The offices of Budapest daily newspaper Nepszabadsag, in Budapest, Hungary,October 8,2016when the independent newspaper unexpectedly ceased publication. Jan Woitas/ Press Association. All rights reserved. Familiar to openDemocracy readers as a former editor and writer for Our Kingdom, Jamie Mackay is Press Coordinator of European Alternatives (EA) and a writer and editor at PoliticalCritique magazine. In October he organised a transnational media meeting at European Alternatives’ Transeuropa festival, a cultural and political encounter that took place in Madrid. Independent media practitioners discussed the opportunities and obstacles to collaboration, established avenues of cooperation and came up with concrete ideas for mutually beneficial fundraising. In this interview, Jamie shares their plans for the future.
Joan Pedro Carañana (J.P-C.): What were the main objectives of the meeting?
Jamie Mackay (J.M.): We met as a group of about 25 independent media from across Europe, firstly to share our experiences of working in different national contexts, and secondly to establish a strategy for new forms of collaboration among our magazines. We presented our respective platforms and shared some of our most interesting and unique stories, from Istanbul to Lisbon. We began with the audience and the question of whether we were aiming to cultivate a small readership for activists – the left or another pre-defined constituency – or a more general readership. There were a lot of different answers, but I think we all agreed on the need for some kind of pluralism.
