[Imc-uk-network] Fwd: [Imc-communication] IMC Book Project

[Tony]

>Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 23:06:31 -0400 (EDT)
>From: "Susan Chenelle" <srcnyc at bway.net>
>To: imc-communication at lists.indymedia.org
>The following can also be found in English, Spanish and French (an
>hopefully more languages soon) at www.indybook.org.
>
>Susan
>
>
>Hello everyone,
>
>In winter of 2005, at the U.S. IMC conference in Austin, members of the
>NYC IMC print team spoke about conversations that they had been having
>with a left-wing indie publisher in New York called Disinfo about putting
>together a book on Indymedia. There were a number of concerns mentioned
>about the project as it had been conceived at that point. After months
>more of discussion and reflection we've come up with a plan.
>
>The purpose of this letter is to:
>
>     * Inform members of Indymedia about the project;
>     * Put out an initial call for submissions.
>
>In our proposal to Disinfo we wrote: "This book would not attempt to be
>the definitive statement on Indymedia. Rather, it would be an overview of
>some of the triumphs and struggles of the network over the past
>five-and-a-half years. Its entries would range from dramatic,
>stream-of-thought, first-person pieces to more analytic chapters on the
>meaning of Indymedia. The book, while thoughtful, would avoid being overly
>academic and would be graphic/picture heavy."
>
>We are excited at the prospect of being able to help the network begin to
>tell its amazing story to the world. The vast majority of the book will be
>original pieces written by IMC participants and friends of Indymedia with
>excerpted material from IMC newswires. While the book will be written in
>English, we want it to reflect the entire network, and so we will be
>soliciting submissions of material from all IMCs. In the coming weeks, we
>will also be sending out a questionnaire to all IMCs to find out a little
>about each IMC's history, current status, what issues you tend to cover,
>frequency of publishing, etc.
>
>The book collective working on this project consists mostly of members of
>the NYC IMC print team, which also publishes The Indypendent
>(indypendent.org). Our research team will be seeking out material
>published on the newswires and other IMC publications during key moments
>in IMC history, but we're going to need help! Guidance on where to find
>great material will be much appreciated.
>
>We want to make clear that this book will have an open submission process;
>everyone reading this can and should contribute something about Indymedia
>if they feel so inspired and should pass this on to others who may also be
>interested. Please see below for submission guidelines, a general outline
>of the book, and details on the finance and distribution plan, as well as
>on the rights and permissions practices for the book. Please contact us if
>you can help with translating this document into other languages.
>
>After reviewing the following information, please send any questions,
>suggestions or submissions to indybook at gmail.com.
>
>Thanks for your time and consideration,
>
>The Indy Book Collective
>
>Outline for the Indy Book Project
>
>     * Introduction
>     * History
>     * Strengths, Weaknesses and Challenges
>     * Case Studies
>     * Multimedia & Technology
>     * How-To (DIY)
>
>NOTE: The following chapter descriptions are subject to change as people
>send in queries and suggestions. Submissions can tackle one or more
>aspects of a chapter's topic or attempt to deal with the entire subject in
>one comprehensive essay. Please see below for full submission guidelines.
>
>Prologue: Excerpt from Subcomandante Marcos's 1997 statement on the need
>for a new intercontinental media network that enables ordinary people who
>resist from below to share their stories.
>http://www.tmcrew.org/chiapas/e_media1.htm
>
>I. Introduction
>An opening essay that touches on the significance of the Indymedia
>movement and places it in the larger social and political milieu of the
>early 21st century.
>
>II. History
>
>    1. Roots of Indymedia
>       A look at how Indymedia's emergence was rooted in a wide arrary of
>alternative media projects that developed over many years and across
>several continents.
>
>    2. Seattle
>       A look at the pre-WTO organizing that went on in Seattle, what
>people were hoping to accomplish, how it all came together, what it was
>like during the week of WTO and what lessons were learned from the
>experience.
>       Supplemental material: Posts and photos from during the WTO.
>
>    3. Exploding Growth
>       A look at how the IMC rapidly became a worldwide movement in the
>aftermath of Seattle.
>       Supplemental material: Indymedia timeline, photos of early IMC
>websites, publications, meetings, etc.
>
>    4. IMC and social movements
>       The IMC and the Global Justice movement both burst into the popular
>consciousness at the same time. How did the two movements grow
>together, inform and influence each other? How has IMC's
>relationship to social movements evolved over the years?
>
>    5. IMC and the Cyberleft
>       Explore the strengths and the weaknesses of the post-industrial
>Left, the rise of decentralized, Internet-based organizing, where
>Indymedia fits in this milieu and what it needs to do to avoid some of the
>pitfalls of other contemporary movements on the Cyberleft.
>
>    6. Indymedia and the Anarchist Tradition
>       A look at how Indymedia's organizational is heavily influenced by
>DIY anarchist culture.
>
>III. Strengths, Weaknesses and Challenges
>
>    1. Who Makes Up Indymedia?
>       Demographics and geography: Why Indymedia tends to be made up of
>certain kinds of people (white, male, with access to relatively high level
>of resources), self-selecting filters; more narrowly focused IMCs versus
>those integrated into local communities.
