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,…