Our step-by-step publishing checklist
💡 Need to create a new issue? Learn how here.
Our overall process is oriented around contributors. Here's how it works:
- Email pitch - a story or narrative from the worker's perspective
- Chat live - see one other, and become friends! We discuss the pitch, starting with desired outcome for the contributor from writing/publishing and ending with editorial vision alignment. We also set expectations: the full writing and editing process may involve multiple rounds of drafting/editing, and 2-5 hours
- Submit first draft - no fewer than 10 days before publishing, to give time and space for editing
- Chat live again - big questions (contributor's desired outcome, editorial vision alignment) and small details (anonymity, cover image, blurb, title, etc.)
- Submit final draft - no fewer than 5 days before publishing, to get perspective from new eyes to ensure draft feels in alignment
- Approve proofreading - no fewer than 2 days before publishing
- Publish!
We operate in the Pacific Time Zone (UTC-8:00 or UTC-7:00).
We publish new issues roughly bi-weekly. (Though there are some exceptions.) This includes publishing the new issue to the website, sending an email to our mailing list, and tweeting a link to the new issue.
There are a few different areas of responsibility for each issue. Who does what is determined during weekly meetings, over emails, and chat. Some responsibilities are collective. 👥
Each issue has two "leads" or publishers. We rotate this responsibility per issue.
- Informal "point of contact" that ensures everything above gets done
- Responsible for opening, managing, and merging the final pull request on GitHub
- Supporting and guiding Worker's Perspective contributors (TBA)
- Identifying major themes in the news (TBA)
- Title and blurb (everyone 👥)
- Proofreading and editing (everyone 👥)
- Worker's Perspective (TBA)
- News (everyone 👥)
- History (TBA)
- Song (contributor or everyone 👥)
Below is our former workflow/schedule. This is currently a bit outdated as we have moved to a more ad-hoc publishing model.
- Monday (Weekly Meeting)
- retrospective on previous issue 👀
- choose publishers and roles for next issue
- publishers to create new doc for issue draft and share; can use this Dropbox Paper Template (click "Create doc" in the top right corner of the template)
- publishers to create new agenda item for next week's meeting, in GitHub's team discussion area
- Wednesday-Thursday
- collective brainstorms ideas and content for next issue
- collect links to relevant news stories
- Friday — by end of day
- confirm issue theme or general direction
- confirm publishers (in case someone becomes unavailable, prefers to change roles, etc.)
- Monday (Weekly Meeting)
- begin writing draft ✨
- Tuesday
- check-in on progress
- talk internally and with guests on vision and strategy for our work
- publishers to create new agenda item for next week's meeting, in GitHub's team discussion area
- Wednesday
- publishers continue work on draft, collective is welcome to contribute
- Thursday
- publishers complete draft
- final draft shared with collective to proofread
- Thursday — by end of day
- collective proofreads and finishes QA
- publishers open pull request on GitHub, shared doc draft is closed
- any remaining edits happen on GitHub
⚠️ - final edits and polish
- Friday — by 9:00 AM
- pull request is auto-merged (triggering all automagic distribution) 🎉