Journalists at Common Ties Organize their Company with PBwiki

The award-winning journalists of Common Ties (commonties.com) write and publish intimate, real stories that illustrate who we are and how we are connected. Common Ties is a virtual company, with almost all communications occurring electronically. This decentralized and distributed approach makes it essential to have a good way to organize team activities.

Flexible Solution

From the start, the founder and editor of Common Ties, Elizabeth Armstrong Moore, used PBwiki as her primary tool for getting things done. For example, Elizabeth even used PBwiki to design and build the first Common Ties web site. She placed all her content on her wiki, and linked the pages together. That meant that instead of trying to follow a potentially confusing set of directives, the design team could flip through the wiki and see exactly how Elizabeth wanted the site navigation and flow to work.

Now that Common Ties has been up and running for several years, Elizabeth and her team continue to use it manage their entire operation.

PBwiki is our filing cabinet--it keeps the entire company organized.

— Elizabeth Armstrong Moore, Editor, Common Ties

Track Story Progress

Every story submitted to Common Ties is added to the wiki, along with related data such as the author’s contact information, photos, and the status (Has the contract been signed? Was payment made?). This allows editors and writers to track the progress of each story, as well as enabling a collaborative editing process. “PBwiki is great because if the writer wants to know what has been changed, you can immediately go to the revision history,” said Elizabeth. “You can even compare versions and see which changes were made.”

Private and Secure

PBwiki’s privacy and security are also essential to Common Ties’ business. “It’s important to protect your work—particularly in the publishing world,” said Elizabeth. “If you have a hot story, you need to protect it.”

Not only does PBwiki keep Common Ties organized, it also saves a tremendous amount of time and energy. While Elizabeth believes that Common Ties could operate on email instead, that would be “convoluted and time consuming.” She estimates that PBwiki saves her and her editors up to 2 hours per day each versus using email alone.

PBwiki is amazing. We wonder how we would do what we do without it.

— Elizabeth Armstrong Moore, Editor, Common Ties