http://www.ashevilleimc.org/index.phpIn this hotbed of progressive activity in the mountains of Western North Carolina, a new media collective has been formed. The Asheville Independent Media Center (AIMC) is a not-for-profit open-publishing news website that hopes to support and foster grassroots social and environmental activism. By providing the digital infrastructure for ordinary people to publish articles, ideas, announcements and events, the AIMC collective hopes to empower and support local communities and campaigns that are otherwise not represented in mainstream media.
The idea behind open publishing is simple: Anyone can post news to the AIMC website, including text, photos, audio, and video. News appears on the open publishing newswire on the right side of the website. The AIMC editorial working group decides what news is important and pressing enough to deserve to be featured in the center-column and what news needs to be hidden or deleted, all the while keeping the Editorial Guidelines in mind, which are posted on the website and decided on democratically by the AIMC collective. The collective is open for anyone to join, and all decisions are made transparently through a process of consensus. The AIMC outreach working group actively works to grow the collective (both in membership and in diversity) and to provide a diverse array of local grassroots organizations the knowledge and skills they need to publish to the website.