[Imc-sydney] uni assignment help

[Cameron Gregg]

Stephanie Childs wrote:

>  
> (1)  My first question is how you guys as volunteers manage to keep 
> Sydney Indymedia up and running. What sort of hours would you contribute 
> to Sydney Indymedia in a typical week? Approximately how many people are 
> there currently contributing to Sydney Indymedia?
>  

There are about 5 in the core group and others on the fringes.
I spend several hours per week (probably up to 10 some weeks) doing indy 
work.

We organise ourselves in a collective in a non-hierarchical way. 
Decision making is by consensus.

How do we keep it running? I'm not sure. It's amazing it's still up. We 
need more volunteers.


> (2)  Do collective members generally come from journalistic backgrounds? 
> Do you think that having journalism training or not impacts upon the 
> quality of news materials?
> (By the way, I’m not a journalist!!)

None of the core group are journalists. Our main task is newswire 
moderation, technical admin, community interaction and outreach. Not 
many of us get a chance to write.

The point of indymedia is that 'everyone is a reporter' (journalist). I 
think that perspective is good in that it empowers people to do 
something that previously was the realm of an elite - those that went to 
journo school. I like the idea of taking that power and distributing it 
to everyone. Most 'real' journalists work for corporate or state 
interests, which means their stories are sanitized and sterile. 
'Journalism from the people' may mean a lower standard of 
spelling/grammer/cohesion, but it also means more real emotion, 
experience, passion. That is, corporate journalists observe and report 
on what they investigate. Grassroots journalists report what they 
experience and/or beleive.

>  
> (3)  I read on the Editorial Guidelines that Sydney Indymedia is 
> committed to freedom of speech and non-censorship. One of the Feature 
> Guidelines is that 12 hours must pass after the posting of a proposal 
> before a story can be promoted to a feature, to allow time for dissent. 
> Does it often happen that there is dissent? On what grounds would a 
> story not be allowed to be promoted to a feature? What sort of issues do 
> you face in trying to strike a balance between non-censorship and 
> non-inflammatory journalistic content?
> 


Can't say i remember any story getting blocked from being a feature.

Stories that get promoted to the front page (feature) are usually 
sydney/NSW oriented, or espouse the politics of the person who proposed it.

Not sure how to answer the rest.. Anything thats non-inflammatory is 
fine to stay up so long as it's within the ed. guidelines.



Feel free to ask more qustions.

Cam