[New-imc] renaming IMC-UK is a bad idea

[Richard Malter]

Hello Andrew and Pennie and everyone,

The basic idea that people around the UK should have a place to post their 
reports, and *how* to do this (implementation), are not the same thing. There 
are many possible implementations. That's the starting point for the 
discussion, especially now with bristol.indymedia coming into existence. 

Indymedia UK/IMC-UK [same thing] consists of a number of groups and many 
individuals: it is a network - as described in the header of uk.indymedia.org. 
The collective in London that does work on the website currently named 'IMC-UK' 
is one part of that network. 

This relationship was recognized months ago and was carefully expressed in the 
Mission Statement published on the UK site.     

The implementation of the Indymedia UK network has to reflect this situation. 

This is the basic positive premise for discussion and solution; and why change 
is necessary in this instance. Rather than the other (wrong) way round, which 
comes down to arguments for 'not doing' something, 'not changing', like an 
institution preserving itself.

An implementation that would match the situation is a uk.indymedia.org website -
 similar to a 'splash' page. It has on it an open newswire for reports from 
around the country, and links to London IMC, Bristol IMC etc. Something like 
that. This is a similar idea to the global page www.indymedia being a place for 
people to post reports from geographical areas not yet covered by the global 
Indymedia network.
It could also have an editorial columnn maintained by a countrywide team, a 
newswire team etc. By each link to the city IMCs there could also be a 
description of the features available on these city IMCs - for example if there 
is an international news page to be found there, science page etc.


Another reason for change in this sitaution is diversity. If we have one 
(small) group of people editorializing a national page for all the (many) 
readers of a countrywide website then we have duplicated corporate media all 
over again. This is a very poor situation.

The politics of that one group is/will also be the editorial basis for the 
countrywide site. People mostly only join groups they feel afinity with. So the 
politics of any one group will propogate and remain limited. In similar ways 
corporate media propogates its limitedness. 

I hope Indymedia will be different to this.

The implementation of the Indymedia network has to be worked out before any 
site redisign is done on uk.indymedia.org unless that site first has a change 
of url to london.indymedia.org. And any site redesign work must be done 
publicly, consulting all parts of the UK Indymedia network.

Richard



---
Pennie Quinton  wrote: -

Dear Richard 

>I do not want to change the name of IMC UK to IMC 
>London, as  we report on actions all over the country. 
>If IMC Bristol wants to just cover Bristol actions 
>then that is fine, but Imc UK works globally as well 
>locally. 
>I feel very strongly that IMC UK is being pressured by 
>those who want to set up their own IMC in Bristol and 
>this does not seem fair. 
>Pennie 
> 1 of IMC
 
[]
Andrew wrote; - 
>hello everyone 
>Yes this is great the bristol IMC we definatly need more IMCs in the uk 
>I would like to point out that IMC-UK may be based in London but it covers 
>the whole of the country and Scotland Wales and untill IMC-Ireland is up and 
>running we are taking their reports as well if we were to change the name to 
>IMC-London we would be alienating all of the above geografical areas 
>including the north of England 
>as alot of people outside of london have alot of resentment towards the 
>south east because it gets most attention from goverment, buisness, funding, 
>etc etc and feel ignored because they do not live in a particular part of 
>the country 
>I for one would not feel right working for IMC-London untill those areas had 
>their own IMCs, and I think that many in the UK collective would feel the 
>same as many of us are not originally from London . 
>I myself am Irish 
>this is my personal view and just wanted to put it on record that I totally 
>oppose any name change of IMC-UK 
>thanks for your time 
>In solidarity 
>Andrew(one of IMC-UK)