Freedom going monthly?
Jun 13 2009 16:22
The latest issue to land on my door mat talks about Freedom going monthly and changing from being news-focused to analytical later this year.
I think this is a mistake for reasons which I'll outline, but what do others think?
I think shifting to monthly might save money, but I reckon less copy will be generated. The editors are mistaken if they think that regular contributors will write 2 articles for a monthly where previously they wrote one.
I think it's bad timing - as we are seeing an upsurge in class struggle - to go to a less frequent paper.
The problems that need addressing at Freedom, which despite recent dettractors are not ones of content, will not be fixed by coming out less often. FWIW I think those problems are about distribution, marketing and ownership. It was recent;ly revealed that the Visteon workers were grateful for all the support of the SWP - of course the support they were actually grateful for was from anarchists too shy to mention their politics. For those who think that being a national federation is unecessary/wrong/a waste of time/etc there is an obvious question to ask about visibility. Groups not affiliated to SF, AF, CW or L&S should be supporting Freedom, or coming up with a good reason why and at least engaging with it.
Regards,
Martin
Jun 23 2009 07:54
#2
Hi
disagree about this.
continuity is important in any publishing project - if you shut down for any length of time it'll disrupt things - people get used to not seeing it available and will think its closed down for good.
as things stand, a fortnightly newspaper doesn't work with the delay between articles being written and the paper actually being received or bought. It might be better to have some arrangement with the feds and their newsletters to do a joint weekly news bulletin (4 pages) that can be sent out (if people are willing to pay the postage.) (It can be given away in large numbers for any event)
even daily newspapers are feeling the pinch in competition with electronic media. (I don't think an electronic version of Freedom would be read - an RSS news feed will suffice most people on-line, they can pick and choose what to read then.)
other than that if the collective want to keep publishing then a monthly is a good compromise. especially if it can come out on time. hopefully a longer time frame might encourage better quality writing. paper publication is for longer term items now. (though take point about people working to deadlines!)
cheers
Mal Function.
Jun 23 2009 10:08
#3
Tbh it depends more on how well you advertise than whether you break continuity. The anarchist movement, and Freedom's readership, is small enough that you could actually make way more people aware of it via a relaunch than would be lost by temporarily closing.
Black Flag didn't lose out significantly in terms of brand recognition by shutting for a year for example, and it's made much more of an impact in its new format than it was having in its declined old one by relaunching with a fanfare of ideas and article releases.
Aug 15 2009 22:40
#4
It seems to me, as a non-Londoner, that one of the major problems is the lack of decent distribution. I recently contacted Freedom to distribute it myself because no one in my local area was already doing it, despite there being a local anarchist group.
To actually get to that stage, I had to look up the Freedom Press website, scour it for info about how to get involved in distributing, find there was none, and then pick an email address off the page to send a message enquiring about it.
Surely the first priority in distribution should be to make an easy, accessible way of applying to distribute it in your local area, and that should be visible on the website and paper itself?
Just a thought!
Aug 16 2009 11:20
#5
Yep, basically we need a dedicated person to be the go-to guy/gal for distro, both as a contact point and general promoter to shops/collectives etc.
If the editorial collective can't do a fortnightly under the current circumstances, tbh it would make more sense to go with the other option I put forward, which was to close it down for six months (subscribers simply have a hold put on their subs) while a long-term plan is constructed, and use that time to sort things out financially, build up a reliable cadre of writers, organise the paper to make it more robust in the long term etc etc.
I've said to various Freedom people I just don't see the point in turning it into a magazine, we've got way too many non-topical products already and it doesn't reduce the workload, it just means you end up with not enough copy at the end of a month instead of every two weeks. And going online would make even less sense, you might as well simply turn over your efforts to one of the existing projects.