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Time to move on: IMC London signing off

anon@indymedia.org (IMC London) | 13.10.2012 14:55 | Indymedia | London | Sheffield

The Indymedia London collective has taken a decision to close.

Collectively we have racked up almost 100 years of involvement with the Indymedia project; from the beginnings of Indymedia in 1999 and the launch of Indymedia UK in 2000 as a manual website and evolution to a content management site, to the creation of local indymedia groups in 2003, and then the launch of the current IMC London website in 2008.

So it is with a sad heart that we bring this latest chapter to an end. Firstly thanks to all the people, friends and comrades who have participated in the project with us over the years, as users, as members of the london collective (over 50 people) and other imc collectives, or as supporters behind the scenes. All of us wish to continue working in a similar terrain and view what comes next as a development from the work that’s already been done. However for us, this Indymedia project is for many reasons no longer the one which we think is tactically useful to put our energy into. There are still many features of the project that we believe to be important and essential, but others which are less so. Below we set out some thoughts on both of these, and some of the challenges and limitations of the Indymedia project over the years.

On a practical note, the open publishing newswire of this website is now closed and the content will be archived, along with selected london related content from the previous different Indymedia UK websites. User logons for the website will no longer work. Our public email lists and wiki pages will also be closed and kept as archives.

We will add to the London Indymedia archive some further reflections and evaluations generated through more than a decade of practice, debate and argument. We also think the function of the London events calendar has been an important one and are interested in thinking about ways of retaining this function in one way or other.

If you wish to contact us or send any feedback on the rest of this farewell message please email us at imc-london-contact@lists.indymedia.org

See you on the streets!
IMC London
xXx


Farewell from IMC London:

Over the last 13 years the Internet and the way people use it has changed dramatically. In many ways Indymedia won, because it pioneered approaches which have now become mainstream.

When Indymedia started it broke new ground, technically, socially and politically. Blogging was yet to take off so providing a way for people to publish their own news stories and multimedia reports from protests and campaigns without any logon was a game changer. This model of ‘open publishing’ or ‘direct media’ allowed everyone to add their voice to the collaborative creation of news, challenging the dominance of single narrative news journalism. The stated purpose was to erode the dividing line between reporter and participant, between active producers and passive audiences, to show that everyone had the ability to be a journalist and speak for themselves. At the same time Indymedia organised transparently and via consensus drawing a distinction between democratic participatory media (by the people for the people) and the hidden agendas and processes of the corporate media monoliths and their vested interests. Powered by advances in technology it provided an infrastructure that was needed and which people wanted to use. At the time, Indymedia was pretty much the only game in town.

Indymedia emerged in conjunction with the so-called “anti-globalisation” (alterglobalisation) movement. There was a general sense of “creating something big” then, and the struggles often focused on big days of action and big counter-summits. In that context it was absolutely necessary to have a web platform that allowed self-representation and communication, whilst, at the same time, provided a space to report the unfolding events worldwide. Indymedia became a global network offering solidarity and direct support across national boundaries, pushing an experimental agenda of radical openness, collaboration, privacy rights and free open software in the name of empowering people to speak for themselves, amplifying our collective struggles.

In addition to digital communication, Indymedia also became a framework for real world organising on the ground. Setting up physical media centres, providing spaces for alternative media groups and activists to plan coverage of big protests to break the monopoly of the mainstream media on reporting the “truth” of what happened on the streets, and to publicise the issues and reasons people were protesting in an unmediated way. Setting up systems to gather and distribute news from participants on the frontline with staffed “dispatch” phone lines, using internet chat and wikis to co-ordinate volunteers and translations, streaming and broadcasting FM radio, mixing video streams, broadcasting sms messages – it truly was a media revolution, and revolutionary in itself.

