UCD College Tribune Bigs Up Indymedia.
national |
arts and media |
other press 
Wednesday October 18, 2006 03:32
by d'other
In a feature by student journalist Susan Cahill, the UCD based College Tribune carried an interesting piece on the rise of alternative media. The article focussed its eye mainly on the main Irish chain in this emerging phenomenon by interviewing a member of the Irish Irish Indymedia Internet Collective, Robbie Sinnott. Left wing UCD students have proven particularly adepth at using adept at using Indymedia to cover their activities over the years, this article will hopefully lead to some more use of the site down in the LG's where it is more common to see tortuous hours spent poring over social networking sites like Bebo.
In the past the UCD Students' Union have used the Oscailt software developed by the Irish wing of the Indymedia network to host its website. An evening of film screenings called 'Reels of Resistance' was also organised in 2004 by Global Action to showcase the visual work carried out by Indymedia activists in documenting the Mayday demonstrations over the EU summit weekend and the activities of the Ambush camp during Bush's visit to Shannon.
For many on the right wing within the college, Indymedia has been used as something to tag on to sneers directed against the student left. This approach was best exemplified by then University Observer (The Snobserver) editor Eoin Casey, who rushed to defend traditional models of journalism against open publishing concepts he viewed as 'dominated by left-leaning participants.' Ridding itself of the tedious hack gossip column that was Faustus, in its first few issues this year the Tribune is showing real signs of finally overcoming the difficulties of being the only financially independent paper on the campus and finally surmounting the dominance of the arse-licking Observer.
Comments (3 of 3)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3I think where indy eire excels in comparison to the likes of the UK site (rubbish!) is that there is a good deal of different material put up. In the UK they dont even let stuff up by people like the SWP, the SP or even NGOs (I'm no fan of any of them, but if they adhered to the editorial guidelines then there's no reason they shouldnt be allowed speak), not because the post might be racist or whatever, but because the Indy collective have a different political opinion to them - i.e. anarchist (within the same 2% of the micro left spectrum - jesus, talk about narcissim of minor difference!). Pure infantile nonsense.
As if in the real world come any anarchist revolution (cough! - as if) you could simply shut up the people whose politics you dont agree with, even if they are very similar to your own... there was a revolutionary before who did that, his name was Stalin.
Anyway, good article, hats off to Robbie for giving them the info
Better than nada
Spelt Indymedia "Indie Media" the whole way through though despite the banner being featured at the top of hte page!
The college tribune about 4 years back now ran a feature I wrote about indymedia and the origins of open publishing at events like J18, Seattle and with groups like undercurrents. Good to see that the college tribune is still giving space to alternative media.
Indymedia Ireland is a media collective. We are independent volunteer citizen journalists producing and distributing the authentic voices of the people. Indymedia Ireland is an open news project where anyone can post their own news, comment, videos or photos about Ireland or related matters.