[Imc-uk-network] proposal to suspend indymedia uk front page for 6 months

[Jim Dog]

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Hey Tony


> This would leave many 'homeless' but it could be a radical way of  
> highlighting the need for more collectives across the country and  
> encouraging new groups to set up. This would need alot of energy from  
> all of us to be prepared to go and talk to new groups / talk about the  
> need for indymedia and alt media / how to's and if need be link with  
> existing sites. If we just disappeared for 6 months we could be  
> replaced by other media... so we would need to engage big time.

I completely agree, and I genuinely do think that a radical change is
needed right now.

As Northern IMC we have put a lot of focus on our outreach activities
and do a lot of it all year round. For example, in the latest time
period we have spent 2 days at the Hebden Bridge Big Green weekend
outreaching, we have been invited to a local school, the woodcraft folk
summer camp, BarnCamp, Climate camp, Unity Day, other events in Hebden,
I was evangelising at Rough Beats festival, we got an invite to go to
Glastonbury again (which we declined) and so on.

The problem is though, in all of this outreach a common theme keeps
reoccuring. People are unable to make a distinction between the local
sites and the UK site, and they see the UK site as somehow being more
important as it has the letters UK on it.

I would see things the other way around, ie it is those on the ground
and organising in their local communities, getting new people excited
and involved who should have the focus of IMC in the UK.

Another common theme when I have followed up on our outreaching is that
people have seen us about, thought it looked like a cool project and
then got home and googled Indymedia (from the uk, guess what they came
up with). try doing this. The global site comes up first (as it should),
followed by the uk then us sites. Scotland is on page 2 of the results,
then 2 below that is the old, mir london site (now an archive), the
current london site only makes it onto page 3. Bristols twitter feed
(but not the site) makes it onto page 8 of the results then by page 11
of the results I gave up looking for the main bristol site, Ireland and
Northern.

So basically, having spoken to these people we met and were enthused,
they then went off to find out what all the fuss was about and ended up
at the current UK front page. To say they were put off contributing
having seen the general quality of articles and comments on there (with
a few exceptions, mainly syndicated from Bristol and London) is a
massive understatement.

So, I guess what I'm saying is we need to work out who it is we are
wanting to reach out to. If we want to continue feeding just the current
users and never attract new ones then yeah, things are fine as they are.
If however we concede that we need a whole new bunch of readers,
contributors and volunteers to keep IMC as a relevant and exciting alt
media source for another 10 years then things are going to have to
change, radically and quickly.

IMC Northern are certainly (and demonstrably) prepared to do the
outreach needed in our community to sustain the project in the interim,
so provided others are also prepared to do so in their communities I
would strongly favour the italian option as a way out of this mess.

In Solidarity and free speech

JimDog
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