[CIMC-work] Who Reads CIMC? Demographics Needed!

Tue Sep 30 11:38:00 PDT 2003

Interesting thread. So people know, we burn our logs for security purposes; 
I, too, would be interested in finding out if there's any way to get monthly 
figures for hits, unique hits, et al.

Personally, I would recast this discussion not as 'selling', but as 
respectful outreach, and there are a couple of issues in play here. First, a number of 
us have a fairly extensive network among groups and activists in Chicago's 
non-Anglo community -- and we've been soliciting more active participation from 
these folks from the beginning. Almost to an outfit, they tell us the same 
thing: they do not have the human capacity to write/file their own stories, shoot 
their own video, take and edit their own digital photos, et al -- and they 
would like 'us' to do it for them.

There's no question that for many projects, there is also a sense that if 
they have to prioritize work, they're gonna focus on either the corporate press 
or their own bases -- and Chicago Indymedia is not necessarily that. I also 
know that a couple of projects are wary about participating more aggressively 
because they know the cops troll our site ruthlessly, as do most left tendencies. 
Re the latter, there is a pretty uniform sense of irritation among community 
activists when every left tendency on the face of the planet shows up to shill 
their papers at an event organized by and for, say, the Puerto Rican 
community, for example, which wants to reach out to North Americans but doesn't want 
to be bombarded with printed material from same AT THEIR OWN EVENTS. 

I think one thing that would be very helpful in terms of expanding direct 
participation in working class communities and communities of color would be to 
take trainings on photo posting/tweaking; news writing; video; site use; et al 
directly to these communities. I mean take these trainings out to the 
neighborhoods, not expect people to just show up at our office from like, Chatham or 
Englewood or Humboldt Park. People will still continue to call us directly 
about sending a 'reporter' to their events (I get a lot of calls like this), and 
we should talk about strategies to stabilize our own reporter/volunteer pool 
and figure out a strategy to make sure that our people get a better heads up 
about actions or issues they may be able to cover. That said, 
developing/expanding indiginous reporter pools should be the priority.

I'm happy to work on the training issue, particularly in giving folks crash 
courses in how the site works and in writing stories for the newswire. But I 
don't want to organize these myself. I'm also happy to make contacts available 
to a working group that would collaborate on getting these trainings and 
broader outreach going.

Chris Geovanis

In a message dated 9/30/03 8:07:07 AM Central Daylight Time, 
tom at ilmechliens.com writes:

> Subj:[CIMC-work] Who Reads CIMC? Demographics Needed! 
> Date:9/30/03 8:07:07 AM Central Daylight Time
> From:<A HREF="mailto:tom at ilmechliens.com">tom at ilmechliens.com</A>
> To:<A HREF="mailto:imc-chicago-working at lists.indymedia.org">imc-chicago-working at lists.indymedia.org</A>
> Sent from the Internet 
> 
> 
> 
> What information is there, if any, on the numbers and characteristics of
> CIMC's constituency?  (There's a specific word here that fails me first
> thing in the morning. DEMOGRAPHICS! DEMOGRAPHICS! I knew I'd think of it!)
> 
> I'm asking in follow-up from the CIMC semimonthly meeting on the 27th, when
> we talked a little bit about expanding the number of people and
> organizations that use CIMC to publish their news.  If we had some
> demographic details to share about our readership, that could be a "selling
> point" (pardon the commercialized metaphor) to get new organizations to
> participate.
> 
> The other benefit to having some demographic information is that we could
> use it for self-criticism and analysis.  I hope I'm not alone in saying I
> don't want to be another group of upper-middle-class white people who sit
> around congratulating each other on how much we care about Blacks and
> Hispanics, even though none of such people actually participate in our
> group.  Remember the old saying that stereotypes come from somewhere, and
> that's one about white folks that definitely comes from somewhere, speaking
> from personal experience.  Not to leave out other ways to divide the pie,
> like age, religion, geography, etc.
> 
> CIMC is a concept that will be very easily transferable to groups that are
> often excluded from mainstream participation, so if it isn't happening, we
> can and should take action to make it a reality.  It will be very easy to
> do, and if anyone wants me to put together an action plan for making it
> happen, I will.  But first I want to know what the reality is, to focus
> efforts where they are most needed.
> 
> Actually, as I think about it more, I see three avenues for growth:
> 1.  Expand contributions from new sources.
> 2.  Expand readership from "outsiders."
> 3.  Expand utilization of CIMC material by other publications.
> 
> I'll leave it at that.  Is anyone studying/working on these matters?
> 
> Yours,
> Tom
> 
> --
> Thomas J. Westgard
> Attorney at Law
> 1325 West Farwell, Suite Two
> Chicago, Illinois  60626
> (773) 761-5073
> tom at ilmechliens.com
> http://www.ilmechliens.com
> -- 
> 
> By the way, unlike other people who have complained (and no disrespect to
> them for that), I'm happy to have this contact info posted on the Web.  For
> the record.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Imc-chicago-working mailing list
> Imc-chicago-working at lists.indymedia.org
> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-chicago-working
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://newsarai.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-chicago-working/attachments/20030930/543b77a3/attachment-0001.htm