Although open publishing was key to the success of Indymedia, the technical aspects alone weren’t what attracted its user base. Just as important were the anti-capitalist and justice-centered values. I came to the Tennessee Indymedia Center’s website, tnimc.org, to write and read stories about how people in Nashville, my hometown, were dying because of cuts to state health care, about how coal extraction had decimated whole mountains and polluted local water supplies, about how police were increasing their presence in public schools.

Local corporate media at the time were either ignoring these issues or, if they were covering them, failed to consistently center the voices of the people and communities affected. Our thinking was that it would be awfully hard to change local policy if our neighbors didn’t know what was happening, and we couldn’t count on the mainstream media to make people understand enough to care. In this way, as grassroots journalists on Indymedia, our work was tactical. We were reporting with an agenda.

Other Indymedia organizers and activists I spoke to felt similarly. “Self-publishing is great. I’m into it,” an early organizer of Indybay told me, who asked to remain anonymous. “But I feel like the main strength of Indymedia was this idea about tactical media. There’s like a purpose to what you’re doing that’s not just about publishing your story.” If you hung around Indymedia types during the early 2000s, there’s a good chance you heard the term “tactical media” batted around. What differentiates tactical media from some imaginary idea of pure journalism is that tactical media is made in support of a political project.