It was also a massive experiment in distributed virtual democracy and self organisation. Different tools exist for organising, and are appropriate in different circumstances and for different purposes. Whilst we remain committed to participatory models and collaborative working, we have also become disenchanted with some aspects of Indymedia. We share this experience with others working on Indymedia throughout the world. Too often, openness and dogma interact to create bureaucracy and to limit progression. The wider question of how to go about organising our lives and work is ongoing.

Fast forward and many of the things Indymedia volunteers were evangelical about have come to pass. No longer is it necessary to set up ‘Public Access Terminals’ in the street to provide power and connectivity, most people have this in their hands with their 3g mobile phones, collectively documenting minute by minute as events unfold. Self publishing is the norm. But be careful what you wish for… we won, but we also lost. Corporate commodification of the self through social media platforms and the corresponding loss of privacy create considerable pitfalls alongside the huge opportunities.

Looking back after five years of developing this particular website and the HyperActive code it’s based on we’re pretty pleased with some of the advancements made. We introduced tagging, a video player, an improved calendar, optional logons for users and group pages (eg cuts reporting), mobile versions of the site and uploading, sms updates and more. Compared to many other Indymedia websites, this constituted a significant move to a more advanced approach. But we are not some massive media corporation or a silicon start-up with millions of pounds to burn, we are volunteer activists devoting our time between studying, jobs, other projects, childcare and the demands of living in London.

Importantly Indymedia has remained one of the few online places that allows users to publish anonymously and without a logon. We always cared about privacy, which means protecting users’ identities from the authorities or corporations, and we prioritised this over the ability to share content with commercial platforms. It is this more than anything which has kept Indymedia isolated from other social media and similar feature developments so thoroughly.

The landscape of the internet changed and so too its usage by both individual participants, activist and campaign groups and indeed the mainstream media. The inexorable rise of corporate blogging tools and the mass adoption of facebook, twitter, flickr, youtube and third party curation and sharing tools has created new complex communities of interest and empowered the production, organisation and distribution of content as never before. The main raison d’etre for Indymedia’s existence is no longer there. Correspondingly the usage has dropped significantly over the last few years. Those whose main outlet for their political documentation was Indymedia now use their own blogs or websites, twitter, flickr, demotix, youtube or vimeo and facebook. Use it or lose it.

But it’s not as if there haven’t been good examples of large street reporting on Indymedia London over the last four years;
we’ve seen the G20 protests and climate campsukuncutstown hall protests and university occupations, the student protests [2,3,4,5], March26th TUC [2,3], the riots of Aug 2011 and the Occupy movement [2] all burst onto our screens from the streets. Many people believe Indymedia can be seen at its best during such moments, providing a structured, more detailed view of events and their backgrounds than can be found almost anywhere else. This imperative remains.

With Indymedia, the global protest movement built a worldwide communication space which was built collectively. Fed by the subjectivities of thousands of individuals and groups, Indymedia gave voice to a collective “we”. This approach does not sit well with the “me, me, me” attitude so prevalent in social media, where blogs, profiles, status updates, and picture galleries constitute interlinked individual self/expressions. Digital communication today seems to be made up of a collective/singular active subject that approaches the “we” from a clear “I” identity”. But this subject is not per se individualistic and de-politicised. We can also regard it as an expression of the multitude, which organizes not through unity, but through singularities that act together. The Tojolabal indigenous people of Chiapas, in their language, have a specific pronoun for this I/us type of subject, an attitude to subjectivity which was crucial for the Zapatista way of organising.

We in London see the challenges of today more in terms of collectivising the individual outputs, of curating from within the sea of content, of fostering true collaboration and solidarity that survives longer than the latest surge in popularity or fashion. We also believe that the ability to publish and surf the internet anonymously is a fundamental necessity. We know that most people choose corporate platforms over alternative and autonomous tools, but we urge you to also use and support alternative providers and those that campaign in this area, as well as learning how to protect yourself (see Tech Tools for Activism + Crypto Party Handbook). We also believe that sometimes having physical spaces to collaboratively co-ordinate and work together is essential. And that maintaining the archive of protest coverage and campaigns from the last years is an important task. Too much history is lost to the 404 error as websites lapse and companies fold, so we commit to ensuring the web archive of the 13 years of reporting remains accessible as an important resource and historical record.

