Call for Volunteers (Patreon)

To help us expand, we are opening up the doors for volunteers. If you have some expertise and time, we could use your help to help us meet our 2023 growth goals.

TECHNICAL

WordPress Editor - Technical: We’re seeking someone who can help update our website currently at malcontentment.com.

- Updating our existing template – review the code and find errors and ways to optimize

- Audit of plug-ins, what do we need and not need

- Some improvements to plug-ins that automatically add footers to stories and place in-line house ads. Specifically, we want to add a footer that is unique for each author that provides a mini-bio, their social channels, and how to support them directly

- Migrate to a new primary URL and make malcontentment.com a redirect (we’re aware of the SEO hit in doing this)

- We can work on SEO/SEM, graphics, and further optimization

- We currently use the Zox template and hold a full license for commercial use – we are open to moving to a new template if the transition can be made relatively painless

- This is a one-time project

Google Amp Editor – Technical: We’re seeking someone to help update our Google Amp implementation to improve the Google News experience.

- Understanding of Google Amp and CSS is critical

- Goal is to align the look and feel closer to the full WordPress site

- Currently, image carousels and polls don’t carry over to Google Amp. We need input on a WordPress plug-in that will carry over or, as we’ve seen larger news sites do, replace the carousel on Google Amp with a “to see the pictures click here” link that will take someone to the mobile-optimized website

- This is a one-time project

Zapier Zap Creator – Technical: We want to implement Zapier to make everyone’s lives easier. We have the talent but don’t have the time to learn a new tool. The scope is undefined, and we would look to you to understand what is possible with Zapier.

READER OUTREACH AND USER EXPERIENCE

Constant Contact E-Mail Automation: We’re looking for someone who can manage sending out a newsletter to our registered public users weekly. Understanding of Constant Contact is preferred, but we can teach you. You don’t need to do content curation. The newsletter would highlight the top news stories from our website, the weekly news podcast (starting February), and other content. The newsletter would be in a template. Attention to detail is critical. Total time would be around four hours a week on a Sunday, but as you learned the process, it would drop to under two hours.

Discord Admin: We’d like to try and restart our Discord, and we need an admin. Skills include understanding the technical side of Discord to optimize the experience, plug-ins, and add-ons, especially with permissions. The Admin would initially help with getting our community on Discord and creating discussions, followed by recruiting moderators that can watch the activity on a 24/7 basis. In full transparency, we will likely close the Discord server if we can't find someone.

Telegram Channel Manager: We need someone to manage our very ignored Telegram channel. Specifically, we are looking for someone who can download videos we highlight in the Situation Report and share in our working group, and post them to Telegram with a description. This would be an ongoing daily project; ideally, having three or four people working together to share the workload would be optimal.

Post Channel Manager: We need someone to manage our somewhat ignored Post channel. Post requires more than snippets like Twitter and is somewhat of a mini-blogging site. This requires additional writing skills and someone interested in finding Malcontent New’s voice on the social media channel.

Twitter Daily Report Build from the Situation Report: We need someone, ideally from Europe due to time zones, who can take the Situation Report and create a Twitter thread that publishes the maps and can write a daily Twitter thread with very limited details within 3 to 4 hours of the SITREP being published.

YouTube Editor: We are looking for someone who can take the daily podcast and convert the content into a YouTube video. This likely requires two or three people working together due to the timing of the release of the podcast and the amount of work needed. Our vision is to take the audio and add still visuals to it that reference what is being discussed. This requires an understanding of video editing software, the ability to independently curate creative commons and open source images and video clips, and using materials referenced on our social channels and in the Situation Report.

EDITING AND WRITING

Copywriter/Editor: We are constantly searching for a copywriter/editor. This isn’t for the Situation Report because of the immediacy of publication, and we believe most of our audience understands that some errors will slip through the cracks as they are written in real time. You would support our journalists by reviewing stories on our news site before publishing. The volume would be low at 1 to 3 stories a day, between 250 and 600 words.

Authors, Photographers, and Videographers: Have a substack or post on Medium? Want to get your content on Google News? Want another channel to promote your work? We’re always looking for content that meets our editorial standards. Regrettably, we can only pay in exposure at this time, which we understand is awful. More content means more eyeballs. More eyeballs mean more traffic. More traffic means more opportunities for monetization, which means we can pay people. We do not do exclusivity deals on unpaid content, and we can pay (United States) for unique content that is of strong interest and aligns with the current news cycle. We add our writers to our masthead, can help you set up a Muckrack page, and can provide press badges for events.

ANALYSTS AND GEOLOCATION

Analysts: We’ve had a lot of burnout as we approach the one-year mark, and we’re looking for people to help gather and/or analyze raw intelligence. Experience is not required. If you’re already combing the Internet for information, you’re already doing the work! Why not get your name on a masthead? If you have a knack for finding videos and pictures that aren’t already all over social media, pattern recognition, connecting the dots, reading between the lines, and putting mental puzzles together, we’d love to have you join our team. Be aware this can be emotionally draining due to the content you may be discovering and reviewing.

Geolocation: We have a new person coming on board, but we’re always looking for people to help with geolocation. Having first-hand knowledge of Ukrainian terrain and landmarks and high attention to detail will help you be successful. The key skills are understanding online tools to find street-level image repositories and a strong ability to read maps and conceptualize 2D images into a 3D world. Additionally, capturing additional cues, including time of day, lighting angles, and weather conditions, to determine when a picture or video was taken is a bonus.

If you’re interested, please e-mail david@malcontentment.com with the subject line: Volunteer Request.

Thank you for helping us grow!