- grassroots coverage of:
- important social and political issues, especially those the mainstream media ignores or distorts;
- events and issues of local relevance in Romania;
- events to which you have been a direct witness, actions or demonstrations that are happening right now;
- events and situations affecting groups that are discriminated against and under-represented in the mainstream press;
- investigative reports that shed light on injustices;
- materials produced by groups that are under-represented in mainstream media (texts, photos);
- stories about initiatives of groups working towards social and economic justice;
- announcements about future actions and campaigns;
- comments about any article on the site.
The most active section of the Indymedia Romania site is represented by the Open Publishing Newswire in the right-hand column of the webpage. All those who access the site can get involved directly by posting their own articles, photos, audio and video materials on the newswire, which can be done straight from the browser through a click of the "publish yourself" button. The central column of the site contains the latest news, announcements, opinions, and essays solicited or selected by members of the Indymedia group and decided on collectively. Anyone can also propose a text for the central column, by sending a mail to the group's discussion list at the address imc-romania@lists.indymedia.org.
Indymedia Romania does not have an team of editors but instead moderators who maintain the site from a technical point of view and put the editorial policy into effect by intervening on the site in order to move certain posts to the public archives of the "trash bin". In some rare cases, texts will be moved to a "closed" trash bin that is not accessible to the public.
It is recommended that you do not publish: your family name, phone numbers, an mail address connected to your workplace/university/official institution or other private data. If you have accidentally posted this type of personal information you can send a message to romania@indymedia.org to have the information erased. However, keep in mind that the pages are archived by google and that generally anything that is published will remain in the public archives even if it no longer appears on the Indymedia site.
The editorial policy agreed upon collectively by the Indymedia Romania group concerns specifically those situations in which a text published on the newswire or a comment:
1. violates other people's rights or censors other people's free expression by discriminating against individuals based on nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, gender or sexual preference, etc.;
2. is an intervention which, even if it doesn't discriminate:
i. comes from organizations or individuals whose mission and goals are in fundamental conflict with ours (because they promote ethnic hatred, homophobia, religious discrimination, gender-based discrimination, etc.)
ii. aims to promote such organizations and individuals
3. incites to violence or represents a personal attacks;
4. is SPAM - consisting of:
i. text or images lacking meaningful content
ii. insults, comments based on epithets, uncontrolled outbursts
iii. text containing pro-profit advertising
5. is a copy & paste of an entire article from another source:
i. if an article from mainstream media is relevant, then we recommend posting the first paragraph + a link to the original
ii. if it is an article from the alternative press it can be reproduced as long as the source is specified
6. is signed with a false name in an attempt to thus discredit a person/organization/group, or through its content to sabotage the real purpose of that person/organization/group or to mislead the reader;
7. has been sent two (or multiple) times, in which case we will move to the trash archives all the copies except for the most recently posted one;
8. contains only comments or general questions relating to the editorial policy or messages already moved to the trash:
i. if you have questions pertaining to the editorial policy or the moderation of a text/comment, write to: imc-romania-editorial@lists.indymedia.org; all messages sent to this address will appear in the public archives of the list; in order to keep the editorial process as transparent as possible and also to publicly assume responsibility for our editorial decisions, any messages of this kind sent to the private contact address will be redirected to the list for an answer or to be debated
ii. if you have noticed personal information in a post or comment then you can write to the private address, at romania@indymedia.org
9. reveals personal information or endangers a person/group/organization through threats or other information:
i. if you post personal information refer to the public source where they are taken from; if it is not clear that the information was already public then the text/comment will be moved to the closed trash bin
ii. any threat towards a person will be sent to the closed trash bin
The moderators reserve the right to edit texts when they contain broken links, diacritics, grammatical or translation errors, and formatting problems which we can fix.
All the material on the site can be reproduced and distributed freely, with the following exceptions as per our CopyLEFT policy:
1. no permission is given to modify the content or to alter the name of the author and original source as this goes against our desire for transparency;
2. no permission is given to reproduce this material for the purpose of making a profit, as this exploits our spirit of generosity;
3. no permission is given to reproduce this material in a context that violates the rights of individuals or groups by discriminating against them on the basis of nationality, ethnicity, gender or sexuality as this contradicts our essential commitment to equality.
It is possible that we will revise this editorial policy if problems related to the content of the open publishing newswire will make it necessary that we clarify or modify certain details.