In fact we are very proud of our contribution during the last 13 years, setting up and maintaining a structure for open publishing. We believe that we created a fundamental bit of “autonomous infrastructure” that the movements have benefited greatly from, and by doing so, we have also put into practice our “political ideals” and diy approach to active political involvement. Openness, horizontality, transparency and collaborative and participative practices which have been central to Indymedia and to our radical politics.

It’s been hard work, but fun too. Online and offline, like all good revolutions there was also room for dancing along the way, with benefit parties, film screenings, and cafe nights. Producing stickers, posters, banners, t-shirts, running radio shows, doing stalls at festivals and raves, distributing CDs and DVDs, organising skills shares, being visible on demonstrations, challenging legal attacks, all part and parcel of participating in a radical collaborative media project for so long.

We are not going away defeated, we are moving on to more exciting projects that we feel are needed, and which we cannot do whilst maintaining a site that we no longer see as strategically or tactically essential. The vision remains the same, as do many of the challenges – we’ll see you in the streets!

Background texts:

Indymedia and the Enclosure of the Internet
london.indymedia.org/articles/203

Why Indymedia Sucks – Thoughts From Conference09
london.indymedia.org/articles/1541

Software Summit in Whitechapel
london.indymedia.org/articles/4762

Their business and ours
london.indymedia.org/articles/5456

Corporate Social Networking .. How Cool Is That!
london.indymedia.org/articles/4787

Non-corporate social networks
london.indymedia.org/articles/4773

Indymedia historical reel film 2009
london.indymedia.org/videos/4336

“The way is the Goal” Interview
stefi.engagetv.com/sites/stefi.org/file...

G8 Scotland: – media centres and dispatch:
docs.indymedia.org/Local/ImcUkWritingAl...
docs.indymedia.org/Local/ImcUkG8Dispatch

Indymedia at the Camp for Climate Action 2006: Report & Personal View
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/10/352703....

Parties:
10 yrs
london.indymedia.org/articles/4856
london.indymedia.org/events/4663
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/05/451899....

2005
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/05/311023....

2004
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/11/301314....
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/...
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/...
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/...

New Year Messages
2012 london.indymedia.org/articles/11374
2011 london.indymedia.org/articles/6848

anon@indymedia.org (IMC London)
- Original article on IMC London: http://london.indymedia.org/articles/13128

Comments

Hide the following 35 comments

If this is true.

13.10.2012 16:29

I would like to thank those bastards responsible for bringing the indymedia community to its knees through their childish, point scoring, ego filling, bullshitting and bureaucratic ways. You know who you are and IF you have been genuine and don’t have state handlers, I hope you reflect on how your behaviour has fragmented the projects and communities you have been a part of. You know who the feck you are. Wankers, the lot of em.

I really feel like finding htem and punching them in the nose, the women too whose ego driven mania contributed to this fragmentation (of course I am not going to).

anon


The main raison d’etre for Indymedia’s existence

13.10.2012 16:33

The main raison d’etre for Indymedia’s existence was also to have a becaon for like minds that was not in the hands of coportions. You have missed this point and destroyed a site for movements to form around.

anon


Raison D'etre

13.10.2012 16:50

@anon: You seem to be addressing this remark: "The main raison d’etre for Indymedia’s existence is no longer there."

Spot on. The 'main raison d'etre' of Indymedia was not prototyping Facebook-like sites, nor facilitating the production of infinite quantities of user-generated garbage. If that's what the London crew thought they were there for, then I'm not surprised they've given up.

Indymedia is as important now as it was when it was first set up; mainstream media has at least as much control over the public psyche as it did a decade ago; and fershure Facebook and Twitter are not challenging the mainstream's accounts.

