In October we’ll have the Independent Radical Bookfair in Edinburgh, guests are Vandana Shiva and Michael Albert from Z Magazine, George Monbiot, Ilan Pappe and others. Exactly at the same weekend, Document4, the Human Rights Film Festival, is happening in Glasgow, and we have got the Argentinian film makers coming over to screen ithefilm about Argentina Indymedia the same weekend.
I am looking forward to it in some way, but in another I am a bit pissed off with the scene at the moment. Basically after the G8, I got to realise that hierarchical decision-making has got its advantages, too. Basically, it gets macho men to take responsibility for tidying up their mess. That’s the big advantage. With non-hierarchical decision-making, they leave it just too often for the women to do whilst they move on to more exciting things. If you believe it or not, hierarchical decision-making can even be more feminist and egalitarian than the whole consensus decision-making, when the person who argues the loudest and longest and is the most intimidating, uncompromising or repetative wins. Or the person who has the most academic sliming language skills, who twists and turns whatever you say. At least in the hierachical decision-making you can work your way up, and once you hold a position and you are doing well in it, nobody can take it away from you or claim any success as theirs but leave you alone with any failure. The rights and responsibilities are not infringed, and that is also important. The notion of equality does not automatically exist in consenus and non-hierarchical decision-making, so I am giving up on it a bit. It is still important to strieve to achieve it, though, but it can’t be anymore the only aim.
At the moment, the whole thing which keeps me from dropping out of the scene completely is the wonderful Indymedia, especially the lovely small Indymedia Scotland with mates Bunny and Harry, some of the main co-founders.
I also quite like the Indymedia UK guys and girls, especially since we started the little independent Indymedia Scotland site, we did not really have any main arguments with the Indymedia Uk collective, as far as I can remember.
Due to the experience I gather at the moment in the mainstream media, I appreciate Indymedia even more. Not all mainstream media are bad as such but all have room for improvement! It is quite interesting to see the market forces influencing the reporting, the style, the editorial, the politics, the interaction with reader and audience, the atmosphere in the newsrooms, the architecture, the organisation, the structure, the design, the formality of the publications.
Every time I am on a new work experience I would love to write tons about it and the experience and comparing it with the alternative media, but at the same time I don’t know if it would be wise to do so on the blog, it might not be appreciated by the proprietors and potential employers.
I am also wondering if the work experience changes me and my priorities. After we finished studying some years ago, I noticed that my formerly liberal lefty collegues turned during their search for work rather conservative and came out with odd opinions they never expressed before. Maybe they were trying to acclimatise themselves to the working conditions, but it was rather odd to watch. Does that happen with everyone? That would be rather scary.