Dorothy Kidd wrote a short piece about the Independent Media Centre (IMC), a large global network of journalists who write about political and social issues and offer an alternative views against corporate-led globalization. This led to me to explore the the site (indymedia.org) a little more and though I don’t find the website design particularly welcoming, their message and purpose is inspiring:

The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth. We work out of a love and inspiration for people who continue to work for a better world, despite corporate media’s distortions and unwillingness to cover the efforts to free humanity.

I am completely in love with this mission. It has all the right language to make an evangelist out of me, but for some reason, I haven’t read a lot of independant news over the years. I thought more about this as I perused the the IMC website articles covering a whole range of hard-hitting topics. I think some of it has to do with the usability of the site – I can’t trace the background of issues in a chronological order, it immediately dives into the issues so it is difficult for new readers to engage, and the overall design is difficult to navigate. I completely appreciate that it is run by volunteers and efficiently served its purpose during critical times.

As we discussed in class, the Vancouver Media Coop takes a refreshed approach to usability and design. This is being added to my regular online reading list as we speak.

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