NOTE:<\/strong> This piece is also running on OJR: The Online Journalism Review<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n For me, it began with a snarky tweet<\/a>: #journchat Bad name, good PR.<\/p>\n Apparently that tweet touched a nerve and prompted Web journalists to come out of the Twitterverse to express agreement.<\/p>\n Before I continue, let me define two things:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Moments after that snarky tweet went out the hunger for Web journalists to network and learn from each other was apparent.<\/p>\n It makes sense.<\/p>\n We’re a community that is constantly evolving, struggling to find the “right” solution for our unique situations… from inside our newsrooms… often alone. Many of us have met at conferences or through social networking, but never regularly.<\/p>\n It was that passionate need mixed with the DIY-spirit of the web that got @lilgirlbigvoice<\/a> @killbutton<\/a> @kimbui<\/a> and myself together to create #jchat within five hours from meeting each other the first time.<\/p>\n While I had known P. Kim Bui<\/a> from the past, I had just met Bethany Waggoner<\/a> and Amira Dughri during the Feb. 1 journchat. Soon, our group grew and included Kate Gardiner<\/a> (@kategardiner<\/a>) and Robin Phillips<\/a> (@RobinJP<\/a>) among others.<\/p>\n We worked out the details for the debut chat first through Google Wave<\/a>, but moved to the more stable Etherpad<\/a>. We selected a topic, drafted some questions and volunteered our first guest moderator… which turned out to be me.<\/p>\n After finding that the @jchat<\/a> Twitter account was taken and essentially dead, we changed the name to @wjchat<\/a>. We also launched the blog site<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n