Users, Outlets, and Groups¶

Plucky Wire is built around three concepts: Users, Outlets, and Groups. Almost everything else in the platform — uploading a story, downloading a story, billing, permissions — is shaped by how these three relate. This page explains the model so the rest of the documentation makes sense.

Users¶

A User is an individual person with an account on Plucky Wire. Users are typically reporters, editors, or other newsroom staff.

A User does not exist in isolation. Most Users belong to one or more Outlets — the news organizations they work for — and through those Outlets they participate in one or more Groups. A User can also belong directly to a Group, separately from any Outlet, which is how administrators help run a Group without representing a particular newsroom.

This layering reflects how local journalism actually works. Reporters do not publish independently; they publish on behalf of an Outlet, and Outlets collaborate through larger associations and consortia.

Roles¶

Every User has a role that determines what they can do. Plucky Wire uses four roles arranged in a hierarchy, from least to most powerful:

Readers have view-only access. A Reader can:

Search and view stories shared with the Outlet or Group
Cannot upload, download, or change any settings

This role is for people who need to see what the wire is offering without participating in the exchange — board members, observers from partner organizations, or staff who only need to monitor coverage.

Members are the most common role. A Member can do everything a Reader can, and additionally:

Upload stories on behalf of their Outlet
Download stories shared by other Outlets
View analytics for their Outlet's stories

Moderators can do everything a Member can, and additionally:

Edit Outlet or Group settings
Invite new Users
Manage existing Members and Readers
Promote a Member to Moderator

Owners can do everything a Moderator can, and additionally:

Manage Moderators (change their role or remove them)
Remove other Owners
Delete the Outlet, or remove it from a Group

A User can only manage someone whose role is at or below their own. Owners can change anyone's role; Moderators can change Members and Readers but not Owners; Members and Readers cannot change anyone's role. This is what lets a newsroom safely invite several staff to use Plucky Wire without worrying that an enthusiastic newcomer can accidentally lock the Owner out or rewrite Group policy.

Freelance Photographer Permission¶

Some Groups work with freelance photographers who contribute photos to the Group's shared library independently of any story. To support this, Groups that have direct photo upload enabled can grant individual Users a separate photo upload permission.

This is a per-User toggle, not a role. It sits alongside whatever role the User already has — typically Reader or Member — and applies only to photo uploads. It does not change story-upload, download, or settings access. Group administrators manage it from the same screen where they manage roles.

Roles Are Independent¶

Roles attach to a specific Outlet or Group, not to the User as a whole. The same person might be:

An Owner of their Outlet, with full control over their newsroom's settings and members
A Member of a regional Group, able to upload and download on behalf of partner Outlets but not change Group policy

This separation is what makes it possible to recruit volunteers to help run a Group without handing them administrative control of every member Outlet — a distinction that matters most when a news collaborative is just getting started and depends on a few committed people to curate stories.

Outlets¶

An Outlet represents a news organization — a daily newspaper, a weekly publication, an online-only news site, a broadcast station, or any other entity that publishes original journalism.

When a story is shared on Plucky Wire, it is shared by an Outlet rather than by an individual User. That distinction has practical consequences:

Ownership is institutional. The Outlet, not the reporter, controls how the story can be used. If a reporter changes jobs, the story stays with the Outlet that published it.
Other Outlets know who they are receiving content from. The Outlet name and verification status travel with every story, which matters for attribution and for trust.
Licensing happens at the Outlet level. Legal agreements about content reuse are made between Outlets, not between individual journalists.

An Outlet can belong to more than one Group at the same time. A regional newspaper might participate in a statewide press association, a national investigative network, and a topical group on environmental reporting — each with its own membership, content pool, and license terms.

Groups¶

A Group is a set of Outlets that have agreed to share content with each other. Groups are the layer where collaboration actually happens.

In the most common arrangement, every Outlet in a Group contributes stories to a shared pool and can use stories from any other member. The Group sets the terms of that exchange through a content license that all members accept on joining. But the model is flexible enough to support other arrangements:

One-to-many distribution. A single newsroom creates a Group through which it offers its content to other Outlets. Members can join and pull stories, but only the originating newsroom uploads. This is a common pattern for outlets publishing under Creative Commons licenses.
Student journalism distribution. A college newsroom creates a Group open for surrounding professional newsrooms to join and pull stories from. This is a common pattern for collaboratives organized by universities.

Groups also vary widely in scope and purpose:

Geographic Groups bring together the Outlets in a particular region — a state, a metro area, a multi-state corridor.
Topical Groups focus on a subject area, like environmental reporting or education.
Investigative Groups coordinate long-term projects that span several newsrooms.

Each Group has its own administrators (Owners and Moderators) who manage membership, set policies, and decide which content licenses apply.

How the Pieces Fit Together¶

The three layers nest like this — a Group contains Outlets, and each Outlet contains its Users:

graph TD
    G[Group]
    G --> OA[Outlet A]
    G --> OB[Outlet B]
    G --> OC[Outlet C]
    OA --> U1[User 1]
    OA --> U2[User 2]
    OB --> U3[User 3]
    OC --> U4[User 4]
    OC --> U5[User 5]

When User 1 uploads a story, it is attributed to Outlet A and becomes available to every Outlet in the Group. User 3 at Outlet B can then download that story for republication, under the terms of the Group's content license.

The same Outlet usually sits inside several Groups at once, and its relationship to each one can differ. A Group may be publicly listed — discoverable in Plucky Wire's directory — or invite-only. And in some Groups your Outlet both contributes and pulls stories, while in others it only downloads what another newsroom distributes:

%%{init: {'themeVariables': {'fontSize': '18px'}, 'flowchart': {'nodeSpacing': 50, 'rankSpacing': 45, 'padding': 12}}}%%
graph TB
    G3["Climate Reporting Hub"]:::group
    G4["State Press Association Hub"]:::group
    O(["Outlet A"]):::outlet
    G1["Border Counties Hub"]:::group
    G2["Rural Communities Hub"]:::group

    G3 -->|"Download only"| O
    G4 -->|"Download only"| O
    O <-->|"Uploads and downloads"| G1
    O <-->|"Uploads and downloads"| G2

    classDef outlet fill:#eef2f7,stroke:#3c4257,stroke-width:2px,color:#1a1f36;
    classDef group fill:#ffffff,stroke:#3c4257,stroke-width:2px,color:#1a1f36;

    linkStyle 0,1 stroke:#7b8293,stroke-width:1.5px;
    linkStyle 2,3 stroke:#a72536,stroke-width:2.5px;

Here, a single Outlet belongs to four Groups at the same time. It uploads to and downloads from the Border Counties Hub and the Rural Communities Hub, but only pulls stories from the Climate Reporting Hub and the State Press Association Hub. Whether a Group is publicly listed or invite-only is set separately from whether your Outlet can upload to it — the two do not depend on each other.

Content licensing happens at the Outlet level. When Outlet A shares a story, Outlet A selects the license that story will be shared under.

Multiple memberships are possible. A user might belong to several Outlets; an Outlet might belong to several Groups.

Keep Reading¶

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