The idea of The Australian Independent Media Network sprung up in response partly to this quote from the Under the radar article on the now-retired Café Whispers blog:
Isn’t it a great pity that excellent articles are being written in the Fifth Estate that slip under the radar into oblivion? Isn’t it also a great pity that this will continue to happen? Isn’t it also a greater pity that such hard-hitting, truth-telling articles will forever be drowned out by our hysterical, manipulative, dishonest, sensationalist, gutless, unfair and unbalanced media in this country?
Has there ever been a greater need for the Fifth Estate to join forces? If we don’t, a lot of what we write will continue to slip under the radar.
The need for a representative body for Australian bloggers had been tossed around for a couple of years but it had never really taken hold. Tim Dunlop’s article in The Drum in October 2012 titled Media pass: citizen journalists need an industry body emphasised the need for something to be done. The introduction to the article read:
Australian bloggers have a lot to offer in public debate, but an independent body is needed to establish the credibility and increase the exposure of our citizen journalists.
So in late December 2012 a handful of bloggers; Michael and Carol Taylor, Barry Tucker, Kevin Rennie and Alex Schlotzer took hold of the idea and on the 2nd January, 2013 The AIMN was born.
We were soon joined by two other bloggers; Victoria Rollison and John Kelly. Kaye Lee and John Lord followed shortly after (both who started out as commenters on The AIMN) and today The AIMN represents over 30 independent sites.
And today we are 5 years old.
In those five years we have:
- published over 6,040 articles (including hundreds submitted by our readers)
- had over 15.5 million views
- attracted over 190,000 comments from over 8,000 people.
On top of that we have almost:
- 5,400 subscribers
- 18,000 Facebook followers
Our record for the most visitors in a day is just under 220,000 and our most widely-read article is Victoria Rollison’s An Open Letter to Frances Abbott which attracted over 430,000 readers and over 680 comments. (It was also shared on Facebook by 75,000 people or Facebook groups).
Recently we have outgrown our server… again.
But the biggest story has been those thousands of people who have helped make us the success we are today.
It might be our birthday … but it is the support from all of you that we should be celebrating. It’s been a great five years and you’ve all been a part of it. Without you, what would we be?
Before our 6th birthday we could well be going to the polls again, making everybody here more important than ever as we attempt to rid ourselves of the most lacklustre and ineffectual government in living memory.
Are you with us?
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