Introduction
Before anything else, please understand that we cannot tell you how to use Free the Media or what to use it for. That's for you to discover along with us and everyone else. In addition the Free the Media you see today will be more and maybe even a little different tomorrow. This will be a living document that develops along with the site. It might even become a book (see books).  This is Revision .001 of this document and Free the Media as well. The site launched on January 12, 2007 at the Conference on Media Reform in Memphis.

We're just learning Drupal. In all likelihood you are too. If you are a Drupal maven, however, and have some time to help, please contact us. We could use you! All that said, the good news is this is a powerful tool which reveals itself the more you play with it and we're building something important here together.

For starters, check out the site, and then consider joining in with your own voice.

Three easy ways to jump in are to

1. post comments to stories,
2. create and reply to threads in the forums
3. start a blog.
4. read and tag news

First Things First
To do anything other than read what's here, you'll need to join the site. To do that pick a screen name, a password, and provide an email address. You'll receive a confirmation email, usually instantly, and you're part of things.

Next stop is "my account".

One cool side benefit of your membership here is that it extends to other Drupal sites as well. To logon to any affiliate Drupal site (which include all sites registered with Drupal, which enable this feature), enter your username like this:
username@mediafreedoms.net
in the user box and your password for this site in the password box. Note: affiliate sites do not store your info. They simply send your credentials back to this site for authentication just as if you had logged in here. For those of you attending the Conference on Media Reform, there's a special section for the Conference where presenters can upload files or paste the text of presentations, and where everyone can discuss topics of interest from the Conference and report on their own experiences, impressions and ideas. Hope this gives you a few ideas. Look for more in the next few days right here.