Meikle examines trends in the "Indymedia movement", which he says highlights "how the Net is making possible a significant shift in who gets to make the news." Pointing to the movement's "spectacular growth", Meikle explains that Indymedia is a forum for non-professional journalists.

The article reviews the scope of the movement and the speed with which it has developed. Specifically, the author points out that the first Indymedia website was established for the Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organisation meeting in November 1999. This site, he says, offered news coverage supplied by anyone who wanted to contribute, using free software and ideas from the Australian activists who had created the network. The site, organisers claimed and this author reports, drew 1.5 million hits. Within one year, a network of more than 30 Indymedia sites had emerged. At the time of this writing, Meikle claims, there are more than 100 Indymedia centres around the world.

The author then tells the "Indymedia story" from 3 perspectives, saying that "each highlights an emphasis on access and participation; each stresses new avenues and methods for new people to create news; each shifts the boundary of who gets to speak. And where these different stories intersect is in the concept of open publishing." He explains that developments in this area "point both to an ongoing challenge for the Indymedia movement, and to a possible future which might enable a further significant shift in the nature of Net news." In March 2002, Meikle claims, a proposal was circulated to remove the open publishing newswire from the front page of the main Indymedia site, replacing this with features sourced from local sites around the world; 15 Indymedia collectives voted unanimously in favour of the reform. Meikle speculates that this decision was an "acknowledgement that Indymedia was struggling against limits to growth."

Meikle concludes with a brief discussion of the concept of open editing, saying that it "might involve not only more new people in the development of informational news, but involve them in new ways, catering for a broader range of abilities and aptitudes than open publishing alone."

Click here for the full article on the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) site.

Note: this article was first published in Media Development, April 2003.