User features
As a registered user, you have access to a number of site features. Most are accessible from the user menu that appears at the top of the page after you log in. Here are some of the things you can do as a registered user:
- Edit your user profile and include a photo of yourself, contact information, a short bio, and any other details you want to share with other readers. (Click on your profile in the user menu, and then click on the Edit button at top.)
- View a list of other registered users. The list is only visible to registered users, though any reader can view a user's profile. (Click on user list in the user menu.)
- Network with other users by using the connections (i.e. "friends") feature or posting messages to another user's profile book. (When visiting the profile of another user, click on the connections button at top, or click on the profile book tab at the bottom.)
- You can also upload media files to the private gallery on your profile page, viewable only by those users to whom you are connected. (Click on the private gallery tab and follow the instructions there.)
- Let others know about events or important announcements by posting to our listings section. (Click on submit in the user menu.)
- Set up a blog on our site. (Log in, click on the blogs menu at top, and select set up a blog.)
- Manage your subscriptions to our email newsletters. (Once logged in, click on the subscriptions button at the top of the page to change your subscription settings.)
- Post comments with your user photo listed alongside and a link to your profile page. (When you are logged in, any comments you post are automatically linked to your profile page.)
- All of your posts and articles in InTheFray Magazine are automatically listed on your profile page. (When visiting on a user's page, click on the articles tab at the bottom.)
About our content
Like the people profiled in its pages, InTheFray Magazine has a personality and style all to its own. Some magazines toss their articles into a mishmash of generic categories — news, commentary, art/photography, cultural criticism, travel writing, book reviews, and so on. InTheFray publishes all these kinds of content, but we’ve taken the time to work out some organizing principles that reflect the magazine’s mission and spirit.
Below are some brief explanations that should help you navigate the various channels and departments of InTheFray. Of course, if you still have questions, comments, or suggestions, please feel free to email us.
Happy reading!
—The Editors
CHANNELS
IDENTIFY, the magazine’s news channel, publishes first-hand reporting that plays to the strengths of our style, which is simultaneously grassroots and global in nature. You could call it “hometown feel with a bite”: IDENTIFY stories are deeply rooted in local communities and experiences, but they draw from the particular to illuminate broader trends in our nation and in the world. In fact, they often cross national borders, such as Justin Clark’s story, “The handshake man,” a first-hand account of workers straddling the many lines dividing Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Other past articles include long-form journalism like "Freedom, deferred," Marguerite Kearns’ profile of a writer, artist, and inmate waging a three-decade war against the penal system, and "Bolton Hill 21217," Nicole Leistikow’s account of liberal middle-class families making tough school choices in Baltimore. Drawing upon a mixture of rich detail and thoughtful analysis, IDENTIFY works to balance an insider’s intimacy with a strong commitment to journalistic objectivity.
IMAGINE, our literary channel, focuses on the world of art and culture. Here you’ll find original short stories and poems, reviews of books, films, performances, and events, and arts-related features. Check out "The Journal of the Ladybug," by Birgitta Jonsdottir of Iceland. Featured in our November 2007 issue, this multimedia piece includes photo, poetry, song and sound to accompany the main article, a daughter's reflections on her mother.
INTERACT, the magazine’s commentary channel, wades right into the fierce public debates over issues ranging from democracy and war to belonging and alienation. In this channel you’ll find exclusive interviews and essays on politics from prominent and provocative thinkers like MacArthur fellow Danielle Allen, legal scholar Rachel F. Moran, and journalist Robert Jensen. INTERACT also provides a forum for introspection and analysis from less-known voices. From "Married in Iowa -- Almost" by Beth Beglin and Pam Lee, a piece written as a letter to friends and loved ones about an attempt to get a marriage license after Polk County, Iowa, allowed same-sex marriage -- for 24 hours, to "The black church arrives on America's doorstep" by Mark Winston Griffith, a column that looks at what Barack Obama's March 2008 speech about race didn't acknowledge, INTERACT demonstrates that the personal is indeed political. (Look in this channel, too, for essays by our regular and guest columnists.)
