[IMC-bristol] Re: Seattle's IMC closes office [?]

Sat Dec 6 00:39:17 PST 2003

Long-time member reflects on what's going on at the [Seattle] IMC
http://seattle.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=36723&group=webcast

"Articles of our recent death and demise are premature; the last time we
checked we were still alive--buried, it's true--under a ton of work." -- a3m

--
Luis,
CMI Brasil.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tony Gosling"
To: Imc-communication; imc-bristol
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 3:11 PM
Subject: [Imc-communication] Seattle's IMC closes office


>
> 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.
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> ----
>
> gparrish at seattleweekly.com
>
> http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0349/031203_news_geovparrish.php
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> Tony Gosling - +44 117 944 6219 - mobile +44 7786 952037
> "Capitalism is institutionalised bribery" [TG]
>
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>
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>
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> "Tony Gosling" <tony at gaia.org> +44 117 944 6219
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>
>
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