[Wylug-discuss] Indymedia re-launch

[mark]

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Because the free software movement continues to underpin indymedia, you
folks might be interested in this.

(before you ask about the new website... KVM, Debian, Apache2, Ruby on
Rails)

Mark
one of Northern Indymedia


**********************************************************************
Greetings from Northern Indymedia
**********************************************************************

This is an open letter to grass-roots political activists in the North
of England from the Northern Indymedia collective, also known as IMC (or
the Independent Media Centre of) Northern England. You have received
this email either because you have previously had contact with
Leeds/Bradford or York Indymedia or you have been recommended to us as a
group we would like to help provide independent media coverage for.
We're sorry if you get it more than once. Please help us to distribute
this email to any others you feel may find it of interest.


What is Indymedia supposed to be?
.......................................................................

For those who are unsure of what the Indymedia project is, here's a very
brief run-down.

Indymedia was founded in Seattle in 1999 to provide independent and
accurate coverage for global justice activists who would be protesting
at the WTO summit. The failings of the mainstream media were as obvious
then as now - vested interests with elite groups, corporate ownership
and corrupt professional journalism meant that groups such as yours may
never have their campaigns represented in an accurate way if at all.

By using open publishing newswires where anyone can easily publish their
news and collectively run, non-hierarchical local media centres,
Indymedia has spread across the world and is now in it's tenth year of
providing a media voice for activists.

In this country, there are many IMC's (independent media centres)
organised into what is called the United Kollectives (UK). This was an
experimental way for local activist news to reach a national audience
and so inspire others to take action.  The closest UK IMC's to here were
until recently IMC Leeds/Bradford and IMC York, which have now merged
into IMC Northern.


What have been the limitations of IMC-UK?
.......................................................................

Northern IMC have asked ourselves why so many of the radical actions and
initiatives we hear about through our friends go unreported on imc-uk,
of which our old website was part. More to the point, we asked lots of
local activists like yourselves. Despite its achievements, not many of
you were happy with the way imc-uk works and we've listened to a great
deal of criticism and ideas for how it could be better.

These are the things that you said you wanted, but didn't get from our
current site within imc-uk:

* A website that's easy to upload photos, video and documents to
* An open collective that you can get involved in
* A transparent, consensual process
* Training on how to write news reports
* Regular face-to-face meetings
* Less centralisation / being told what you can & can't do by people
   you've never met
* A calendar where you can publicise events yourself
* Editorial open-mindedness

Some of us have put a lot of effort into trying to get these things to
work within the existing imc-uk structure (we even hosted a meeting for
the UK indymedia network here at The CommonPlace last October).
Unfortunately we've not been able to make much progress, because there
isn't a functioning collective process. It's not a choice we've taken
lightly, but we've decided that the time has come to set up our own
autonomous IMC that can deliver what you want. This is a route that's
already been taken by imc-scotland, imc-bristol and imc-london.


How we're going to change things
.......................................................................

To re-establish trust and participation in the Indymedia project in this
region is a serious challenge. Thankfully, much of the groundwork has
already been done. For the last year, the newly reformed IMC
Leeds/Bradford collective have been working to build an effective media
centre which can provide coverage for groups such as yours.

Through regular meetings, skill-shares and outreach work talking to
various groups near and far, we have reached a point where we can begin
to take confident steps in a positive direction. Primarily, this means
moving away from the UK and all the baggage it carries, towards a truly
autonomous independent media centre which puts the local activists and
groups we provide coverage for at the very heart of the process at every
stage. We are reorganising ourselves as "IMC Northern," a deliberately
vague term so as to include anyone in tiny areas as much as in the big
cities of the North.

- From the start, we've placed more importance on people and group process
than technology, but we are quite excitied about the new website we're
launching to enable you to 'Be The Media' better. By 'tagging' your
articles when you publish in our newswire you will be able to provide
your locality, no matter how remote, with your own local newsfeed
alongside regional and global news, with your own web address to direct
people to.

The new site we are building allows campaign groups to have their own
area of the site to collaborate on news articles and events
announcements. It will be easy to upload photos and videos to the site
of actions and posters for events. If you need to amend or edit
something you've posted to the site, you can do it yourself.


How you can help
........................................................................

Above everything else, the most important part of this process is you.
We are sending this email to invite you to get involved (as an
individual or a group) and help to build a resource which is to the
benefit of all grass-roots activists in our region, whether campaigning
for animal liberation, radical social change, anti-capitalism,
anti-racism, disability rights, climate activism, anti-militarism or
anything else which will make our world a better place. We exist solely
to give you a louder voice.

The main way you can help us to help you is by writing reports for the
newswire of actions and campaigns you are involved in, no matter how
small they might seem. We are particularly interested in giving a voice
to those who wouldn't get any coverage elsewhere.

Also, we are an open collective so if you would like to get more
directly involved with imc Northern (all of the current members are
activists with other campaigns as well) there are a number of ways you
can do this. The best way by far is to come to our meetings which are
advertised on our site and on the mailing list. We are commited to hold
meetings all over the region so if your group would like to host one,
please contact us via the mailing list. Between meetings, you will find
our on-line collaboration tools at https://we.riseup.net/imc-northern
and you should definitely join our list at
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-northern


And finally...
........................................................................

To end on a very practical note, we are happy to announce the Northern
Indymedia Art Uncompetition. We'd like people to send us graphics we
could use on the new site, particularly a logo and a banner (those are
the bits at the top of each page). For the logo, we'd like it to reflect
a positive aspect of northern culture married with the "(((i)))" symbol.
For the banner, it might be a collage of photos from actions (help
yourself from the old website), an original piece of graphic art, or
whatever you want really. It's an uncompetition because nobody loses -
everyone's ideas will be valued - and as everything submitted to us has
to be free for others to re-use, we might end up with a mash-up of
different submissions. Send your ideas to the email address below.


*In solidarity*

*IMC Northern England*

imc-northern at lists.indymedia.org (publicly archived collaboration list)
imc-northern-contact at lists.indymedia.org (private list, only for
confidential stuff)

OLD website (active until 31st July)
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/leedsbradford/

NEW website (active from 1st August)
https://northern-indymedia.org/

This is a low-volume list for infrequent announcements about The Common
Place, Leeds.  Only the list owners may post.

To unsubscribe, send an email to
commonplaceannounce-unsubscribe at lists.riseup.net from the email that is
subscribed to the list.

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