[IMC-US] proposal: US-IMC

[Chris Strohm]

Hi,

 

I’m Chris with DC Indymedia. I’ve been involved with Indymedia since I wandered into the IMC during the April 2000 protests in Washington, DC. I have been helping to organize the new DC-IMC space, work on the local editorial collective, and have done projects in just about every medium.

 

I’m excited and fully support a U.S. IMC for many reasons. Two main reasons are that I believe it will help bridge the isolation between U.S. IMCs and provide a syndication outlet for some of the best content being produced by local IMCs. My hope is that a syndicated outlet will distribute the great content generated by local IMCs to a much broader audience, as well as help local IMCs know what’s going on elsewhere throughout the country, which will hopefully lead to greater collaboration and good investigative reporting. Therefore, I think it will be critical for the editorial and outreach groups to reach across U.S. IMCs to find and package content in the features. I also fully believe a U.S. IMC will rival corporate media outlets.

 

Many thanks to Max for writing the proposal. With regard to the proposal, I have three concerns/questions:

 

First, as I mentioned at the AMC, I’m concerned about how the proposal is being presented. I’m thinking we are going to have trouble, or get blocks, by proposing a national U.S. IMC right off the bat. Instead, I think it might be better to propose an Indymedia project that would syndicate content from local IMCs in the United States, and that local IMCs have the option to join it or not. This way, it’s not presented as a big national United States IMC, but rather a cool syndication project that local IMCs opt to support in order to have their content syndicated. I’m worried that a proposal to create a national IMC right off the bat will be blocked. But, if we say we are creating a syndication outlet for local IMC content, I think that is much more friendly, inclusive and acceptable to local IMCs. And I think local IMCs will jump at the opportunity. Then, we start with the IMCs that want to be part of this syndication network and we build it out, and eventually we get to a national
 IMC. But I don’t know what we would do if the idea is blocked right off the bat. However, these are just someconcerns I have after working in the network for a couple of years and seeing certain behavior. I might be way off base, and I will support whatever approach this group decides to take.

 

Second, the proposal says the following: “The editorial group will be responsible for newswire maintenance (if an open newswire is part of the site) and feature

writing/compiling/editing.” Shouldn’t we decide if we are going to have an open publishing newswire before we make the final proposal?

 

Third, will different codes between local IMCs present a problem for syndication? It’s my understanding that not all IMCs are syndicated on the global site yet because of code discrepancies. Will IMCs have to have compatible code to be syndicated and should this be a concern?

 
OK, that’s all. Chris


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