About

About The-Riotact.com

What is The-RiotACT??
Our History
Other Stuff

The-RiotACT is an Australian grassroots news and views website almost entirely dedicated to the life and times of the Canberra (ACT) region. We have been publishing independent and intelligent coverage of ACT politics, business, civil society, arts, music, events and sport since 2000.

We encourage an open (and hopefully civil) discourse on our stories many of which are submitted by our readership, which over the past 10 years has grown to over 120,000 individuals, making RiotACT the most read independent news website in Canberra. Our team strongly believe that robust and transparent media is fundamental to a healthy democracy and accordingly RiotACT is fiercely independent with no affiliation to any political party, lobby group or other media organisation.

More than anything RiotACT is what you make of it. If you don’t join in you have no right to complain. Having said that anyone can submit a post, anyone can comment. Have a question to ask or a story you want to get out? – you can say it. Got something to add to the discussion? Register and join in the conversation.

RiotACT uses whats known as a Freemium business model. That means you can use RiotACT for free. However we’ve gone out of our way to include a heap of extra features for our paying subscribers which include stuff to make the site easier to use, make your comments stand out more and will give you access to a whole raft of goodies and prizes that dwarf the small cost involved.

Mostly however your financial contribution is invaluable in helping RiotACT keep going. You’ll be supporting the editors and journalists who make RiotACT happen – and helping to provide independent perspectives on the big stories of the moment, as well as breaking new ones.

RiotACT was established in late 2000 with the purpose of setting up an open journalism project focused on the Australian Capital Territory region and its inhabitants. With the aim of spreading the word of what is going on in our town RiotACT provides an outlet for the local community to have their say on the issues that interest and affect them. RiotACT is grass roots news, the opinion of the people and up to date information about the Canberra scene.

Chiefly inspired by one of our founders’ wish to provide a vehicle for the community to promote and discuss local issues, RiotACT came to life one weekend over a pile of computer parts and an angle grinder. Since that time various local groups have discovered RiotACT and used it as a soapbox for their cause, sparking numerous political debates, alerting the public to hundreds of gigs, bemoaning the state of law and order and rallying support behind our local sporting teams.

As a small core group much of the original content revolved around those topics and issues that affected our lives but as the site has grown so too has the range of contributors and the topics addressed. Drawing interest from a wide audience RiotACT now receives regular contributions, be it posts or comments, from both local and federal Members of Parliament, local and national news outlets, business leaders, artists of all kinds and the list goes on.

As stated on one of our taglines, a bastardization of something Winston Churchill was quoted saying: “History will be kind to us for we will write it.” and we consider this your opportunity as much as ours to do so. With over 400,000 comments and 35000 stories online RiotACT is a wiki for Canberra. This is your chance to add to that history.

RiotACT gets tens of thousands of people reading the site. Of those many have taken the leap to register in order to have their say, be it to comment on someone else’s post or to inform the community about a local issue or event that interests them. With home net usage in the ACT the highest in Australia and as a huge percentage of workplaces in the ACT provide net access it’s no surprise that RiotACT’s readership is vast and varied (and constantly growing).

RiotACT survives on its readership’s willingness to let the rest of the community know what issues and events are important and current, and offering varied and informative points of view.

The website is currently run by editor John Griffiths (johnboy) and managing director Tim Hyde (Jazz) but draw on an extended team for advertising sales and editorial. We are and always will be based in Canberra. Frequently asked questions are listed here. You can also contact us with a question or comment.

Have Fun
Regards,
Jazz
The RiotACT team.