This newswire policy is actually very similar to ones already adopted by other IMCs, e.g. New York, Santa Barbara, Big Muddy in Illinois.

Its rationale basically boils down to this:

1. Critics and detractors of the IMC have taken to exploiting the newswire's open publishing policy to post agitprop, conintelpro, hate speech, etc.
2. Said critics then direct publicity to these newswire posts saying something along the lines of "look what those imcistas are writing now!" i.e. with explicit intention of discredting the IMC.
3. IMC states repeatedly that it doesn't moderate the Newswire, that is an open forum, but the people complaining usually don't have the patience to bother listening.
4. IMC ultimately forced offline for allowing its Newswire to foster hate speech or similar crap.
5. No one happy, except of course the IMC detractors who posted the crap on the Newswire in the first place.

The key here is that the moderators want to keep the site online, and doing so now means defending themselves from attempts to discredit the site.

Does this suddenly mean the Net is no longer a free & uncensored space? If effect, yes! Censorship and content monitoring occurs regularly througout the Net, not just in China. stlimc.org does not want to be censored by its Net providers, and it specifically does not want to be censored because some jerk posted crap contrary to the IMC mission on the Newswire.

If you personally feel this change in Newswire policy is for the worse, there's plenty you can do:

1. Donate $$$ or some other resource to the IMC. Keeping on open forum online doesn't happen in absence of time and money, sadly.

2. Volunteer to do journalism and editorials for the IMC. The motto is called "be the media" for a very simple reason.