Indymedia still matters!

Ex Londoner


Reason for indymedia are not gone... just lurking....

13.10.2012 18:18

In my opinion indymedia was also groundbreaking in fighting the oppression of the internet.... and just alone for this reason it needs to continue to exist even though only low-key at the moment. Though at present it seems anybody can say anything anywhere on the internet we know that is not the case, and we know if the alternatives seize to exist, the powers that be only make it tougher and more repressive and capitalism takes over the rest.

not gone... just lurking


A beacon for like minds?

14.10.2012 08:34

anon: "The main raison d’etre for Indymedia’s existence was also to have a becaon for like minds that was not in the hands of coportions"

Not sure I agree with you. That just seems to have produced self-referential cliques who have become divorced from the communities they are supposedly serving. Then we just end up with representation rather than empowerment. This site is a case in point.

ZX81


ZX81

14.10.2012 08:44

"divorced from the communities they are supposedly serving"

Is that as elected representatives, self-selected representatives or what?

"This site is a case in point. "

So why not point us to one of your articles so we can see how to break out of the trap? Or do you just attack posts in the comments?

'everybody else but me'


How on earth did you reach consensus on this?

14.10.2012 10:34

In the 'eulogy' above, you claim you had over 50 members in your London Indymedia Collective.

I'd be really interested to see how you reached a consensus to close a project like this.

I hope it didn't mirror the process that you attempted to impose on Indymedia UK with the so-called Bradford "agreement".

brum imcista


re: brum imcista

14.10.2012 11:13

At least Northern announced that they were planning on stepping back and invited users to attempt to form a collective to take over.  http://northern-indymedia.org/articles/2575

Better that London's "we're not playing any more, and we're taking our ball home with us" which means problems with URLs for any new collective.

But hey, they can always use " facebook, twitter, flickr, youtube and third party curation and sharing tools" innit?

londoner


A brave and sensible decision

14.10.2012 11:41

Better to pull the plug in a timely manner than let the site drag on, slowly falling apart and filling up with spam.

Although I've used indymedia - both local and national - a lot over the years it's never lived up to it's early promise. It might be worth keeping a national indymedia going but that's about it I think.

inks
mail e-mail: softcentre2012@gmail.com
- Homepage: http://goodforbristol.blogspot.com


all things must pass

14.10.2012 15:01

In a sense this development was inevitable. The internet changed but Indymedia didn't.

Indymedia London had a good run for a decade. But all internet things must pass when they outlive their purpose, and the general devolution of Indymedia around the world shows it. The same will happen to this site as well eventually.

Cheers.

and so it goes


And again...

14.10.2012 15:49

The collective harassed by secret state police, the site contaminated with looted data derivatives, another indymedia project lost to regime intimidation like so many recently, although the potential of the idea is far from exhausted considering access is so much easier than in 1999. Such a development leaves a ring of sad irony in the Western capitalist democracy mantra, like the Jewish joke about the 23 dissident newspapers closed down in Persia. What?!? They had dissident newspapers there?

Does Not Matter


Thanks for all your work

14.10.2012 16:25

I would like to say a big ups to all the people involved in Indy London since its beguinning for the years of dedication, the hard work and perseverance
I know how much hard work all the London Indy crew put into the site and many of those same people into the UK site before the regions began, the techs, the moderators, the admin and to all the many contributors.
Thank you all.
good luck with your new ventures

stay well
stay calm
see ya on the streets

Gizmo


Farewell.

14.10.2012 17:30

Indymedia has not reached redundancy. If you look at the vast majority of news sites around the world they all need you to have Facebook or twittering accounts. By default that means that you cannot comment without giving information to US companies, which is very unhealthy. This means that freedom of speech is a commodity, linked to corporate interests.

Indymedia by its existence stands against that.

The real problem London has always had is in competing with the national UK site. Most events that take place in London are considered of national importance. London Indymedia was always trying to do the same job as the national site.

