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 correct:
**Independence won: **Substack, Ghost, Microblog 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. 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:
Originally published July 2017. Updated January 2026. Many of these ideas became standard practice as journalists built independent sites.
Originally published December 2011. Updated January 2026. After 40+ years in technology journalism, this principle remains central to my work.
Why detachment matters in journalism
The percentage may have changed slightly—technology has seeped deeper into everyone’s lives since 2011—but the core principle hasn’t: maintaining distance from geek culture makes for better technology journalism.
This isn’t about lacking technical knowledge. It’s about perspective. Technology journalists serve readers, not industry insiders. The moment you write primarily for other technology enthusiasts rather than the people who actually use technology in their daily lives and work, you’ve failed your audience.
According to How geeky are you? I’m only 15 per cent geek.
That seems right.
I fail because I don’t like science fiction or any other geeky form of entertainment.
Despite 30 years of writing about technology, geek culture hasn’t rubbed off on me.
I’m not comfortable when I’m with other technology journalists who want to talk about Star Trek or Dungeons and Dragons.
To say these things don’t interest me is an understatement.
We have science fiction books on our shelves at home. Visitors to our house assume they are mine. They are not. They belong to Mrs B. And apart from her reading tastes, she is even less geeky than me.
Computers do not mean geek
Most of the points I scored on the geek test come from work. After all, I’ve spent years writing about computers and technology, I know the difference between a Rom and a Ram.
Of course, I have more than one dictionary. It’s a journalist thing – they are tools of my trade. And yes, I confess I correct people’s grammar. Editing has been my job for most of my adult life.
In the past, people have commented on my non-geek status making me the wrong person to edit a newspaper’s computer pages, run a computer magazine or write about technology.
Detached
I disagree. A level of detachment means I can make better rational decisions. I’m less tempted to air my prejudices. It means I write for ordinary people, not geeks. In fact one of the skills I’m most proud of is being able to explain tricky things in plain English.
I’m a journalist first, technology specialist second. I can – and have – written about most subjects.
And anyway, most of my work has been writing for non-geek audiences. My lack of geekiness means I can better serve their needs.
This approach proved especially valuable when covering New Zealand’s technology industry. Local companies need journalists who can explain their innovations to potential customers and investors, not just other technologists. Being able to translate technical developments into business and economic terms serves both the industry and the public better than insider jargon ever could.
The same applies when covering telecommunications regulation, business model challenges in media, or the impact of technology on society. These stories require understanding the technology, but they’re fundamentally about people, economics, and social change.
My journalism training taught me to ask “why should readers care?” before “how does this work?” That order matters. Geeks often reverse it.
Journalism first, technology second
This reader-first approach shaped how I’ve covered journalism itself. When publishers struggled with digital transformation, the story wasn’t about the technology—it was about business models, audience relationships and sustainable journalism.
When paywalls and subscriptions became necessary, the challenge wasn’t technical implementation but convincing readers of the value proposition. When ad-blocking threatened publishers, it was fundamentally about the broken relationship between readers, publishers, and advertisers.
Technology enables or constrains these developments, but it’s never the whole story. That’s why detachment from geek culture remains an asset, not a liability.
More on journalism and media:
This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism practice, business models and the craft of technology reporting:
An excellent post cum manifesto from Dave Winer who has done some deep thinking about the web in the past.
Here he encapsulates one perspective on the current state of play that many of us would subscribe to even if it isn’t orthodox thinking.
Activity.pub is fine and good, but as Winer says, it isn’t the only open protocol. Links are essential, but I’d argue the RSS feeds first developed by WIner are equally important.
There would be a place in Ben Werdmuller’s otherwise excellent Publishers on social media are between a rock and a hard place to mention Micro.blog.
It doesn’t drive much traffic to my website, if any… but it gives me a lot of what Twitter no longer can. Also, it meshes nicely with Mastodon.
My site traffic is down by between 20 and 30 per cent now I’m not active on Twitter. I could make a faustian pact to get that traffic back, but at least I’m comfortable with myself.
Impressed by Simone Silvestroni’s De-brand blog post. It covers some of the things I’ve been wrestling with as a journalist.
My Bill Bennett micro.blog site was set up from the outset along similar lines. It’s hard to totally debrand the Ghost site because it’s a business. But let’s work on it.