New network for independent Irish journalists

national | arts and media | opinion/analysis

Tuesday August 23, 2011 04:01

by Colin Platt

colin at dogit dot org

Nonprofit network is being developed with a focus on local news from locally-based independent reporters and citizen journalists.

Where do you get your news? How do you know who to trust? If the news you read is covered up or flanked by advertisements, how sure can you be that the content represents the common interest, and not corporate interest? If a reporter doesn't witness an event or get all sides of a story on the ground, how can you trust the accuracy of their reporting?

Indymedia is a great avenue for radical organizing, grass-roots, locally-based reporting, editorials, and impassioned debate. What we need is a better way to filter user reports based on their location, whether regional or in your own neighborhood, and to have the ability to connect and collaborate with others with similar interests in a secure way. And we need to promote and support independent journalism in every location possible.

At the moment, it seems many Indymedia sites have shut down their open publishing wire due to lack of resources or excessive spam, and many other sites are cluttered with anonymous editorials and personal attacks. Many local IMCs can't afford their hosting fees.

A new network for journalists and nonprofits is being developed at dogit.org, not to detract in any way from the hard work of Indymedia collectives around the world to face these challenges, but to help the spread of independent journalism further in places where media access is limited, corporations dominate the airwaves, or journalists themselves are in danger.

Dogit.org is in its beta phase right now, and you're invited to check it out and help us shape how we publish and view independent news. You are free to publish your media on your own terms, as long as it is a real story and is original.

Write about what you know, the places you come from, and the stories that deserve a closer look than the mainstream media has the attention span for. Positive or negative, stories must be grounded in facts; editorials can be linked to on your user profile. You can also comment on other sources and report biases, omissions and inaccuracies.

We are not for profit. We are for exposing reality. And no one can tell the truth of their reality better than the people who live it.

Colin Platt

Founder, Watchdog International

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Comments (4 of 4)

why not just put your effort into indymedias?

by Hmmm

Tue Aug 23, 2011 08:20

who is paying for this?

who is behind it?

How do we know you are bona fide?

Surely you would be better throwing in and helping indymedias to be better instead of trying to divide their readership more thereby helping to weaken them further?

best wishes

by JoeMc

Tue Aug 23, 2011 08:46

Very best wishes for the project , Colin.Independent journalists need a site that they can publish their news on.It would be good to see writers photographers and other media people collaborating to bring out the new , not just working as isolated individuals . Hopefully the new site would encourage such an approach.

Perfectly valid questions.

Thu Aug 25, 2011 03:10

Thanks for speaking up. To answer your questions: I am the owner of the site, I am funding this with personal savings, but I refuse to allow corporate advertisements and in no way am seeking to profit from or abuse user information or content. I am registering as a nonprofit to be eligible for other sources of funding for this project, and looking for viable non-Paypal/non-Google ways to accept electronic donations. The web development itself is being graciously donated by Foamgarden. I don't expect other donations until I have proven that the site is worth everyone's while.

How can you know I'm bona fide? Like any good journalist, meet me, research me, investigate me, call for transparency, but most importantly, document what happens over time as the site and organization develops. I have been a no-budget independent documentary maker and activist for the last 11 years and I was inspired to do this because I think journalism is the key to advance humanitarian causes, local production is the way to go as informatization increases across the world, and filtering per a user's preferences is necessary when we are hyper-saturated with online content, corporate propaganda via social networks, and of course spam and scams.

So why not devote my resources to Indymedia? I think the sites should be complimentary, different tools for somewhat different functions, but both in the service of getting more exposure to independent and non-corporate journalism. I think different IMCs have other objectives and purposes, but I would like to hone my focus to that, as far as a website goes, and do my part to create an inclusive environment with straight-up news.

Really, the ultimate goal of dogit.org is to publish the work of independent journalists, teams, or media collectives in every location possible, and the framework of the site allows for that, unlimited location creation without overtaxing the site's resources. The site will facilitate collaboration between people with different skill sets who are in the same location and have the same interests. It also makes it easy to search for news from a particular location from someone actually based in that location, and to see a reporters' past work, which is something I prefer when searching for independent news and checking the bona fides. Unfortunately, I can't even locate my old postings on Indymedia anymore. But you can check out my blog posts to get more of an idea of where I'm coming from.

The discussion about how to best improve independent media and challenge government propaganda and corporate outlets' telling of history in the making is obviously far from over. I am hopeful that the people who use the site become actively engaged in making it work better for them, and am excited to get more feedback.

Cheers,
Colin

fair enough

Thu Aug 25, 2011 06:55

Ok Colin. thanks for your informative answer and good luck with your website.

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New network for independent Irish journalists

Comments (4 of 4)