A local paper claims the Independent Media Centre that started it all in Seattle closed partly because of its decision to have a downtown location costing $3000 a month so that it could be at the heart of the Seattle WTO protest (which was four years ago) and so it could offer its multimedia services to other left-leaning groups.
More controversially the paper’s ‘obit’ suggests classic problems of left splintering were also partly to blame – “the core group running the IMC was cliquish and inaccessible; at one point, nonwhite media activists discussed starting their own competing local IMC” and it also pointed out one of the drawbacks of the open publishing model – readers had “to sort out for themselves the solid, well-researched, well-presented stories from the jargon-laden, factually incorrect anarco-leftist rants”.
Of course Seattle Weekly is part of the alternative press themselves so it may be they had an axe to grind – and the Seattle Indymedia website is still running, with a front-page explanation of their status that is “dismayingly revealing”:http://seattle.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=36723&group=webcast …