>
>    2. IMC and race/gender/class
>       How have issues of race, class and gender been addressed at
>Indymedia? Have advances been made toward creating a more inclusive and
>empowering culture for all inside the network? If so, where? And how? If
>not, why not?
>
>    3. Who's Reading Indymedia?
>       An examination of what fragmentary records exist to develop an
>estimate of how many people use Indymedia (both on normal days and when
>there are big protests happening) and how much impact the
>network may have. Also look at the challenges of moving from
>crisis-driven coverage toward consistent, daily activity.
>       Supplemental materials: Solicit responses from local IMCs throughout
>the network about how they've become more rooted in their
>communities and on what people consider to be the greatest obstacles or
>challenges they've faced in their work with an IMC.
>
>    4. IMC and the participatory journalism movement
>       Traditional journalism is facing unprecedented challenges from
>ordinary citizens seeking to "be the media" This chapter will
>consider the forces driving this, compare and contrast Indymedia
>with other citizen journalism initiatives and explore the unique
>contributions that Indymedia has made to the citizen-journalism
>movements around the world.
>       Supplemental Materials: Solicit responses from local IMCs throughout
>the network about what they see as their greatest achievements to
>date; stories they covered that made an impact in their community or
>country, initiatives they took to empower people to "become the
>media," etc.
>
>    5. IMC and State Repression
>       In 2005, British law enforcement officials seized the UK Indymedia
>server (which housed 20 other IMC websites) at the behest of the
>FBI...Indymedia has been targeted repeatedly by law enforcement
>since its inception with IMC journalists being beaten, tear-gassed and
>arrested while trying to cover demonstrations...IMC has also
>been subpoenaed for its weblogs by police looking to track the
>origins of specific posts...Seattle IMC in April 2001...NYC
>investigated by NYPD and Secret Service in 2004...Look at how IMC
>has responded to legal threats and how it radically decentralized
>its activities and decided to stop logging IP addresses.
>
>IV. Indymedia in Action: Potential Case Studies
>
>    1. Genoa G8 Protests
>
>    2. Indymedia in the Global South
>
>    3. Argentina Uprising
>
>    4. People Power in Bolivia
>
>    5. The Birth of Venezuela IMC
>
>    6. IMC in Africa
>
>    7. Chiapas: Indymedia Takes Root in the Home of the Zapatistas
>
>    8. IMC in the Middle East
>
>    9. From UK to United Kollectives: Decentralization in Britain
>
>   10. IMC in Europe
>
>   11. IMC in Asia and Oceania
>
>   12. Responding to 9/11: NYC-IMC
>
>   13. Responding to Hurricane Katrina
>
>   14. US Indymedia in the Bush Era
>
>   15. UC IMC Buys the Post Office
>
>V. Multimedia and Technology
>
>    1. Reflections on IMC Audio Projects
>       How have IMC radio projects both blended into and made unique
>contributions to the larger movement to free the airwaves from
>corporate and/or government-dominated broadcasting...Look at both
>ongoing projects and special projects around convergences.
>
>    2. Reflections on IMC Video Projects
>       Cable access shows...Vblogging...Video IMCistas have also
>collaborated to produce more than a dozen feature-length
>documentaries... Documentaries preserve a part of the movement's
>collective history, but what has been their overall
>impact?...Challenges of building distribution networks...a short
>history of IMC Newsreel, etc.
>
>    3. Reflections on IMC Tech
>       The creation of Active code and the open publishing newswire...What
>was novel about IMC in 1999? What was it doing on the Web that had never
>been done before?...Has Indymedia ossified or has it been able to keep up
>with a rapidly evolving web environment?...Evolution of IMC source codes:
>SF Active, Dada, Mir, Drupal, etc...Tech's early role in the network and
>the effort to move to a more transparent,
>democratic decision-making process...the challenge of
>archiving...Transferring computer equipment to the Global South.
>
>    4. How active is the IMC network?
>       Review the number of center column features being posted on local
>IMCs and use the http://lists.indymedia.org database to review local
>listserve activity at different IMCs over the past year, in addition to
>contacting local IMCs, to gauge how actively people are
>participating and how often meetings are being held (if they are
>being held).
>       Supplemental materials: charts, infoboxes
>
>VI. DIY
>
>    1. How to start an IMC
>
>    2. Different IMC models
>
>    3. The philosophy and practice of open publishing / moderation /
>dealing with trolls
>
>    4. How to build a radical paper
>
>    5. The challenge of distribution
>       Distribution is critical to IMC's impact ... a look at what
>alternative distribution channels are available, creating
>distribution networks, getting indexed by Google, etc.
>
>    6. How to acquire space, importance & implications
>       Indymedia started on the Internet and in many ways was shaped by the
>decentralizing logic of the Web. Yet, for many local IMC chapters, the
>need for an actual physical space to meet and work from is the most
>pressing dilemma they face. The solutions to this problem have varied
>widely.
