Indieweb for journalists

Originally published July 2017. Updated January 2026. Many of these ideas became standard practice as journalists built their independent sites.

There are times when working as a journalist overlaps with the Indieweb movement.

What happened: 2017 to 2026 

The ideas sketched here in 2017 largely came to pass, though not always through IndieWeb protocols. The principle—journalists owning their work and distribution—proved prescient: 

Independence won: Substack, Ghost and personal newsletters became standard. Journalists learned to build direct reader relationships rather than depending on platform algorithms or legacy publishers. 

Portfolio control matters: Maintaining your own archive became essential as news organisations collapsed and old URLs disappeared. Journalists who owned their own platforms kept their work accessible.

The subscription economy: What the IndieWeb called "owning your content" evolved into sustainable business models where journalists developed direct reader relationships. The 2017 vision was correct: independence from the big tech giants became crucial for journalism sustainability.

The view from 2017

The first and most obvious overlap between journalism practices and the Indiweb is the idea of having a syndicated work portfolio. If you like, you can create a single source, feed or river of everything written or posted elsewhere.

This means linking back to stories published on mainstream media sites. I want to do this even when those sites don’t reciprocate my links.

At the moment I sometimes write a linking blog post on my site.

Linkrot doesn't help

One problem with this is the way big newspaper sites change URLs and even drop old content. Keeping links up to date is hard work. Publishers missed opportunities to maintain permanent archives—another reason journalists need control over their own content.

The second Indieweb idea is to somehow consolidate the comments that fill different buckets at places like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. There are also some on Disqus.

There have been times when there are two or more conversations covering much the same aspects of a story. It would be better if the interested commenters could see what others have to say and interact.

Indieweb central repository

Then there’s my unrealised idea of moving to more of a stream-of-consciousness style of reporting. This is not so much Jack Kerouac style, but more like the daily live blogs you see on sites like The Guardian. I like the idea of writing a post then update it as the story evolves. This would be easier to manage with a central repository.

Last and not least, there’s my need as a journalist to own my work outside of the big silos.

I’m not a snob about FaceBook or Google, but I am aware their shareholders get the reward for my effort when my work appears there. It won’t happen overnight, but the Indieweb may hold the key to redressing the balance in the future.

I'm not a snob about Facebook or Google, but I am aware their shareholders get the reward for my effort when my work appears there. The subscription economy that emerged proved this concern valid—journalists needed to own their reader relationships, not rent them from the tech giant's social media services.

There’s a lot to be said from taking back control over how we work with technology.

More on journalism and media:

This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism independence, business models and platform control: 

• Online paywalls vs print: Why readers resist.
• Ad-blocking threatens online publishing.
• Lack of local technology news damages industry.
• Journalists too mean to tech companies
• Old school journalism writing habits
• Online subscriptions: the second digital divide