Wildlands Publishing Coop - Empowering Community Through Publishing

Worker-Member Info

Community Cohort Application

Got an interesting digital-media problem? Need to build an essential digital service for your community/project/business?We're offering discounted membership, consulting, coaching, website hosting, and technical and development services for a few select community members with interesting digital-media problems, challenges and opportunities that we can solve together.Wildlands Community Cohorts are well-resourced, collaborative, peer-learning environments. The resources we create, and the knowledge and skills we develop, will become part of the Wildlands ecosystem, to benefit your peers and the greater community — while protecting your proprietary and confidential information and resources.Example problems for digital publishers and organizers:<ul><li>Community resource guides</li><li>Social networks and community organizing</li><li>Online commerce and storefronts</li><li>CRM —&nbsp;Community (or Customer) Relations Management</li><li>Events calendars</li><li>Email newsletters with interesting integrations</li><li>Shared digital-knowledge libraries: videos rescued from YouTube, organizational histories, community archives, etc.</li><li>... what else?</li></ul>If you'd like to learn more and apply for our 2026 cohort, pop us a note using the contact form below, and share a brief outline of what you're trying to solve and how you can contribute to a peer-learning cohort.

Wildlands Digital Media Commons builds advanced, open source digital-media resources for journalists, publishers, artists, organizers and entrepreneurs.We work collaboratively and share what we make to reduce costs and build resiliency.Drop us a line to get involved.<a target="" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="/hire-wildlands">FOR COMMUNITY</a> •&nbsp;<a target="" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="/join-us">FOR WORKER-OWNERS</a>

Build. Share. Grow.

Our workshops empower local journalists with the skills and knowledge needed to effectively share stories that matter to their communities. We focus on the principles of ethical journalism and practical storytelling techniques.

Fan's mourn Kobe Bryant's death at a vigil at Staples Center on January 26th, 2020. 

Community Journalism Workshops

We design and implement initiatives that foster community engagement and participation in local issues. By leveraging digital tools, we help amplify voices and drive collective action.

Community Engagement Initiatives

Our online resource hub offers access to a wealth of materials, guides, and tools to support digital publishing and community organizing. Members can explore a variety of topics tailored to their needs.

Online Resource Hub

Create, edit, publish and promote using open-source tools such as WordPress. Plug in to a managed hosting environment, and access 24/7/365 community support and service.

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Digital Publishing

Use email, events and calendars, resource guides and directories, advertising and CRM to sustain and grow your business, community, services and projects.

Revenue & Community

Wildlands is built around in-person support, coaching, and DIY builds. Work with peers to solve problems, learn new skills, and launch your media project in supportive cohorts.

I followed Don Kao, a Chinese American LGBT activist, around for weeks on an assignment from New York Times photo editor James Estrin. I captured this moment of Don helping a woman fill out paperwork. It exemplifies how hands-on and willing to help Don is, especially among LGBTQ youth.

Peer-to-Peer

Grow Your Own Digital Media

Cooperation is the way of the future and our shared origin. It is a transformational strategy for survival and flourishing. Wildlands Digital Media Commons uses a mutual-aid approach to build a new kind of mass media ecosystem that helps individuals and communities thrive.Our intention is to incorporate as a cooperative business governed according to co-op ethics, such as the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_Principles">Rochdale Principles</a>.We envision an open-source, secure, inclusive digital commons that can supplant the coercive, extractive, nonconsensual surveillance capitalism of today's attention economy.Want to get involved?<a target="" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="/hire-wildlands">FOR COMMUNITY</a> •&nbsp;<a target="" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="/join-us">FOR WORKER-OWNERS</a>

Services to help members preserve digital content securely and ensure long-term accessibility and cultural heritage.

An architectural highlight: The Stuttgart library

Archiving & Preservation

Collaborative creation and maintenance of open source tools tailored for community-driven digital media publishing.

Open Source Platform Development

<ul><li>Data portability: Take your work anywhere. No locked-in, proprietary systems.</li><li>Forward compatibility: Open source means the platforms we use exist in a public commons. They are resilient, tested, accountable.</li><li>Long-term: Work with, and help build, a digital medium that will be there as long as you and your community need it.</li></ul>

Digital Sustainability

<ul><li>Wildlands is committed to mutually-beneficial cooperation and reciprocity.</li><li>Wildlands is pluralistic and practices solidarity and inclusion.</li><li>Wildlands is built on mutual responsibility and shared accountability.</li><li>Wildlands is dedicated to privacy and security in its business and community conduct.</li></ul>

Cooperativism & Mutual Aid

<ul><li>We work together to reduce our reliance on extractive/dependency-producing systems.</li><li>We welcome participation by independent workers, organizers and creators.</li><li>We help each other strengthen our digital-publishing, platform-development and management skills.</li><li>We're cultivating an ecosystem, and will work like an agency to provide common resources to our worker-members and community cohorts.</li></ul>

Happy Mother’s Day

Please tag @hyneseyes on Instagram for credit, thank you 

Independence & Empowerment

<ul><li>Arts &amp; Culture: Build platforms to support creative, cultural and civic life outside of extractive information economies.</li><li>News &amp; Civic Life: Connect journalists and civic advocates with skills-building, resources and digital tools beyond the broken attention economy.</li><li>Community: Organize and share socially, online, without being tracked and data-mined, to create and sustain the life you want to lead, and the world you want to live in.</li></ul>

Birds,egrets, return back at dusk.  Almost silhouettes in the orange sunset sky.  It's rainy days here i.  Monsoon.

Organizing Alternatives

Wildlands Principles

Connect with Wildlands

We are professional digital publishers, software engineers, designers, marketers, documentarians, journalists and artists who realize that banding together will give us access to resources, skills, knowledge and experience that alone are harder to reach.We work with individuals and organizations who need to improve their online presence, build/sell/share digital tools and products, and support their online and offline communities.You are:<ul><li>A technology freelancer or contractor working independently</li><li>An organizational representative who wants to upskill and learn how to do more with the available tools and resources<ul><li>Website and digital projects manager</li><li>News, literary press or magazine staffer</li><li>Community and nonprofit group employee or volunteer</li></ul></li></ul>We will share the following resources:<ul><li>Shared, affordable hosting using a premium WordPress host</li><li>Access to plugins and other “agency” tools</li><li>Project management, invoicing tools</li><li>An online community and knowledge repository</li><li>Business/professional insurance for digital projects</li><li>Aspirational: Health, retirement benefits (for freelancers)</li></ul>What we can do alone:<ul><li>Work as a team member on a larger project</li><li>Build individual sites or small-to-medium features on existing sites</li><li>Consult on an hourly basis for training and technical support</li></ul>What we can do together:<ul><li>Combine our efforts to develop or sell larger projects, for example:&nbsp;<ul><li>Community resource guides, online directories, online knowledge repositories&nbsp;</li><li>Tech stack for publishers: website, email, newsletter, social, CRM, fundraising, commerce</li><li>Help organizations migrate their digital systems to different platforms/environments</li></ul></li></ul>How it works:<ul><li>Each member contributes towards the infrastructure:<ul><li>Fees for hosting, online meetings, etc</li><li>Operations costs for managing the membership, marketing and promotion, and other operational costs</li></ul></li></ul><ul><li>We have regular monthly member meetings to identify opportunities and collaborate</li><li>Weekly working sessions (support groups) where people are able to move their projects forward with support and help</li><li>Drop-in question and answer sessions for all types of technical support</li></ul>