities to build businesses in the We Media culture?
• Do Good: Who’s applying the power and potential of We Media to make the world better for more people?
• Power & Policy: Who are the movers, shakers and what are the big ideas and debates around government policies that influence how we access and experience media?
• How To: Best practices and practical tutorials on how to perform common tasks with digital media tools, or how to use new products and services to streamline and improve creative processes. These could include Top 10 lists of plugins, tips for podcasting, producing and distributing video, best ractices for mobile media or social marketing, how to recruit for talent, and other practical ideas for best practices and immediate application.
• Storytelling: Who’s using digital media in the most creative and inspiring ways to tell stories with power, conviction and impact?
• Technology: Spotlight the technology trends, concepts, services and products influencing the rise and evolution of the We Media culture.

Author Responsibilities, Values and Conduct

Like all users of We Media, if you choose to use or contribute to We Media you will be agreeing with our our Terms of Use – and that you are solely responsible for the accuracy of your contributions to We Media. We seek accurate and truthful reporting and commit to correcting errors. Our accuracy depends on that of our authors – and we ask for immediate notification when questions arise about published works or works-in-progress.

Promoting Your Post After It’s Published

Upon publication we strongly recommend you alert and send a link to anyone mentioned or linked in your post via email, and in other blogs you may operate.

How To Post

Approved bloggers will be instructed on how to register and post to We Media.

More on The Big Idea

We Media is also a movement. It’s about how we know what we know, whether through journalism and the shifting systems used to produce it, through social networks and our personal connections to people and organizations we trust, or through old and new forms of story-telling that travel side-by-side and surround us in the digital mediascape. It’s about politics, democracy and the power of us; and censorship and the power of control. It’s about information overload and a world of choice – and choices about how we live, learn and care for each other. We Media is at once a sea of noise and confusion, a day-to-day struggle for survival and achievement, and an infinite quest to harness the power of media, communication and human ingenuity for the common good.

We Media is a counterpoint to “The” media. In a world connected by digital information networks and devices, the power to produce and distribute media and communications services is in more people’s hands than ever before. That includes grass roots groups, bloggers and independent media creators, as well as institutions large and small that share space, time and attention with everyone else in the connected society.