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Organizing Indy/Alternative Media At The Local Level |
Current rating: 0 |
by Danielle Chynoweth
(No verified email address)
Address: UC-IMC |
08 Nov 2003
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10 UC-IMC organizers travelled to Wisconsin this weekend, joining 1600 others in Madison to discuss the future of Media Reform. Workshops on the theory and practice of Indymedia abound alongside calls to roll back FCC legislation, and press our public stations to stay tied to local concerns. What follows is a transcript of a talk offering advice for how to foster local, independent media. |
Organizing Indy/Alternative Media at the Local Level
by Danielle Chynoweth of Urbana-Champaign IMC
for the Media Reform Conference in Madison, November 7-9, 2003
The Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center was founded in 2000 and is now part of a network of 123 IMCs in over 50 countries. Let me paint a picture of our set up. We have a storefront community center in downtown Urbana which provides meeting space, an open publishing website where anyone can post a story, a library of books audio and video as well as our own archives, a monthly newspaper with a run of 7000, a weekly local news radio show on community radio, our production room where members can check out media equipment and use computers, music and spoken word shows, and an art gallery. Our video group both produces and selects pieces for air on our local public access television station.
I have been asked to give advice for how to foster local, independent media. I've been told I have ten minutes to do this. So here are ten pieces of advice:
1) Just start.
Our local IMC had its humble beginning as a group of 15 meeting weekly in my living room starting September 24 in the year 2000. We collectivized our equipment and began reporting two days after our first meeting. Our first project was to cover local solidarity protests with the Anti-International Monetary Fund and World Bank protests in Prague.
2) Make sure the community is behind you.
As media reformers, we have a long haul ahead of us. To ensure the sustainability of this movement, we must make sure that we have continued community support and that our work is not taken for granted. No more martyrs - if the community wants it, they need to fund it.
We created a goal for our group that would ensure a broader commitment than ourselves to this project - we said that if we could find 10 people to commit $50 a month for one year we would open a modest space in downtown Urbana and see what we can do. We found 25 "Founding Funders" and opened in a storefront in downtown. We then signed on sustaining funders. We are now seeking to purchase a building and expand. We have made a challenge to our community - once we have $50,000 in hand, we will seriously start looking for a space. Our goal is to raise $100,000. We are currently at $42,000 in the bank and have about ten thousand more pledged.
3) Keep it simple, decentralized, and low to the ground.
We had some folks who wanted to make structure before making media. The majority of us said no. We insisted on a structure document that fit on one page - this was to prevent getting too caught up in conflict over structure and to prevent those "in the know" of some long policy document from wielding power over those "not in the know."
4) Empower those who work, not those who just talk.
We created a structure that centers around working groups - low to the ground, action-oriented groups that largely determine their own paths. Each working group sends two representatives to a weekly steering group meeting where information is shared and IMC-wide problems are addressed. Our entire membership, about 300 people, is called to meet twice a year to discuss large-scale policy changes and future directions. All decisions on all levels are made by consensus. When someone wants to get involved they join a working group. If what they want to work on is not represented in a working group, they don't wait for permission to do work. They start their own group, which exists outside of the IMC, until they can prove their viability, at which point they can petition the IMC to become an official working group. This is an easy way to sort out the talkers from the do-ers.
5) Groups that have been shut out or misrepresented are your natural membership base.
Although we come up with various plans to bring in new members, our best recruiting tool is to do good work and fill a need - those who benefit from IMC activities then get involved.
Queer Folk
In 2001, when queer activists were arrested for singing to an Illinois senate committee, IMC members were there, videoing the event. The arrestees faced a potential class c misdemeanor charge that was dropped when IMC video footage proved the police lied about events. Those activists are now regularly covering their events for the IMC.
Non-citizens and people of color
In May of 2002, when global justice activist Ahmed Bensouda, a Moroccan, and a neighbor of mine, was detained by the INS, brought to an unspecified location, denied the right to see a lawyer, and threatened with charges of treason, the IMC followed the story hourly online and kept its doors open 24 hours for supporters to walk in, get updates, and organize. Under the Patriot Act, the federal government was going to bring evidence against him that neither he nor his lawyer would ever hear. We tracked the situation carefully, there was an outpouring of public pressure, and they called off the secret evidence.
Young Folks
Those most denied free speech and most in need of an independent space are those under 18. Us twenty and thirty-somethings simply created a music and performance venue that was not a bar. Before we knew it, every teenager in town had come through our door - they alerted us that we were the only all-ages venue in town. So we handed them the reins - our Shows working group is now primarily folks under 21. Our audio engineer is a 13 year-old girl.
