Editorial Policy

This document is to facilitate discussion about the specific proposals to revise the editorial policy that is taking place on the list in June09. To review the discussion, begin with this post: https://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/private/imc-us-editorial/2009-June/0620-fx.html

This is the original version of the policy. It is located here:
indymedia.us/en/static/editorial.shtml

Editorial Policy

US-IMC Editorial , Aug 25, 2004 @ 17:48 GMT

This policy was created by the US-IMC Editorial Working Group and consensed upon in August 2004.

imc-us-editorial (at) lists.indymedia.org

Contents:
-Open Publishing Newswire
-What to Post
-What NOT to Post
-Center Column
h1. -Featurewire

Open Publishing Newswire

The newswire works on the principle of open publishing, an essential element of the Indymedia project that allows anyone to instantaneously self-publish their work on a globally accessible web site.

The Indymedia newswire encourages people to become the media by posting their articles, analysis, videos, audio clips and artwork directly to the web site. You can publish to the news wire by clicking the “publish” link on Indymedia.us and filling out a simple form. Indymedia relies on the people who post to the Indymedia news wire to present their information in a thorough, honest, accurate manner. While Indymedia reserves the right to develop sections of the site that provide edited articles, there is no editorial collective that edits articles posted to the newswire section. The IMC-US editorial collective keeps an eye on the newswire to keep track of what is being posted and to apply basic editorial guidelines to keep the newswire free of spam and duplicate postings. You can find the IMC-US editorial guidelines at the info library link on the left-hand side of this page.

For more information on open publishing, try this essay by Matthew Arnison. Anyone can post to to the US IMC’s open publishing newswire. News articles and media that are uploaded using the publish form will appear a few minutes later on the righthand newswire on the frontpage. In the case of heavy site traffic or large media uploads, the time may be longer.

Articles posted to the site go straight to the newswire and are not passed through an editorial board or approval process. Once articles and media are on the site, they may be hidden according to the editorial policy. The content of posts is never edited though sometimes formatting is corrected (someone forgot to check html checkbox, or made html errors etc).

Please contact the editorial listserve to call attention to newswire articles that should/could be featured or to comment about the editorial policy.

Articles that violate the above criteria are collected on the hidden articles section. The hidden articles page is linked from the bottom of the newswire on the open-publishing page.

If you wish to comment on the ideas in a particular post, use the “add a comment on this article” link at the bottom of that article. The free-wheeling discussions that take place through such comments are another interactive feature of the indymedia website. Comments are subject to the same criteria as newswire posts.

Stories contributed to this site are free for non-profit re-use. Copyleft is a central tenet of indymedia. For more information, check out opencontent.org. If you don’t want your story to fall under copyleft, please give your copyright conditions in the summary on the publish page.

What to Post:

General Site Guidelines

  • Please post news items only; post your comments after existing articles.
  • Please post just one copy of your story. It may take a while for media to show up, so please be patient.
  • If you want to post multiple stories from other sites, please summarize and link them in one article rather than posting many articles one after the other which push other articles off the front page.
  • For more information on posting, see how-to publish

We encourage people to publish:

  • Researched, timely articles;
  • Eyewitness accounts of progressive actions and demonstrations;
  • Coverage of issues of importance to the United States;
  • Media analysis;
  • Investigative reports exposing injustice;
  • Coverage of events affecting underrepresented groups;
  • Media produced from within underrepresented groups;
  • Local stories with national or global significance;
  • Stories on people or projects working towards social and economic justice.
  • Original, underreported stories of local, regional, national, or global importance;

For help with HTML see the HTML guide.

What NOT to Post

US-IMC editorial team volunteers reserve the right to hide posts that:

  • advocate criminal activity indicating a specific time, place and/or manner
  • are duplicate posts (the most recent remaining on the newswire)
  • are obviously libelous or slanderous
  • interfere with the technical functionality of the website
  • are intended to disrupt the site
  • are empty posts (no content or gibberish)
  • are commercial advertisements
  • promote racism, homophobia, sexism, or other discrimination.
  • are obviously incorrect or misleading, including attempts to spread dis-information
  • contain threats and/or intimidation
  • flooding and spamming

Center Column / Features

The center column is the place for feature articles. These can be either articles articles promoted from the featurewire or articles written by an editorial team specifically for US-IMC. Articles promoted from the featurewire can be promoted with either no changes, with corrections to spelling and grammar, or with added links and content (with the exclusive purpose or adding context for a US-wide audience). Feature articles written by the US-IMC editorial group are written collaboratively over an email list, in a very similar fashion to global.

Feature articles should be articles produced by local IMCs with content relevant to the US-IMC readers and/or original features compiled by the US-IMC editorial team. The editorial group will make an emphasis on featuring articles produced by local IMCs rather than by the US editorial group.

Feature articles should be of interest to the entire US, and should not be reposts of articles published elsewhere.

Features should be drawn primarily from independent media sources rather than the mainstream press, and should be written with links to these sources if necessary.

Lastly, features should be primarily news-reports, that is, reports on events which are taking place or will take place, rather than commentary. Indymedia is a mechanism for the distribution of information, not a political soapbox.

US-IMC Editorial Process:

The US-IMC editorial group will communicate over an email list. This group is empowered to create and modify the editorial policy for US-IMC.

All feature articles will follow a process similar to that of the www-features group of indymedia.org: Feature proposal —> 6hrs without blocking —> publish.

The email list and the internal message boards in Mir are used for inter-group communication.

The editorial group is open to anyone who is already working on a local IMC in the US.

Featurewire

The featurewire is a fully automated, syndicated wire of all features from US IMCs.
article.to_original.email.prefix: imc-us-editorial at lists.indymedia.org