The Trans Journalists Association web team has been hard at work developing a more formal membership platform.

Membership dues are still optional!

But this platform will bring us more insight about our active membership, streamline org communications, let you edit your own directory entries and profiles, and make it easier to find upcoming events or get involved with our work.

We hope that the new site and structure will give us more tools to understand who our members are, what programs you want, and how we can keep building and sustaining this community.

What do I need to do? 

1. Sign up for a 1-year, renewable membership.

2. Select "Legacy Slack/listserv TJA member" when you choose your "groups" at the end of your application.

3. Wait until you receive an email confirming your membership.

4. Log in to your account.

5. Using your new members dashboard, request access to any additional online spaces you wish to join.

6. Explore the website! There are a number of new, members-only pages, like events, user directories, and more.

7. Let Kae know if there are any issues: petrin@transjournalists.org

Okay, so which membership type am I?

We have an FAQ and a page that explains more about the membership tiers and addresses some common questions that our membership has asked. 

But here's a short version:

• Journalist member

• • You work in journalism in any capacity — full-time, part-time, or freelance/independent

• Student member

• • You’re in some sort of educational program and aspire to work in journalism

• Community member

• • You’re invested in our work and do not work in journalism

  • You do any paid work that involves sending press releases on trans coverage topics to journalists

  • • Even if you also freelance — you should sign up as a community member if this describes you
    • You can convert from a community member to a journalist member at any time if your professional situation changes
    • If you are a longtime TJA member in this boat and have questions about it, please reach out to Kae!

  • You just think we’re neat 

• • Your mom can join this membership type

This is to keep track of members and support requests we’ve had from non-journalists who want to follow our work more closely, as well as people who are interested in moving in to journalism and do not yet have clips (e.g. can't be verified for our journalists-only spaces).

Broadly, we hope the addition of the “community member” membership will also be a good place for our members who have left journalism and want to stay involved with the org, but don’t necessarily want to be on a bunch of journalism-specific email lists.

How does the optional membership donation work? 

We want the organization’s resources to continue being accessible and affordable, especially because so many of our members are freelancers or independent journalists. So membership is, by default, free. 

However, we ended up going with a membership site that offers improved safety, security, and usability — and, as a result, is more expensive. So if you are interested in supporting that (and all of the TJA's other work), please consider donating! 

There are two ways to donate: directly, as an annual flat amount when you sign up (which is NOT tax-deductible), or through our fiscal sponsor, as a monthly or annual amount (which IS tax-deductible).

We hope that cis ally journalist members and non-journalist community members, in particular, will contribute membership donations in solidarity and in support for our work.

If 30 people signed up for a $5/month donation, it would cover the site costs for up to 500 members; if 50 people signed up, it covers the costs for up to 2,000 members.

Some big changes (long version)

A few changes going forward:

• You must have an account on this website to be considered a “TJA member” eligible for TJA-specific opportunities

• • Listserv and Slack membership are no longer 1:1 with “TJA membership”

  • The TJA will still maintain Slacks and listservs for journalists, but they’ll be optional spaces for people who want them! 

  • • If you want to join the Slack or listserv, and you’re a journalist, you can

    • But you can also fully keep up with our organizational news, professional opportunities, etc, entirely on this site without having to join anything else

  • This has been a request from a lot of members and we’re excited to deliver on it. 

• The TJA will be moving away from sharing organizational news/updates through the listservs. 

• • If you want to keep up with org news, it’s now all in one place on the new website!

  • The new platform will send emails, event updates, registration and location info, volunteer opportunities — everything

  • This listserv space and the Slack will remain primarily for members as a place to discuss, share work and opportunities, etc. 

• The existing jobs listserv will receive listings from the new jobs board.

• • You can view the posted jobs (very few right now) 

  • Those job postings will be paid (we’re experimenting with price points) 

  • People can continue to email free job postings/freelance opportunities to the jobs@transjournalists.org address directly

• The freelancers directory will be moving over! To learn more about directories, check out our FAQ.

• • If you want to be listed in the new freelance directory — which is only viewable to approved hiring managers and fellow freelancers — check the freelancers directory on the question about which directories you want to be added to

  • We’ll be reaching out separately to remind people currently in the freelancer directory of this change

• We have added a PR directory in lieu of a wire/press release service

• • If you want to be listed as a journalist who wants to receive PR pitches, requests for coverage, etc, check the relevant form in the directories field on your membership application

  • This directory will be available to the members who are in it, as well as to the community membership non-journalist and ally members

  • • This is a new system and feature, so if you want to use a feature like this and have any feedback on how to make it more useful to you, please let us know

• You’ll be able to directly request access to other TJA spaces from the new site

• • This means less admin time for us, adding and removing people from things, and more time to build new programs for members!

• Our public newsletter will become less focused on organizational news and more focused on trans coverage, our members’ work, recent research, et cetera

Tl;dr

If you're still reading this absurdly long post — thanks for doing so. And I hope you're as excited as I am about all the ways this will make TJA membership more accessible and navigable for all of our members.

All best,
Kae