A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

the open publishing aspect of Indymedia is dead

Well. No mention of access inequality. But perhaps, when 'user generated
content' reaches the cover of Time magazine it means that the open
publishing aspect of Indymedia 'is dead.'

... instead, the only remaining value of our network (which is
considerable) is our connection to social movements. So, maybe its time
for local IMCs to take stock and do a critical self evaluation as to how
connected we are to movements and movement organizations locally, and
prioritize that work of outreach, training, growing...

Time magazine's "Person of the Year" is You

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061217/tc_nm/time_dc

You were named Time magazine "Person of the Year" on Saturday for the
explosive growth and influence of user-generated Internet content
such as blogs, video-file sharing site YouTube and social network
MySpace.

"For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing
the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the
pros at their own game, Time's Person of the Year for 2006 is you,"
the magazine's Lev Grossman wrote.

The magazine has put a mirror on the cover of its "Person of the
Year" issue, released on Monday, "because it literally reflects the
idea that you, not us, are transforming the information age," Editor
Richard Stengel said in a statement....

schock

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This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

Change needed

20.12.2006 15:53

Indymedia is far from dead but it does need to change. We have all seen the damage done to the UK site this year from the concentration of Editorial control being held in the hands of a small elite.

Unless Indymedia wants to continue to hemorage readers contributors and funding it needs to return to its first principles and provide a media outlet for those who are disenfranchised by the mainstream corporate media.

IM reader and contributor

time=corporate winners=corporate

20.12.2006 22:44

Time is a massive corporation. I do not think it is surprising that they would nominate the MySpace and YouTube to be the 'winners'. These communication systems are run and controlled by those corporations so it is hardly people power when it depends on and is enabled by those massive corporations. As the Yahoo report shows those corporations are controlled through massive wealth and enabled through that - $580 Million and $1.65 Billion repectively. I hope that no-one who wants a more equal society, and you don't even have to be anti-capitalist to want that, thinks it is cool to use these sites. I do not have much experience of those sites but I believe those corporate sites will be allowing free speech as long as it does not endanger their profits. In any case all the Myspace pages I have seen have looked a mess, cluttered, thin on any content of substance and big on hype. Even with Indymedia there is no indication of how it is funded to pay for their web servers and bandwidth or who is in control. So it's probably better for people to set up their own individual websites where possible.

Brian B
Homepage: http://www.brianb.uklinux.net/antiwar-discuss/

banker =

21.12.2006 12:52

Actually, there is an indication of how indymedia is funded. You can look at the accounts or attend meetings. For example, here are details of the London accounts and you can look up the IMC UK accounts also.

https://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcLondonBankAccount

wanker

Beating the pros

21.12.2006 14:43

The bit that I thought was wrong about the Time decision was the claim that citizenship media was "beating the pros at their own game".

It's not true of entertainment: some home-made clips on YouTube may be amusing, but a lot of it is cannibalised from mainstream films and television, the best examples of which remain much more interesting (see Armando Iannuci's Time Trumpet, for instance).

It's also not true of news. I realise that's a bit controversial to post on here. But - given that the numbers of bloggers and contributors to sites like this one vastly outweighs the number of mainstream media journalists, by thousands to one, it's weird that the "pros" are still getting nearly all the best news stories.

In America there have been some good exceptions, such as stories broken by the Drudge report. However, in terms of earth-shattering moments of British citizenship journalism, the only bits that I can think of from the last few years were the camera phone pics after the July 7 bombings, and the great video-camera-phone footage of that Ikea riot in Edmonton. And maybe some of the political scandals broken on the Guido Fawkes website.

But I look forward to being corrected....

Norville B