infobong.com

Here's a good piece critical of Indymedia by professional writerr Jennifer Whitney. Whitney has a strong grasp of Indymedia's goals and practices and seems to genuinely want Indymedia to succeed. I agree with many of her criticisms, like too many stories are appropriated from other media outlets and that the flame wars on the site may alienate many progressives. In particular, I agree with her criticism of the quality of original work:

Whitney does a good job of explaining why developing technique should be regarded as an asset by Indymedia activists, while not falling into the trap of defending professionalism. Because one of Indymedia's primary goals is to make media-making accessible to anyone, it privileges participation over skills. I applaud the efforts to resist elitism, but too many pieces could use better story-telling and organization. These seem to be similar issues to the ones Larry Sanger raises about Wikipedia. Although Wikipedia and Indymedia work from a different set of principles and have different editorial goals, the tension between quality and open participation seems to be a source of both projects' problems.

Although Whitney doesn't try to assert the legitimacy of professional journalism, it does seem that Indymedia and Wikipedia make an easy case for professional writers who do want to assert that their work is more legitimate than the work of amateurs. I'm not sure it's entirely wise to valorize open participation as an alternative to professionalism. Instead we need to rethink the categories of "amateur" and "professional" and concentrate on making fair and engaging media.