London always had a problem with occupying its own place. Frankly, its closure was always on the cards.

London has always been a tactic without a strategy!!!

Sus


agreed

14.10.2012 18:58

That simply highlights the price to be paid for Indymedia UK's winner-takes-all approach. The Indymedia scrap of activist mindspace may be getting smaller and smaller, but Indymedia UK will fight to the last dog to be the ones who control it, even if the result is ti turn even more people away from Indymedia.

rather


yikes

14.10.2012 19:09

Not sure how to respond to this. It's a bit of a surprise.

It would be good to hear more about what projects IMC London people are moving on to next. Will those projects provide anonymous open-publishing? If not then something important has been lost.

anon


re: agreed — rather

14.10.2012 20:04

"That simply highlights the price to be paid for Indymedia UK's winner-takes-all approach."

The Indymedia uk newswire will keep going because the collective that is currently running it was never convinced that the national open publishing newswire should be shut down.

Indymedia uk has been quite happy to run the feeds from all the Indymedia sites so where and how is evidence of this "winner-takes-all approach" to be found?

London, Northern and co set up the site they intended to replace it with ( http://bethemedia.org.uk/) and its still there. Had the uk wire closed down, then where would London news be published now?

"The Indymedia scrap of activist mindspace may be getting smaller and smaller, but Indymedia UK will fight to the last dog to be the ones who control it, even if the result is ti turn even more people away from Indymedia. "

Whatever - its been discussed enough times. (see the 241 comments here for example -  https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/05/478721.html)

london claim "We are not going away defeated" - but I doubt they will ever explain what would have happened to the newswire if they'd succeeded in moving it off the current url - would they still be shutting their own site down?

londoner


Standards

14.10.2012 22:08

Sad news but not surprising. What's just as sad are the negative comments running throughout this IM UK site that attack almost any action, protest, project or idea. Debate is useful, but mostly this isnt debate.

as in morals not flags


No biggy

14.10.2012 23:20

"What's just as sad are the negative comments running throughout this IM UK site that attack almost any action, protest, project or idea. D"

Im quite sure the people that do that are people who have never really achieved anything.

Maybe it would be better to just accept that they are too far gone to be of any use. The whole troll thing makes them more serious than they deserve to be.

I remember a couple of years back reading a web page on a newspaper about thousands and thousands of people marching on the streets, pictures of people cramm ed together in their thousands and thousands. But the few dozen comments that followed were all negative...why are they marching? why weren't they at work and so on?

In my book, the people in the pictures were many many thousands of times more important than the feeble minded weakness of these armchair commentators.

In every great age...there are losers. But dont worry about them, in the years to come, they will be telling their friends that it was all their idea and they were totally behind the events of the age.

Thats just the way it is.

Anonymous


*sad face*

15.10.2012 07:29

It is very sad to hear that indymedia London is closing down, I thought their site was great. With regards to Northern, after asking around there is just not enough interest to keep it going. It sounds like a similar situation with London. It is interesting to note that after the ‘split’ it appears that this issue is occurring on but one (bethemedia) side ?

JimAKirk


If anyone's interested see Autsria and Germany

15.10.2012 08:36

Austria closed down a few of months ago and Germany Indymedia is expected to close in the spring, both citing similar reasons to london

 http://at.indymedia.org/node/23146
 http://de.indymedia.org/2012/10/336058.shtml

Meep


Meep

15.10.2012 10:07

That is equally sad to read. I imagine if we look at email records and meeting attended we are likely to find that the same people are involved in propogating the thought that indymedia has no place now, rather than it being the case of seperate gorups coming to same opinion independent of one another.

anon


Inevitable.

15.10.2012 11:27

The universally praised 2005 G8 Media Centre. Set up by folks from IMC London.
The universally praised 2005 G8 Media Centre. Set up by folks from IMC London.

