When indymedia was first launched during the WTO summit Seatle, it was widely regarded as a revolution in news reporting. The internet has made it possible and work the previous year during the J18 carnival against capital in London had paved the way for these grassroots activist journalist. The idea spread quickly and people praised the quality of the reporting.

The network expanded rapidly but as it did idelogical differences began to emerge between different groups and splits occured. Meanwhile, Indymedia had contributed to a major shift that was occuring as even the mainstream media began to provide forums for 'citizen journalists'. The BBC launched their iCan website and websites that had previously been discussion forums added 'open' newswire like features.

Different Indymedia sites implimented the principles of open published (now often refered to as open editing) in different ways. Editorial guidelines vary widely and some sites have hardly any moderation and in others all posts moderated before publication. Some remained entirely anonymous while other provided the option for users to register a user name if they wished. In other sites, not considered official indymedia sites, registration is compulsory.

With all the differences The strapline on the top of most Indymedia sites says it best, "A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues."

Network appears to be the key word, but what does it mean?
What is the Indymedia network and what is the common thread that holds it together? In theory all Indymedia sites go through a process and sign up to a set of principles of unity. Ironicly however, no concensus was ever reached in formulating these principles of unity and not all 'Indymedia collectives' have gone through the process or agreed to the draft principles. The common thread it appears is simply the goal of creating an independent platform to allow everyone to publish the news that the corporate media are incapable and unwilling to provide.

The Indymedia Network is not the only collection of people working on reclaiming the media and creating platforms for real news and communication. A few months ago a new website was launched under the name 'Our media', it is just one of many emerging citizen media sites. Like Indymedia, Ourmedia is an open-source project built and run by volunteers. It freely hosts grassroots video, audio, music, photos, and text.

The project was started by members of the creative and technology communities who have managed to obtain the co-operation and vast resources of the Internet Archive. Their partners share a vision the grassroots media which is scattered across the Web or hidden away on laptops and closed networks, deserve a wider audience.

Like indymedia, Ourmedia describes itself as a global community but there are many major differences. Ourmedia doesn't set out to be a news service - although it's users are free to turn it into one. While Indymedia moderators struggle with guidelines and dicisions about whether something is news or a rant, Ourmedia doesn't care. While indymedia is seen by many as an anarchist activist hangout, Ourmedia applies no overt political ideology.

Ourmedia insists that all contributors are registered. Of course that doesn't mean that the contributors can't choose to protect their actual identity. Conversly, Indymedia seeks to protect the anonymity of it's contributors, (although strangly, due to it's dedication to openess, the moderators don't enjoy the same protection).

The number of people using the internet has increased massively since Indymedia was born and being open and anonymous has it's problems. Posts are frequently spammed by trolls chucking out dissinformation and distraction. You get people prentending to be campaigning groups announcing fictional events or cancelling real ones. You get people creating fake personars to reinforce their position in an arguement.

While most users see only a fraction of these distruptive comments as moderators quickly hide what they can. However, moderators can't catch them all and the process is a political nightmare generating additional strains in the collectives and across the network.

Meanwhile, the quality of the posts on Indymedia is widely considered to have gone down. People just don't spend so much time and effort writting for indymedia since their posts quickly slide off the newswire under the volume of other posts. Within different indymedia collectives there have been many proposals about how to addres the issues. However, reaching consensus and making dicisions is not one of the things that Indymedia is particulary good at and so change is slow and painful.

The consequence of this is that people get disillusioned and give up. This included visitors, contributors and active members of the collectives and it becomes a vicious circle as people take their efforts elsewhere.

Anyone looking to jump ship might like to check out Ourmedia - it's far from what's needed to replace Indymedia. It has no direct equivilent to the newswires but with it's integration of RSS syndication, personal and group blogs, podcasts, video archives, video RSS etc. it has great potential.

In many ways Indymedia has no equal. It is an anti-authoritarian network and it has without doubt contributed a great deal to our common struggles. However, in my opinion, in it's current form it's days are numbered and the cracks are starting to show.