Activists
When it comes to corporate media, global justice activists are probably one of the most inaccurately represented populations because they target corporate power. The hope of non-violent social justice campaigns relies on a free press. At the WTO protests in Seattle, the police started beating and gassing us 3 hours before a window was ever broken, but because the press lied, the American public swallowed the police repression as legitimate. The IMC network was born out of the necessity to cover non-violent acts of resistance to corporate controlled globalization. If they won't cover it, we will.
6) Give folks the tools and training to report their own stories.
This is a universal struggle in the Indymedia movement - how to get over the perception that we are a news outlet that reports someone else's message for them. If you have a maid to cook for you, you don't learn how to cook. If you elect people to represent you, you learn how to complain instead of learning the difficult work of building fair policy in a diverse society. And if we leave storytelling up to the experts, we forget how to tell our own stories.
For our radio show, we have a paid coordinator who helps folks through the process of making a news feature. For our newspaper, we invite a different guest co-editor every month. This way we weld a stable structure of committed volunteers with strategies for bringing new voices in.
7) Help people realize the value of their stories.
As a global society, we are bloated by stories created by public relations firms and corporate media. As a global society we are starving for each others' stories, but few people share, because they don't see themselves as story tellers. We don't realize the power of sharing stories and absolute necessity of seeking out other's stories.
We all know that corporate media distorts events such as foreign policy. I hear less about how it distorts our sense of each other. How do we how "what Americans want?" or "What the world thinks?" The binoculars we have to see each other as a society are distorted; we don't see ourselves represented through them, so we begin to believe that "we" doesn't exist. We begin to accept a marginal status - that our concerns about clean water, peace, and civil rights are "fringe." When I ran for city council, it was my fellow progressives who most doubted my ability to win - they had so defined themselves as "losers."
8) Indymedia on a budget - practice "carrier pigeon" reporting.
When you return from your travels, it probably doesn't occur to you to tape your dinner conversation and broadcast it. The Indymedia movement has put a frame around that kind of storytelling and said "this is important" - "this has power." The success of the Indymedia movement depends on everyday people realizing that, in our monoculture of information, their eyes and ears are valuable. A trip can be transformed into valuable journalism with a few pieces of equipment. Personal travel diaries can be a refreshing break from highly managed corporate drivel. The corporate media has unknowingly created fertile ground for IMC's to flourish. With their silence on substantive issues, refusal to pay for investigative journalism, and lack of on-the-ground reports, the corporate media fails to meet people's real need for knowledge they can do something with. Within the framework of Indymedia, ordinary "citizen journalists" fill this need.
One of the things our IMC does is "carrier pigeon reporting." We keep our ears to the ground to find out when someone from the area is traveling to a protest, or overseas, so that we can train and outfit them with a mini-disc recorder and a digital camera. Our local IMC has outfitted people traveling to Palestine, the FTAA protests in Quebec, anti-war rallies in D.C. and New York, World Social Forums in Brazil, anti-biotech protests in St. Louis, to Guatemala to do human rights work, and the WTO meeting in Mexico.
9) Hand ordinary people the power of the press pass.
A microphone in the hand is the best free schooling opportunity there is. It is an excise to talk to anyone about anything. I work with girls who have found schooling oppressive and left that system. I give them a press pass and training and before you know it, they are in the field getting an education - calling up Anniston to interview cancer survivors in Monsanto's superfund dump, creating hilarious satires of high school sex education class, taping the manifesto about abuses in schools that they sent to the school superintendent. My eight-year-old friend recently asked me what the difference between a Democrat and a Republican is. I offered that she and I go interview them about each other to find out and then broadcast our interviews.
10) Don't get caught up on issues of purity. Not everything touching the world of business, mainstream media, or government it tainted. Hold onto your integrity AND be strategic.
We try to be watchdog AND octopus with our tentacles stretching into spheres of influence. Our IMC works to get stories out - and sometimes the best venue is the daily paper that goes out to 70,000 people. We have established relationships with journalists in town who we suggest stories to. We help downsized news departments by sending them photos and calling in stories live from events that they can't send journalists to. We support underdog public officials by giving them the ability to get news of their projects out to their base of support.
Okay, my time is up. Thank you/ |
See also:
http://www.mediareform.net/
http://madison.indymedia.org/feature/display/14926/index.php
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Comments
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Re: Organizing Indy/Alternative Media At The Local Level |
by local Urbana reader-contributor
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Nov 2003
Modified: 04:37:46 AM |
Nice job, Danielle. Too bad that UC IMC can't live up to the hype. This site may have some of the poorest news content of the IMC network. What's the problem? Community utreach? Skills development and sharing? Volunteer base turnover? To many of your readers and contributors, it appears that the site itself is actually a minor priority..ranking far behind fundraising and infrastructure development and global IMC projects.