I stopped publishing on IMC UK sometime in 2008 (?) long before it was robbed off its founders by the so called 'Mayday' collective. My reasons for leaving were evenly split between seeing the IMCs as increasingly less relevant in the face of advancing technology and having better things to do with my time than have pointless arguments with the fuckwits who would go on to steal the site. I also wasn't comfortable with my pictures and reports sharing a newswire with discredited conspiracy theories or utterly shite analysis written by clueless egotists and moronic keyboard warriors.

The open publishing facility was an innovative concept when it began but open to too much abuse when the lunatics took over the asylum (or 'moderation' as they call it). I have huge respect for the IMC London people who pushed forward a new design for their site and did their best to evolve what was already a dying form of media which is now all but extinct. Now that everyone has a blog/Youtube/facebook or twitter account the relevance of IMC has passed. But in its day it wound up our enemies and was a useful tool for the movement.

Well done to the London people for going as long as they did. I met some of them the other night and was excited to hear about their plans for the future of net based reporting. Their talent, committment and level headedness in the past allows me to predict that we will be seeing more of them in the future.

Guido


Biography of a professional photographer on indymedia

15.10.2012 12:17

Take lots of pictures of actions and demos. Don't really stress about profiling anyone in the movement - this is your career we're talking about here!

Don't forget to photoshop some nice watermarks onto your photographs and flirt with some notions of copyleft. Make sure you get your name all over the posts - you want google to rank you higher and higher and this is free FFS!

Get yourself established off the back of a volunteer based alternative media project.

Then, slag it off.

And whateva you do keep your corporate/ngo photo deals to yourself. Don't repost them here as exclusives!

job done Guido

reality tog


re: Guido

15.10.2012 12:29

" I also wasn't comfortable with my pictures and reports sharing a newswire with discredited conspiracy theories or utterly shite analysis written by clueless egotists and moronic keyboard warriors. "

Yup - you wanted open publishing that wasn't that open!

Still it seems you found an outlet that we can assume suits your politics.

 http://socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=29670

londoner


re g8 scotland

15.10.2012 13:00

For note the g8 media centre in edinburgh was a collective effort of volunteers from different local indymedia collectives - the old uk network if you like - and some from further afield. True though that london imc crew took the lead in organising it with scotland folks and setting it up. Yeah, that was a blast. And big up the stirling forward field imc crew too - legends.

ex volunteer


Guido

15.10.2012 14:15

I love that pic Guido, nice one! The banner reads ‘reclaim the media’ but yet you say people are using other media, such as facebook and other corporate media instead. From this perspective, well, bit of a failure no? People such as myself suggested indymedia, particularly northern, allowed or set up micro blogging, discussion forums etc. I even mentioned it at the meeting in Bristol. You know, here is the trend, people having individual editorial spaces…why not have indymedia create these individual editorial spaces and bring it under the indymedia banner?

You know, a single idea or brand, for want of a better term that would infer some sense of collective force and commonality. But no, people just ignored my suggestions and omitted them from the minutes. Some would say UK would block this idea but that would not stop the local indymedia groups setting such a resource up.

I think people need to be honest with themselves and realise that whilst, yes, people’s habits online have changed, the issue is that you lot (and I speak as an outsider who tried to increase my involvement in terms of what I write above) failed to realise that indymedia could provide for such changed habits and needs. Or maybe it is more the case that some of the key people realised that if such a strategy was taken, that that possible collective force should not be allowed to occur? If the latter then I question their motives.

JimAKirk


Why has Indy failed

15.10.2012 17:17

Southern failed

Sheffield failed

Oxford failed

Brum failed

Northern failed.

London failed.

UK failed (the Mayday collective just don't want to admit it)


Is it as simple as the "new media" argument ? Did we get overtaken by Twitter and just not notice ?