IMAGE , our visual channel, puts a human face on the predicaments faced by communities across the world: terrorism, dislocation, protest, isolation. The images featured here can encourage introspection, as they do in “Reaction,” a collection of post-September 11 pictures taken by New York photographer Dustin Ross and commented on by poet Shobita Mampilly. They can stir outrage, as is the case with Micah Wright’s retro anti-war posters, showcased in “The propaganda remix project.” Or they can inspire resistance, as do our photographs from the frontlines of massive demonstrations in Miami and Cancún, Mexico, against free trade. Through a mixing of the beautiful and the grotesque, the sacred and the profane, IMAGE celebrates human emotion and visual innovation.
We also have two editorial cartoonists whose work appears regularly in IMAGE. Tak Toyoshima, the art director for Boston’s Weekly Dig, is the creator of the Secret Asian Man comic strip, now published across the country with a total circulation of over a quarter of a million (making it the country’s first widely printed comic strip featuring an Asian American leading character). Secret Asian Man now appears regularly in our pages — along with Tak’s SAM-styled caricatures of our columnists. Mikhaela B. Reid is a Brooklyn-based political cartoonist whose work can be found in Boston Phoenix, In These Times, Bay Windows, and The Funny Times regularly.
DEPARTMENTS
Over the years, InTheFray has added several departments to its roster: ACTIVIST’S CORNER interview section, our BLOGS , the NEWSWIRE of recommended articles and links, the OFF THE SHELF book review section, and THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: NOT SO FOREIGN TRAVELS , our interdisciplinary travelogue section.
ITF ACTIVIST’S CORNER is devoted to helping our readers learn more about how they can make a difference in our world, in ways both big and small. Each month the ITF ACTIVIST’S CORNER features an interview with a different activist, loosely defined. Our goal is to highlight a diverse array of activist strategies and voices, providing readers who want to contribute to society but aren’t sure how or where to begin looking with the information they need to get started. ITF ACTIVIST’S CORNER also features links to organizations and people InTheFray’s editors find to be particularly intriguing and outstanding, in addition to resources to help readers become more involved in shaping our collective future. If there is an activist you’d like to see ITF interview, please submit that person’s name, a brief bio, and if possible, contact information for that person by using our contact form.
OUR BLOGS are updated daily by a team of columnists who write about topics ranging from Iraqi reconstruction to rising home costs to trips to the movies. Our bloggers pose provocative questions about identity and community and highlight stories that are often scantily covered in the mainstream media. In the process, they build InTheFray’s community in cyberspace by giving readers a reason to visit the site on a daily basis.
THE NEWSWIRE has a daily rundown of recommended articles from top newspapers and news services. It also includes recommended articles from Digg.com, recommended sites from del.icio.us, and recommended videos from YouTube. We suggest links that deal with the themes of the magazine and that we think our readers will enjoy.
LISTINGS are announcements about events, exhibitions, fellowships, and other news of note for our readers.
OFF THE SHELF is the magazine’s book club in cyberspace. Each month an InTheFray editor reviews a book that deals with issues of identity and/or community. The featured works are a mix of old and new, fiction and nonfiction. For a taste of OFF THE SHELF, see Jeremy Gillick's "Balkan at War." A graphic novel by Harvey Pekar and Heather Roberson, Macedonia: What does it take to stop a war? explores the only former part of Yugoslavia did not descend into war after the dissolution of the country. Reviewer Jeremy Gillick calls it "a moving and memorable book that has revolutionized the art of the comic and has the potential to alter the long-dominant discourse on war."
THE ORGANIZATIONAL DIRECTORY is a list of organizations that share our values and that we want our readers to know about.
In THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: NOT SO FOREIGN TRAVELS , our writers, photographers, and artists examine issues of belonging and identity (personal and national) while traipsing through lands and cultures more or less distinct from their own. THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS publishes narratives and visual essays from both travelers sojourning abroad and immigrants making new homes, with an eye toward subverting the standard travelogue formula — that is, approaching a country halfway across the globe as something more than a home to strange cuisine and peculiar customs, questioning notions of the “exotic” and “foreign,” and reconsidering our own status as outsiders. For an example, check out Michelle Chen’s "Cornerless City." The piece details the cornerless quality of Cairo, and the author takes
the reader through the streets and curving alleyways that are
representative of the order that belies the twists and turns. It is
also a discovery on the part of the author about how lives are
structured and followed.
Finally, our long-running EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK offers an introduction to the month’s content written by InTheFray’s editors.
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