Roundtable: Editorial Independence and the Magazine as a Counter-Archive

With: Jack Murray-Brown (ICRN / Refuge Worldwide), Arysia Chernobai (Lyuk Media) Independent media play a crucial role in shaping what gets remembered, who gets to tell the story, and which forms of knowledge remain visible. Editorial work can be more than the production of news: it can be a way of preserving cultural memory, reclaiming narrative legitimacy, and building infrastructures that allow communities to document themselves. This roundtable explores how independent media can act as counter-archives—creating spaces where overlooked histories, cultural practices, and lived experiences are documented, contextualised, and kept accessible beyond the news cycle. It asks how editorial choices shape collective memory, whose knowledge is considered legitimate, and how independent media can challenge dominant narratives without reproducing the same structures of exclusion. The discussion will also examine the infrastructures that make this work possible. From archives and shared digital tools to collective forms of stewardship, technological independence is not simply about owning or controlling a platform. It can also mean building interdependent systems in which knowledge, resources, and responsibilities are shared.