I think not, in my view the issue is Open Publishing and an unaccountable editorial collective. Quite clearly the very openness of OP is both its strength and weakness, examples of which we see every month on various Indy sites with nutters from the Left and Right, David Ike disciples, Rothschild lonnies and the 911 brigade all vying for their five minutes of fame while a few moderators try to stem the tide. At the same time certain moderators are able to selectively hide and promote posts based on their prejudices / beliefs / wants while using the excuse of,
"we say we are not impartial so that makes it ok"

Looking back now on an idea that was 10 years of life I realise that it was probably doomed to failure from the start. This doesn't matter that much, like many of us involved at the start I have moved on and am now active in other political fields. Some never did and I wonder what on earth they will do when Indy finally dies completely in the UK.

Collective member


Indymedia and the Kollective.

15.10.2012 18:47

"This doesn't matter that much, like many of us involved at the start I have moved on and am now active in other political fields. Some never did and I wonder what on earth they will do when Indy finally dies completely in the UK."

People still want to use Indymedia UK and still post stories on it along with action reports. While that continues Indymedia will remain.

It is still the case that the MSM report based on the personal and ideological 'preferences' of its members. The MSM is a terribly subjective place and while that continues, Indymedia will always have place.

If anything, 2013 is likely to be a rebirth for the 'project' and is likely to place some serious demands on a great many activists in the UK. In order to make the most of that, Indymedia will once again be needed.

Those who went left and right will find ther 'camps' won't be of much use to anybody or anything.





Wedlock


" If anything, 2013 is likely to be a rebirth for the 'project' "

16.10.2012 03:47

Sorry but that is simply mad, in my work I come into contact with hundreds of new students every year and aside from the fact that each successive generation is getting less radical than the one before I can tell you that Indymedia is certainly not their media of choice. What radical organising and communicating is happening is via Facebook and Twitter (and yes they do know about the security and moral issues of that, they just don't care).

Indymedia is failing not only in the UK but in many parts of Europe because it is seen as irrelevant and that is because individuals do not want to produce news they want to consume it (yes I appreciate the dichotomy of that ). The world of media has changed enormously in the past five years with even massive organisations like the BBC and News International caught out by the shift in the way a generation obtains and shares its news.

The 'Indymedia Project' has been informative, fun, frustrating and helpful to me and others however this line in the sand that has been written by London closing and Northern just about to close is probably the point where I say goodbye as well. I am sure the UK site will continue to allow publishing but I doubt if the 'news' published here will be read by very many people at all.

London based IM user and contributor


The scary part

16.10.2012 04:50

I had always measured the success of Indymedia based on the number of good original posts and have been depressed to see how the number of these has declined in recent years across the entire Indymedia UK network, for example Northern started with a big bang but their stories have dropped off rapidly in terms of number and quality. This however is not now my major concern, a poster here wrote,

"I am sure the UK site will continue to allow publishing but I doubt if the 'news' published here will be read by very many people at all. "

This maybe the biggest issue facing Indymedia right now, is anybody actually reading what is posted here ?

This trigged a memory because last week I spoke with somebody from a radical organisation based in the West Country and he admitted that although he contributes to Indymedia Bristol he rarely reads it and has not read the UK site here for about five years because as he put it,

" I can't be bothered to wade through the weird stuff"

Are we simply posting stuff that nobody apart from a hard core is reading, are we simply preaching to the choir?

Alison Waters
mail e-mail: A_waters@gmail.com


Moving the debate on

16.10.2012 11:14

Good to see after a load of typical angry point scoring comments we are finally having a few talking about the issue. Where now for indymedia in the social media world of 2012. It seems that the people behind the London site have had a discussion about how this pans out and decided that it is time to find new ways of doing media activism, good luck to them, we need new ideas and people who engage with the questions of how activism is served by online media.

We all know the mainstream is against our politics, which is why there was a need for indymedia to start with, to expose stories they ignore. This is now being done on many levels with social media and blogging, now the question is how do we get people to see it and how do we reach new people.

