[Imc-uk-features] Indymedia UK: process, content and other things

[Shiar]

So I break my laptop and come back after a few days to find all this
'madness' on the features lists. And while I've always thought it's good,
and very important, to have this kind of discussions, some of the emails
were certainly most unpleasant.

Rather than going through the recent stuff point by point, however, I'd
like to say a few general words about what i think is the background to
most of these arguments. Hope i don't rant on for long.

1) Process

[I've taken out a big chunk about the 'art of discussion' and consensual
decision-making because it was too long and sounded a bit patronising.]

There's something I'd like to stress, though. In this kind of hostile
discussions, people tend to forget/ignore that what we, as Indymedia, have
in common and struggle for is far more than what we may, at times,
disagree on (well, at least that's what i'd like to think). Getting
defensive and emotional about 'your own' stuff doesn't help at all.

2) News vs non-news

Too often have people used the term “grassroots reporting” to describe
original reports submitted by activists to Indymedia. The strength of
Indymedia, to me, comes from combining two things: radical alternative
grassroots perspectives and open publishing. None of them is sufficient to
make up Indymedia on its own. By suppressing one of them for the sake of
the other is, in effect, killing Indymedia or, at least, minimising its
radical potential.

Defining Indymedia as “the journal of the movement” is imo, on the one
hand, too ambitious, given the new reality of the web, and, on the other,
too narrow-minded. This is well exemplified by the fact that we do get a
lot of reposts, both from other alt media outlets and blogs and from
mainstream media. And there have been people arguing that they actually
want/need that. Activists surely need more than just action reports to be
able to act (announcements, alternative analysis etc.). So the question
is: should Indymedia be the place for all this? IMHO, it has the potential
to, with some more creativity and work.

So let's try, again, to agree on the core functions of Indymedia UK and
how we could achieve them. [I had actually written a detailed list but
eventually took it out for another email or maybe a network meeting.]

3) Local vs international

The same argument above applies here. Indymedia UK is quite distinguished
in this sense: it is both local and international. With some extra
creativity and work, the two could work well together rather than against
each other. This's actually a broader discussion related to
social/political movements in general, but Indymedia could, and should,
play a big role in that.

4) 'Editorial features'

A typical Indymedia feature is supposed to reflect what we get on the
newswire. This is sometimes taken as merely sewing links together.
Strictly speaking, this often leads to 'bad journalism' as some of the
essential questions a report or feature should answer often remain
unanswered (notably why and how).

Neither is it necessarily more democratic or horizontal. After all,
selecting certain reports to link to in the feature is an editorial job,
and so is the title, outside links etc.

Finally, it's not even realistic, or let me say too idealistic. We all
know that we sometimes don't get enough reports/info about some
issues/campaigns/actions. Does that mean we shouldn't do features about
them? Well, this's linked to the wider issue of passive vs active
reporting, but i'm not gonna moan about that again now (basically i think
a lot of us got into the habit of waiting for reports to come in and can't
be arsed to go out their and get stories. And no, this doesn't go against
the idea of open publishing or is not the same as professional journos).

Here's a excerpt from the "What's a good Indymedia report" notes that I
drafted before the G8 (https://g8.indymedia.org.uk/Good_Reporting):

“Mainstream journalists are also brainwashed into concealing their
opinions, pretending to be 'objective' and 'impartial' (the so-called
neutral point of view). However, most of those involved with Indymedia and
other alternative media projects would argue that you should have a point
of view. It will help you, and your readers, if it's clear where you're
coming from. But remember, a news report is not a column or an analysis
piece.”

Of course one problem with this is that we're not all coming from the same
place. But the bottom line to me is that we shouldn't be afraid of saying
things. Speculation, conspiracy theories etc are, in many cases, labels
invented and imposed by those in power to prevent us from questioning
them.

5) 'Simple' solutions

There are so many things we could do to solve these issues. Here are just
a few examples, but I'm sure there's loads more. I'll just mention them
quickly as most people should be familiar with these issues (and anyway
most of them are either there already or have been agreed on but not
implemented yet).

- We have a lot of topic pages that we're not really making use of. Each
topic page should, in theory, reflect and cover at least one
struggle/issue/campaign but some go beyond that. Ideally, the Startpage
should reflect them all (including Analysis, History and the like).

- A more dynamic Startpage would also solve the issue of
local/national/international coverage.

- A separate Reposts newswire and publish form would save us a lot of
discussions and time-effort.

- More collective effort put into moderating, writing features and
improving the site is the answer to our shortcomings, not slagging each
other off whenever something goes 'wrong'.

Finally, I support the proposal of a as-soon-as-possible network meeting,
but I'd rather not have it at/with other meetings or events that some of
us are heavily involved with.

Best,

-- 
Shiar