How to Launch a News Collaborative

Set up a content-sharing Group — your news collaborative on Plucky Wire — bring partner newsrooms in, and start sharing stories under a Creative Commons license. Launching a collaborative takes a few hours of your time spread over one to two weeks, most of it spent waiting for partner Outlets to verify.

Joining an existing collaborative instead?

If your newsroom wants to participate in a collaborative someone else runs, see How to Join a Group. This page is for the person leading a new collaborative.

Before You Begin

This guide is for the person leading a new news collaborative — the editor, project manager, or director who will be its first Group administrator on Plucky Wire. You don't need any prior Plucky Wire setup; the guide starts from the homepage.

You will need:

• A valid email address you can check during sign-up
• The basic details for your collaborative: a name, a one-paragraph description, and a contact email — a shared inbox like wire@yourcollaborative.org works well

Note

The phases below are sequential, but only the first two need to happen back-to-back. Once your Group exists, you can spread the rest of the work across days or weeks as partners come on board.

Phase 1 — Create Your Account and Group

A Group on Plucky Wire is the closed circle of newsrooms that share stories with each other. Before partners can do anything, your Group needs to exist with you as its Owner — the role that has full administrative control.

1. Create your Plucky Wire account. Go to https://wire.pluckyworks.org, click Create an account, and fill in the registration form. You'll need to click a verification link in the email Plucky Wire sends you.

   See How to Sign Up with Email.

2. Start your Group. Once you're signed in, open Explore Groups from the dashboard and click Create Your Own Group. Fill in the Group's name, description, and contact email.

   For the configuration that matches a typical news collaborative, set:

   • Group Type: Closed — you approve each newsroom that requests to join
   • Public Listing: checked — your Group appears in Plucky Wire's public directory so newsrooms can find you, but they still need your approval to join

   See How to Start a Group.

The moment you submit the form, you become the Owner of the new Group. You're the only member, and there are no Outlets in it yet.

Phase 2 — Set Your Sharing Rules

Before any partner can upload a story, your Group needs at least one License — the legal terms that govern how shared stories can be republished. Plucky Wire ships with the standard Creative Commons licenses already available, so this phase is mostly a few clicks of configuration.

1. Pick your default license. Go to Settings, select your Group from the sidebar, and open the Licenses tab. In the Default License dropdown — the menu that opens when you click the field — choose the Creative Commons license you decided on in Before You Begin. The change saves automatically.

   See How to Manage Content Licenses.

2. Confirm which licenses partners can choose from. In the Allowed Licenses section, check any additional Creative Commons licenses you want available to uploaders. Most collaboratives keep this list short — just the default and one or two close alternatives. Click Save.

3. (Optional) Adjust other Group-wide settings. Things like a logo, edit alerts, and page view tracking live in the General tab of Group settings. Defaults are sensible; come back to this tab once you have a feel for how partners are using the Group.

   See How to Configure Group Settings.

Phase 3 — Bring In Your Partner Newsrooms

A Group with no partner newsrooms in it doesn't share anything. Each partner newsroom is represented by an Outlet on Plucky Wire — the platform's term for a registered news organization. There are three ways to bring partners in, and most administrators use a mix.

Approach	When to use it	Where to learn it
Add a partner Outlet directly from your Group's Outlets tab	You've already agreed terms with the newsroom and want them in the Group right away. The newsroom doesn't need to confirm.	How to Manage Outlets
Generate a signup link and share it with several newsrooms at once	You want a single shareable URL multiple newsrooms can use to register their own Outlet. Good for kickoff meetings, launch announcements, and conference outreach.	How to Manage Members → Create a Signup Link
Invite a specific editor by email	You want one journalist to be a Moderator or Owner of the Group itself, not just a member of a partner Outlet.	How to Manage Members → Invite Someone by Email

Because your Group is Closed, you'll also need to handle requests from newsrooms that find you through the public directory and apply to join. See How to Manage Members → Handle Membership Requests.

Note

Newly created Outlets are reviewed by Plucky Wire staff before they can upload. Verification typically takes 1–2 business days. Until verification finishes, those Outlets can join your Group but can't upload stories — plan your launch timeline around the wait.

Warning

Adding partner Outlets directly puts them in your Group immediately and counts them against your Group's plan. Existing Outlets you invite still need to accept the invitation before joining.

Phase 4 — Help Partners Start Sharing

Once your partner Outlets are in the Group, the people who actually do the work — reporters and editors at each partner — need to know how to upload their stories and how to find and download stories from others. The detailed guides below are written for those journalists, not administrators. Share the links directly with the editors and reporters at each partner newsroom.

For partners uploading stories

• How to Upload a Story — The manual upload form, including media attachments, embargoes, and license selection.
• How to Upload Stories with RSS — Streamlined uploads for partners whose CMS produces an RSS feed.

For partners finding and downloading stories

• How to Find Stories — Search, filter, and bookmark stories shared in your Group.
• How to Download a Story — Copy text, download media, and pull stories into a CMS via the per-Outlet RSS feed.

Tip

A common kickoff pattern is to schedule a 30-minute orientation call with each new partner Outlet, walking through the upload page and the search page once together. After that, the linked guides answer most day-to-day questions.

What Happens Next

When all four phases are done, you have a working news collaborative: a Closed, publicly listed Group, with multiple verified partner Outlets in it, and a Creative Commons license governing every story they share. The first uploads usually appear within days of partners completing their orientations.

The people who depend on you will see the collaborative this way:

• Reporters and editors at partner Outlets see your Group on their dashboard, can upload their own stories to it, and can search for and download stories from other partners.
• Partner Outlet administrators receive Plucky Wire's automatic notifications about new uploads and member changes in your Group.
• Newsrooms outside the Group can find your Group in Plucky Wire's public directory (because you turned Public Listing on) and can apply to join. Their requests land on your Membership Requests page for you to approve or deny.

From here, your job shifts from launch to operations — keeping partners engaged, handling new applications, watching for inactive Outlets, and tuning settings as the collaborative grows. The dedicated operations guide picks up exactly where this one ends.

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Next Steps

• How to Set Up Email Digests — The single best tool for keeping partners engaged once stories start flowing.
• How to Manage Tags, Series, and Boilerplates — Optional organizational tools that become useful once content is flowing.

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Troubleshooting

• I created my account but I don't see a "Create Your Own Group" button on the Explore Groups page: The button only appears for Users with a verified email address. Check your inbox for the verification email and click the link inside. If you've already verified, log out and back in.

• A partner says they signed up but can't upload stories: Their Outlet probably hasn't been verified by Plucky Wire staff yet. Verification takes 1–2 business days. Open your Group's Outlets tab and look in the Outlets Pending Staff Approval section — if their Outlet is there, the wait is normal.

• I want partners to be able to upload, but I don't see how to set up the license: Your Group needs at least one License before any partner can upload. Open Settings → your Group → Licenses tab and pick a default. Standard Creative Commons licenses are available out of the box.

• A newsroom told me they applied to join but I don't see their request: Membership requests only appear if your Group's Group Type is Closed. If you accidentally chose Open, partners are added immediately with no approval step. Check the General tab of your Group settings to confirm.

• A partner Outlet I added isn't appearing for my newsroom's reporters in search: Reporters at the partner newsroom need their Plucky Wire accounts associated with the partner Outlet. They can search for and join the Outlet from their dashboard — see How to Join an Outlet.

• Still stuck? Email support@pluckyworks.org. If your Group has another Owner, asking them is also a quick way to unstick a permissions question.