>
>    7. Consensus and Meeting Facilitation
>
>    8. Living With and Managing Money
>
>    9. How to run a media convergence space (for big events)
>
>   10. Independent journalism tools and tips
>
>   11. How to avoid burnout / cultivating a healthy media collective /
>building long-term sustainability
>
>CONCLUSION
>
>GLOSSARY
>
>RECOMMENDED READING / RESOURCES
>
>INDEX
>
>SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
>We are soliciting a lot of different kinds of material for this project,
>so the style and content of submissions will vary greatly. Please follow
>the guidelines of each type of content submission. Ideas/pitches for all
>of the chapters outlined above are welcomed. With all submissions, please
>include a short introduction about yourself and your work with Indymedia.
>Submissions in English are easiest for us to handle, but we do have
>Spanish and French translation capacity at this point and we should be
>able to translate from more languages as we get the word out about the
>project.
>
>SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE: SEPT. 1, 2006
>
>Original Article or Sidebar
>If you are interested in writing something on an idea or issue mentioned
>in the above outline, or on something that you think should be included in
>one of the chapters listed above as an article or sidebar, but is missing
>from our description or list of ideas for that chapter, please submit a
>query to indybook at gmail.com before sending us a fully-written article. The
>query should include the basic idea of the piece, a short explanation of
>why it's important, and the approximate length you think the finished
>piece would be. Queries should be under 750 words. If you are planning to
>submit something in a language other than English, it is especially
>important that you submit a query (in English, if possible) first.
>Finished articles will range from 500-5,000 words, and should be fully
>researched and written in an engaging, straightforward style, i.e., not
>too jargon-heavy, either activist- or academic-wise. We are also exploring
>various Twiki-style technologies that make it possible for interested
>readers to comment on drafts of articles as they go through the editing
>process.
>
>Newswire Material
>If you have written/posted or know of material from an IMC newswire that
>you think we should excerpt for one of the chapters outlined above, please
>send us a sample of the text (no more than 250 words), a brief explanation
>(250 words) of the context of the post and why this particular post is a
>strong reflection of that event/issue, and the URL for the newswire
>article, if it's still online. If you are not the author of this material,
>please include any contact info you have for the writer.
>
>BUSINESS MODEL
>The book's target retail price is $14.95. We can buy the books (and return
>any unsold copies) for $7.50. We will set up a website for the book and
>ask local IMCs to put a button or some sort of permanent link to it on
>their home pages.
>
>We would sell the book through our website for $12 plus $3 for shipping
>and handling. All the profit, i.e., $4.50 per book, would go to Global,
>preferably to assist underfunded IMCs in the Global South. If we sell
>5,000 books over time, that would mean $22,500 for Global. Any royalties
>made from the publisher's sales would also go to Global.
>
>The publisher of the book will be Disinfo (disinfo.com), a lefty,
>for-profit publisher based in New York that has put out titles like: Why
>Do People Hate America? The Vigil: 26 Days in Crawford, Texas and
>Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. We've approached non-profits like
>South End Press and New Press, but they've shown little interest. It's
>also been suggested that we self-publish, but upon reflection, we realized
>that the quality of the product would be compromised, the size of the
>print run greatly reduced and we would have to create our own book
>distribution networks from scratch.
>
>Disinfo has offered a $12,000 advance to be paid in three installments:
>$4,000 upon signing the contract, $4,000 upon delivery of a completed
>manuscript and $4,000 upon the book going to print. Five percent, or $600,
>will go to our fiscal sponsor, UC-IMC, for processing. No one will be paid
>for any work. Photographers in the Global North will be asked to
>contribute their work. The only exception we are considering is paying
>photographers from the Global South a modest fee, recognizing they are in
>a unique position of having high expenses in a developing economy.
>
>Written contributions will not be paid, but will include the author's
>byline. Members of the book's editorial collective will be working on an
>unpaid, volunteer basis. The rest of the money would go to the NYC-IMC
>print team to help cover ongoing media-making expenses, particularly for
>newspapers and poster projects.
>
>One question, of course, is why the initial funds go to the NYC-IMC print
>team. The project represents an enormous burden upon our limited
>resources. Two of our most experienced editors and coordinators, Susan
>Chenelle and John Tarleton, will be devoting the next year to the project.
>We will need to solicit unpaid design and production work from our
>volunteer staff. The same goes for the content editing, copy editing,
>proofreading and fact checking phases. Then we need to build a website,
>set up a merchant account and handle all of the order processing -- all of
>which is also unpaid. Finally, the fulfillment aspect will be an enormous
>burden. Packaging, addressing and shipping thousands of books will require
>a huge commitment of work hours from everyone at the project. Again, no
>one will be paid for this work. The funds will go directly to other
>media-making only.
>
>RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS
>We will secure the permission for use of written material where possible,
>and will very much appreciate assistance from IMCistas in contacting
>writers of material we would like to excerpt from the newswires. Where
>explicit permission cannot be obtained, we will excerpt or quote a minimum
>amount that would fall under US "fair use" provisions. We will be
>approaching photographers directly to secure permission from them to use
>their photos. No photos will be used without permission.
>
>_______________________________________________
>IMC-communication mailing list
>IMC-communication at lists.indymedia.org
>http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-communication