SEATTLE INDYMEDIA

With all the talk about Boston's Indymedia, I thought I would present the first of the Indymedia's Seattle. Their history and editorial policy which I found to be interesting:

SEATTLE INDYMEDIA

History
The Independent Media Center (www.indymedia.org), was established by various independent and alternative media organizations and activists in 1999 for the purpose of providing grassroots coverage of the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle. The center acted as a clearinghouse of information for journalists, and provided up-to-the-minute reports, photos, audio and video footage through its website. Using the collected footage, the Seattle Independent Media Center (seattle.indymedia.org) produced a series of five documentaries, uplinked every day to satellite and distributed throughout the United States to public access stations.
The center also produced its own newspaper, distributed throughout Seattle and to other cities via the internet, as well as hundreds of audio segments, transmitted through the web and Studio X, a 24-hour micro and internet radio station based in Seattle. The site, which used a democratic open-publishing system, logged more than 2 million hits, and was featured on America Online, Yahoo, CNN, BBC Online, and numerous other sites. Through a decentralized and autonomous network, hundreds of media activists setup independent media centers in London, Canada, Mexico City, Prague, Belgium, France, and Italy over the next year. IMCs have since been established on every continent, with more to come.

Editorial Policy
The Seattle Independent Media Center (here after SEAIMC) is an open collective of grassroots journalists dedicated to providing an open outlet for non-corporate news and analysis.
The SEAIMC is an organization that strives to work with all mediums, including print, audio, video, and internet. The website at http://seattle.indymedia.org/ is the online outlet of the organization's reporting.
The SEAIMC is affiliated with the global Indymedia movement. This network works to foster media creation based upon the principles of free participation and association, mutual aid, open-source software, open publishing, and transparent decision-making. As an affiliate of the Indymedia network, the SEAIMC remains committed to these principles.
The website operates two basic media dissemination structures: feature stories and the open newswire.
Feature stories, which are found in the center column of the website, are written and/or selected by members of the SEAIMC collective. These features represent the organization's daily output of news and editorial content. Seattle-area and Washington stories and issues are the focus of features, although regional and global stories are published as well. Features are typically based on content published on the open publishing newswire.
The open publishing newswire appears in the right-hand column of the website, and works as the basic means through which any participant can contribute news and editorial content to the SEAIMC website. Text, photo, audio, video, and several other types of files are publishable on the newswire.
The online newswire is designed to empower individuals to become independent and civic journalists by providing a direct, unmoderated forum for presenting media, including text articles, audio and video recordings, and photographs, to the public via the Internet. Within that general framework, we specifically encourage individuals to publish:
· Well-researched, timely articles
· Investigative reports exposing injustice
· Coverage of Seattle-area and Washington state issues
· Stories on events affecting underrepresented groups
· Media produced from within underrepresented groups
· Stories on issues ignored by the mainstream media
· Stories on people or projects working towards social and economic justice.
· Eyewitness accounts of progressive actions and demonstrations
· Media analysis
The newswire is a democratic forum designed to make available important stories, news, and opinions with local relevance. The newswire operates on the principle of "open publishing" meaning that anyone with access to the Internet can post articles, photographs, audio and video to the newswire without prior editorial approval. SEAIMC is dedicated to maintaining the newswire as a completely open forum. However, the editorial collective regularly watches the newswire, intervening on rare occasions to maintain its usefulness as a media resource and as a welcoming community space.
Content published on the newswire is not endorsed by the SEAIMC, and is subject to a basic editorial policy designed to facilitate open media-making while preventing obfuscation of the newswire as a media dissemination device.
The intent of the newswire is to enable independent reporters to publish news and commentary on contemporary social and political issues. Published material that abuses the editorial policy is liable to be hidden. Published content may also be grouped together if their subject matter is related. Hidden content is not visible on the front newswire archives, and is not included in the website search function. The decision to hide is made by individual SEAIMC collective members who are empowered to implement the editorial policy.

The SEAIMC reserves the right to hide newswire posts that:
1. Advertise commercial services or products
2. Are repetitive or duplicates
3. Contain or link to pornographic content
4. Publicize or advocate actions that actively endanger human or animal safety
5. Use language, imagery or other forms of communication that promote bigotry and/or hatred based upon gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, religion, class, age, physical or developmental ability, or national origin.
6. Contain content that has been published on multiple IMC newswires
7. Repostings of corporate media content that is available elsewhere on the internet, or excerpts of previously published material.
8. Appear in an unreadable format (e.g., posts posted as test) or are titled "test"
9. Are obviously false or misleading in terms of author, location, time, or actors. This includes attempts to spread disinformation or impersonate another individual.
10. Are unintelligible (e.g., containing numerous spelling or grammatical errors).
11. Are off-topic or are not news.
12. Are flamebaits made with the intention of provoking argument and/or limiting constructive dialog.
13. Are otherwise inconsistent with the general mission of this website, which is to use media production and distribution as tools for promoting social and economic justice in the Seattle-area and Washington State.
Published content that is included in any of the above categories may be hidden at the discretion of the SEAIMC. The hiding of articles, however, does not indicate that unhidden articles are endorsed by the SEAIMC.
The newswire is a tool intended to facilitate grassroots media dissemination, and the SEAIMC will actively strive to work as a community-based participatory media organization.