This site is very much for a small audience of committed political people. There is not much attempt to talk to anyone outside of our ghetto. Fine but why do we do that? If we have something to say we want to reach more people we want to persuade them that we have ideas and solutions. Or are we just angry and want to moan? Lets use this media to blast out our voice to new people. I hope the London people will do that and maybe this site will also find new ways to do that otherwise it will be heading the same way.

Ellenor


We’ve been working for the man on a top secret project

16.10.2012 11:36

London Indymedia:

"Looking back after five years of developing this particular website and the HyperActive code it’s based on we’re pretty pleased with some of the advancements made. We introduced tagging, a video player, an improved calendar, optional logons for users and group pages (eg cuts reporting), mobile versions of the site and uploading, sms updates and more. Compared to many other Indymedia websites, this constituted a significant move to a more advanced approach."

The HyperActive London Indymedia site was launched in October 2008, two year after the October 2006 launch of Webcameron which used many ideas pioneered by Indymedia, the agency who developed it claimed it:

"combines some major aspects of blogs, video-sharing sites such as YouTube , photo-sharing sites such as Flickr , and other social networking sites to provide a collaborative space for political discussion and the presentation of ideas. Members of the public can register and post blog content immediately. They can also contribute to and share content from a media library consisting of video, photos and audio. The media library allows users to display and comment on other peoples’ media contributions from within their own blog posts."

 http://blog.headlondon.com/2006/09/30/webcameron-beta-launches/

The Guardian proclaimed on their front page that David Cameron had:

"radical plans to harness the power of the internet by reaching out to a blogging generation that is disaffected and disconnected from mainstream politics"

"The site has taken ideas on sharing video and images from YouTube.com and flickr.com, and also social networking sites such as MySpace. Steve Hilton, Mr Cameron's closest adviser, and Sam Roake, a 26-year-old former Google staffer who is in charge of the party's web operation, have masterminded the development of the site alongside Head, a digital agency."

"It very much represents the values of David Cameron's Conservative party, of openness and community. We see this site as being a way that people can engage with politics in a meaningful way on their own terms, and share a platform with David Cameron and thought leaders around the world on the guest blog, which we think is going to be very powerful."

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/sep/30/uk.media

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my view, for what it's worth

16.10.2012 14:56

"Indymedia uk has been quite happy to run the feeds from all the Indymedia sites"


Indy UK desperately needs the feeds from the other Indy sites which is why they were so quick to take them a few months ago and changed the code to ensure all the posts contents are transferred to the UK pages. Without London, Bristol, Scotland and Northern there would be very little weekly content on the site.

me


me's view is worthless disinfo

16.10.2012 16:47

Bristol represent the biggest slice of newswire pie but look they changed the code so their articles including reams of Turkish? spam have no content. Just so solid!

Northern is dead in the water probably because the crew that wrote their CMS has scarpered leaving the code uninstallable, nice;)

First thing BeThe Media did on May the first 2011 was alter their map of the UK wiping out Sheffield, Birmingham and UK in an act of "Solidarity" and Humanitarian empathy.

Notts are busy as are Oxford though not many posts from Oxford on the Newswire.

Even a quick scan of the wire and you know "me" is living in some dilusional sour grape state of being. You'll get over it.

2%


To sum it up,

19.10.2012 14:46

"I think not, in my view the issue is Open Publishing and an unaccountable editorial collective."

Open Publishing requires an open society and the possibility of independent opposition. Only then false information can be openly falsified by other contributors, and the general level of discourse evolve over the time. When a society deteriorates into a military/police state, open publishing media are the proverbial "canary in the coalmine" where such a change of climate is being felt first. Moderation collectives can still try to exclude regime trolls, but only at the price of reduced openness and false alarms. Of course, it is just as easy to lament what passes as serious debate these days as it is to ignore the causes for the nonsense and walk away with a grudge not even knowing who has to be held responsible for it. To sum it up, it is not Open Publishing which has failed, it is the centralist remodeling of the internet and the society it is mirroring which fail to provide the preconditions for any openness.

poster