Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

Once your group has gotten together, you will want to focus on your goals as a media collective. There are several options for making media: releasing information through websites, producing videos for community screenings or public access television, producing newspapers and magazines, creating audio productions for pirate radio stations, low-power FM stations, even college radio. Anything is possible, provided your group has the time, proper organization, and skills or at least willingness to learn. Your group should discuss what equipment you can access, and what you will need to accomplish your chosen projects. Always offer training to people who are interested in learning new skills: this will help to spread power and technical ability evenly both inside your group and in tiie community around you.

Publicizing Your Media Outlet It won't matter how good your webpage or paper or videos are if people never see them.

Especially at the beginning of your enterprise, you'll do well to put as much energy into promoting your news sources as you do into providing news through them. People need to be used to coming to them on a regular basis for information. Your long-term goal may be to wean people off corporate media sources entirely, and if that's the case you need to let the world know that you can offer everything the corporate media offers and more. Distribute your papers everywhere. Arrange for local establishments to carry them regularly, and get them into unexpected places, too (see Distribution, Tabling, and Infoshops, pg. 210). Get other websites to link to yours, and put up stickers with its address everywhere. Promote showings of your videos, tying them to otiier events or making them into social gatherings with refreshments. Hold guerrilla showings in busy public places, using a projector to show video or photos on the walls of buildings. Encourage activists who receive corporate press coverage to use it to direct people to Independent Media independent media coverage. Also, solicit constantly for people who might want to use j4S the means you provide to tell their own story, or make their own media.

Indymedia is an example of an international media network. Much like Crimethlnc, it is as much a brand name as it is an estabUshed body of media collectives; the main advantages it has to offer are the name recognition associated with its radical media centers and the opportunity to network with other media activists. The Indymedia network is composed of local Indymedia-aflfiliated Independent Media Centers (IMCs). An Independent Media Center operates by the principles of equality decentralization, and local autonomy. If there's no local Indymedia group you want to join, you can create one yourself Provided that the collective agrees with the IMC Principles of Unity, if your group so vnshes it can become part of the global Indymedia network. To join, you must compose your own Mission Statement and Editorial Policy, which can easily be plagiarized from one of the hundreds of IMCs already out there, have representatives join various Indymedia communication email listservs, and set up a website. See www. indymedia.org for details.

Joining Indymedia

Starting a website is straightforward, provided that one person in your collective has a computer with internet access. You do not personally have to be very skilled with computers; it is only necessary that you be witling to learn skills and ask people for help with your problems. Free web space is available through various servers, including those of Indymedia and other non-profit groups. You should use a fairly reliable server, with lots of space if you're doing video work or expect your site to be viewed during a major protest; you should have a backup site, preferably based in another country, in case government agents try to shut down your site. An obscure web server in a country like Vietnam may well just throw away letters from angry lawyers or foreign governments.

Just like the corporate news, a website should be updated constantly, providing up-to-the-minute coverage and interactive forums. Providing an open publishing newswire, a forum on which anyone can publish news and discussion, is one way to facilitate this.

Media Websites and Open Publishing

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Writing News Articles, Tal<ing Photographs, Recording Audio

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