[IMC-bristol] Seattle's IMC closes office

Fri Dec 5 17:11:10 PST 2003

Endymedia

Here it was born and here it has died, but elsewhere Indymedia.org lives on.

by Geov Parrish

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0349/031203_news_geovparrish.php

AFTER MONTHS OF rumored trouble, it's official: Seattle's 
Independent Media Center (IMC) is closing. The downtown 
alternative-media storefront, opened to organize 
independent coverage of 1999's anti-WTO demonstrations, 
spawned a network of Web sites and media collectives 
worldwide that today includes 123 locally managed IMCs in 
at least 45 countries. But it never quite made it here. 
The idea of independent media producers pooling their 
content in one place while covering a major protest was 
not new, of course. There was the temporary media site 
established to report on protests at the Chicago 
Democratic Party convention in 1996. But Seattle's effort 
three years later was very much in the right place at the 
right time. 

Beyond the enormity of the World Trade Organization 
protests, the Internet was just coming into its own as a 
tool to convey breaking news inexpensively. And there was 
a growing audience aware that network news coverage of 
such protests was likely to tell markedly different 
stories than protesters themselves would tell. Moreover, 
Seattle had?and still has?a remarkably diverse and 
talented pool of alternative print, radio, cable TV, and 
Web media outlets. Live Web accounts of the mayhem in 
Seattle's streets during WTO drew more than a million hits 
a day. 

At subsequent "summit" demonstrations in North America and 
Europe, the indymedia.org movement found its first niche, 
providing real-time coverage of the demonstrations and 
encouraging the establishment of new IMCs wherever the 
protests occurred?and in the hometowns of the protesters 
upon their return. 

IN THE PAST two years, blogs came into their own, and 
post-9/11 American foreign policy raised interest in 
alternative sources for global news. Now, almost 
two-thirds of the IMCs, including some of the most active 
and well run, are outside the U.S. There's still plenty of 
protest politics, but, especially in Third World 
countries, local IMCs have become a way for media 
activists to spread to the rest of the world news from 
points of view not reflected in Associated Press and 
Reuters dispatches. In October, for example, 
www.bolivia.indymedia.org was an invaluable multilingual 
source of accounts of the movement that forced Bolivia's 
government into exile. Impoverished Bolivia has few 
Internet users; the audience was readers in other 
countries. 

Meanwhile, back in Seattle, the original IMC was crashing 
and burning. The storefront on Third Avenue near Union 
Street was chosen because it would be in the heart of the 
WTO protest action, and it was. But the need to 
continually raise money for rent for the expensive 
location has been a drain for four years. This month, the 
IMC defaulted on its lease; it will close by the end of 
the year. 

MONEY HASN'T BEEN the only problem. The post-WTO decision 
to keep the expensive storefront was based on a dream of 
the IMC becoming an activist community center of sorts, 
where groups could hold events, use computer and video 
equipment, and collaborate on media projects. It rarely 
happened. Many of the city's existing, left-leaning 
political media projects?newspapers like the Washington 
Free Press, Real Change, and Eat the State!, radio and 
cable producers, and Web projects?worked with the IMC 
sparingly or not at all. Efforts by the IMC to launch its 
own print publication fizzled. A number of media activists 
complained that the core group running the IMC was 
cliquish and inaccessible; at one point, nonwhite media 
activists discussed starting their own competing local 
IMC. In the end, core members were clashing over 
personalities, vision, and what to do about the debt. 

FOR SOME readers and would-be supporters, content has also 
been a problem. The Seattle IMC Web site aspired to be a 
credible local news source, but in practice it was open 
publishing, meaning that anyone could send in a story and 
it would run untouched. The policy was, in theory, the 
ultimate in media democracy. But it also left readers to 
sort out for themselves the solid, well-researched, 
well-presented stories from the jargon-laden, factually 
incorrect anarco-leftist rants. There were plenty of each. 
But as more and more people started their own blogs or Web 
sites, the site's local content deteriorated. 

Maybe existing or new IMC activists will try to save 
seattle.indymedia.org. In any event, the impact of the 
project has been phenomenal. Locally, the IMC trained a 
new generation of media makers, and there are more good 
alternative media projects in town than ever. More 
important, as the technology of media has changed, the 
idea that spread from Seattle has evolved to inspire 
writers, producers, and artists on six continents. 

Globally, as in the U.S., control of much of the world's 
major media is in a handful of conglomerates. The Internet 
has proven to be the most powerful medium we have for 
breaking that monopoly. So far, the world's biggest 
grassroots effort to that end began in downtown Seattle, 
next door to Bruno's Pizza. Long live Indymedia. 

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gparrish at seattleweekly.com 

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0349/031203_news_geovparrish.php
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