UIC is to to be commended for its active involvement in broader IMC projects - including the continued fundraising efforts for IMC's in the global south, and the latest initative to launch a US IMC site. But for breaking news and coverage, other IMC sites are light years ahead. |
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Re: Organizing Indy/Alternative Media At The Local Level |
by Paul
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Nov 2003
Modified: 10:58:06 AM |
To local reader-contributer: Thanks for your compliments and honest critique.
Regarding your critique -- perhaps you could suggest ways to improve the site? Or, better yet, perhaps you would be willing to lend a hand in organizing efforts to make it better?
You're probably right that the site is a lower priority than many other efforts, like the public i newspaper and the radio show. And it is likely due to not enough volunteers to go around. Of course, one way that YOU could help remedy this is to volunteer to help out. Each additional person is a major asset.
Anyone can get involved in the IMC at any time, so if you're a member of our community, then you can be IMC. But if it's something you can't or don't want to do, then it's hard to expect things to change. |
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Looking For A Hand For More Local News Coverage? Check The End Of Your Arm |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Nov 2003
Modified: 10:36:52 AM |
The UC IMC colelctive has always put an emphasis on local news. That's why we have a separate Local Newswire. We all would be glad to have more local news and agree that there needs to be more.
But the way you put your complaint implies that somehow UC IMC is doing something that prevents the posting of more local news. That is hardly the case. We also have the Public i (it is available online at this link, in case you missed it: http://publici.ucimc.org/) and the IMC Radio News (programs usually available via links from the Local Newswire within a few days of its airing) that provide much local coverage, along with programs on cable access, I think we do a lot to coevr local events.
This is a resource that is created by those who make it. You post as "local Urbana reader-contributor" which indicates that you at least understand that we expect people other than from within the UC IMC collective to post their stories here. UC IMC members constantly remind groups that they should post stories on their actions and activities here, but this has been, in some ways, an underutilized aspect of this important community resource, although we have had more people posting local news of late.
However, perhaps you still share some of the misunderstandings about why some stories aren't given the coverage you think they deserve that sometimes is expressed by those used to dealing with the dominant media. UC IMC members work on stories of interest to them. There is no news director giving orders about what gets covered. Thus, if you think more coverage on any issue needs to be done, you really need to look right at the ends of your arms for the hand you need. It's that simple. We would be glad to have even more local coverage than we already have. |
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Re: Organizing Indy/Alternative Media At The Local Level |
by Gloria Walker
glowalker22 (nospam) hotmail.com (verified) |
Current rating: 0
10 Nov 2003
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I was there this weekend and meeting the folks from the Indy Media Centers was the highlight, by far. I am inspired and hope to get something going in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a very isolated place when it comes to media. I will be in touch, please put me on your listserves. |
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How To Sign Up For UC IMC Email Lists |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Nov 2003
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Gloria,
Here's a link with info on signing up for UC IMC email lists:
http://www.ucimc.org/info/display/volunteer
Typically, we let people sign themselves up for email, although it is possible that one of our tech people will see you message and do so. We do it this way so that people do not get signed up for email except when they specifically request, in order to avoid any unwanted messages from our numerous lists. |
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You All Are Amazing! |
by Benjamin(WWU Intern @ SeattleIMC)
bfgalbraith (nospam) yahoo.com (verified) |
Current rating: 3
11 Nov 2003
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I am amazed with this advice, it's way beyond any other IMC information I've studied. (The UCIMC is considered to be a cutting-edge IMC model just to start with anyhow.) By the way, fellow readers, their "Structure Document" is online at this website:
http://www.ucimc.org/info/display/structure/index.php
Oh yeah!
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Re: Organizing Indy/Alternative Media At The Local Level |
by David Garcia
dgarcia (nospam) arkansas.indymedia.org (verified) |
Current rating: 0
12 Nov 2003
Modified: 09:41:09 PM |
Hey local Urbana reader, to an outsider from Arkansas, it sure looks to me like UC IMC lives up to the hype. They are one of the folks that Arkansas IndyMedia looks to for news stories. Just in the last couple of weeks we've linked our razorwire to three different stories on this site. And I very much appreciate their work in helping other IMC's. The workshop they gave at the BE THE MEDIA conference had a fund-raising idea that just might help Arkansas IMC finally get an office space and some decent equipment of our own.
I don't mean to be rude or nasty about it, but I do have to agree with the comments to the effect that if you don't think there is enough news coverage on the site, the best remedy is for you to start contributing more. Don't complain about the media, become the media! |
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Re: Organizing Indy/Alternative Media At The Local Level |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 3
06 Jan 2004
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Dear local Urbana reader-contributor,
In other words, if you don't like the news, make some up. There is a lot of that going on around here.
Jack |
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