From: Publisher Dan • 2024-01-25
Hello Wayves reader and... if I'm lucky, team member!
So, it’s 2024, and it’s time for the next phase in the Wayves reboot: building an editorial team.
I need to expand the team that produces Wayves: to return it to a functional collective with a bunch of people contributing decisions, ideas and work.
A year ago, I put this off because I wanted to have “the machine” running first — that is, relationships with a network of writers around Atlantic Canada, advertisers, a proofreading team, procedures for publishing & social media, and an enthusiastic reader base. All of that has gone pretty well. You probably didn't notice, but in December we did some tuning to the way the website looks and works and I'm quite happy with it - for now.
This is good news for you: it means that all that we have efficient procedures in place for all the drudgery, and you can chew into the fun part: identifying stories and getting them out there.
Wayves is publishing more articles than ever before, with a healthy income from advertisers to pay the writers, and most importantly, lots of reads on their articles.
Please, give business to the advertisers you see here, and mention that you saw them in Wayves!
So, now, it's time to rebuild the "Collective" part of the organization. We need a bigger team to
- discover more stories that need to be told;
- make decisions about what people need to hear about and don't;
- represent every geographic diversity, every walk of life, every letter and symbol of our alphabet soup and the ones in between;
- sniff for stories that are interesting and joyful, stories that haven’t been told, stories that need to be told, stories that piss off those mis-using their power.
Q folk in Atlantic Canada need YOUR antennae up for these.
We should be very roughly six people, give or take; that is: you. You should be:
- passionate about the role of a free press in a democracy
- called by the muse of journalism;
- eager or driven to poke into topics that are uncomfortable;
- able to offer a couple hours per month helping make decisions about Wayves stories and how it does business, and equally importantly:
- telling me when I'm barking up the wrong tree, and
- do this because it's important work, not for the money. The writers get paid, the rest of the collective does not. (The ad sales job is paid by commission, just like it's been for the last 30 years.)
This won't be easy: the first few months of editorial teamwork will be slow and awkward. You'll need copious amounts of patience and the ability to see evolutionary, not revolutionary, progress.
In the past, we’ve met face to face twice a month and done a lot of work by email, but I anticipate that we’ll be using some kind of online chat - a Facebook Message group, texting, WhatsApp, or Discord.
Want to be on the editorial team? E me - this link.
