Do you keep missing meetings? Forget your dad's birthday? Didn't realize that martial law was declared to put down a meat packers' strike in Nebraska City on January 27, 1922? You must not have a Slingshot Organizer!

Asheville Indymedia is now selling 2008 Slingshot Organizers at Rosetta's Kitchen at 111 Broadway St in downtown Asheville. We know it's a little late in the year, but Slinghots are cool, artsy, collectively-made daily planners chock-full of facts about people's history. They also include menstrual calandars, space for address & phone numbers, and loads of useful information on emotional well-being, consent, dealing with government repression, etc. as well as a list of radical contacts around the world. For more information, go to: http://slingshot.tao.ca/organizer.php

Small "classic" pocket Slingshots are $6. Large desk calendar versions are $12. All proceeds go to Asheville Indymedia. Supplies are very limited, so go pick up yours today.

In the spirit of open publishing, the Asheville Indymedia collective has updated its editorial policy to add more transparency to editorial decisions. The new editorial policy is published below, and you can always look up the latest policy by clicking the "editorial policy" link to the left. The editorial policy spells out what sort of content we would like posted to our website, and when editors are empowered to hide or featurize user-submitted content. We have also added (though we're still working out the kinks) a "compost bin", which can be accessed by clicking on its link to the left. Articles and comments that the collective decide to hide don't get erased from the website entirely, they just get moved to the compost bin.

Asheville Indymedia Editorial Policy

The Asheville IMC newswire works on the principle of open publishing: anyone is allowed to post to the site. Articles go straight to the newswire and are not passed through an editorial board or approval process. Once articles and media are on the site, however, they may be hidden (according to the guidelines below) to maintain the newswire's efficacy as a media resource. The content of posts is never edited though sometimes formatting is corrected (html errors, for example). AIMC is committed to remaining as transparent as possible regarding its decision making. In this spirit, we are working to create a page to collect hidden posts so that visitors to the site can view articles that the editorial group has decided to hide.

FROM THE NEWSWIRE: The editors of the ASU campus newspaper, "The Appalachian," censored an investigative article by a student reporter about the controversy surrounding the College of Education building and then fired the young reporter who wrote it. We've obtained the article he wrote and reproduce it below in its entirety. This article was originally posted at WataugaWatch, the blog of J.W. Williamson - http://www.wataugawatch.net/

Friday, September 07, 2007
Censorship at ASU

The editors of the ASU campus newspaper, "The Appalachian," censored an investigative article by a student reporter about the controversy surrounding the College of Education building and then fired the young reporter who wrote it. We've obtained the article he wrote and reproduce it below in its entirety.

The article was prepared and finished by deadline on August 23rd for the August 25th edition of The Appalachian. It included a very full background on the ASU-Town of Boone disagreement and interviews with ASU Chancellor Ken Peacock, ASU Director of Design & Construction Clyde Robbins, ASU Student Government President Forrest Gilliam, ASU Board of Trustees member Jeannine Underdown-Collins, ASU professors (and Boone Area Planning Board members) Greg Reck and Tom Jamison, Boone Town Council member Lynne Mason, and (most significantly) Eris Dedmond, the woman whose household is threatened by a four-story university building 13-feet from her home.

FROM THE NEWSWIRE: I don't know quite how to say this other than just being direct. After the publication of this week's 436th issue of the Asheville Global Report, the newspaper will cease to exist.

Dear friends and family,

I don't know quite how to say this other than just being direct. After the publication of this week's 436th issue of the Asheville Global Report, the newspaper will cease to exist.

A combination of several factors has led to this inevitable outcome, and our newspaper is by no means alone. The past year has seen many of the strongest progressive publications meet a similar fate: Clamor, LiP Magazine and the NewStandard, just to name a few. The difficulties in sustaining a grassroots publishing enterprise of this sort have never been more apparent. Though most of AGR's reasons for stopping publication are particular to us, we do share with our defunct colleagues many overlapping reasons as well.

The fledgling Asheville Independent Media Center will host a film screening of This is What Democracy Looks Like on Friday, June 1st at Eaties Cereal Bar (next to the Hookah Bar on Coxe). The event will be a benefit and a kickoff party. $5 sliding scale requested donation.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like weaves the footage of over 100 videographers into a gripping document of what really happened on Seattle's streets at the WTO protest in November of 1999. With more cameras on the street than any other media organization, the Independent Media Center (IMC) coordinated hundreds of media activists and collected more than 300 hours of video footage during the WTO protests. The film cuts through the confusion and tear gas to paint an intimate, passionate portrait of a week that changed the world.

Dance party to follow! Guaranteed intensity!

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In 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.