Local/National press

Bimonthly's good...and you seem to have kept to deadlines. How many pages and contributors are there, outta interest?

Ok, I didn't realise. I don't really see the point of local publications. Don't the AF have publications already?
Devrim

actually, Dev's point is reasonable one to make. But the answer is obviously that we aren't able to cover enough local stuff in our national paper. We'd love it to be bigger and better. Even then we'd need local ones too. |The only problem would be if they offered different political lines.

I don't think that these local publications are a sign of anything positive, or that they have anything much to offer. I certainly don't agree with what little brother seems to imply that it shows a strength of the movement.

Of course if the AF were an organisation with a strong national press, a strong local press would be a reflection of that strength. The situation at the moment though seems to me to reflect nothing but chaos.

The AF has two national publications, Organise (bi-annually 32 pages), and resistance (monthly 4 pages). In my opinion that is very poor for a group of the AF's size*.

I feel strongly that far from supplementing the AF's national press, these local publications actually draw energy away from it. Of course this is not merely an organisational problem, but a political one concerning the priorities of an organisation.

Devrim

*Our organisation, for example, currently has a two publications, one biannual with about 90 pages, and one monthly with 16 pages.

If that's addressed to me Jason, it varies. A good issue of the monthly sells about 500. It always makes a profit.
Devrim

Yes, most people are. Of course we have problems with distribution as it isn't a legal publication, and of course it can't be sold in shops. This means that people can sell them to friends and workmates, but demonstrations make a big difference to sales.
We now have the bi-annual magazine coming out, which is legal and will sell in shops. We will see what the sales are like. I expect it to make a profit.
Devrim

Why the hell not? What an absurd thing to say.

Because they are generally low quality, and take away money, work that could be put into building a half decent national press.

Devrim

I've split the discussion, original announcement is here: http://libcom.org/forums/midlands-east-anglia/hereford-heckler-08082008

Looking at issue #5, of four pages:

Page 1 - Financial Crisis
Page 2 - Argentina, Thatcher, Financial Crisis continued, bailiffs insert, local pool news *, local police*.
Page 3 - Anti-fascism, Animal rights protest *, immigrants piece *
Page 4 - Olympics, National sport, local sport*

* = local reference

That's about 50% local issues at most. Some like the immigrants piece are essentially national articles but with a local reference (nothing wrong with that in itself, but it skews the stats).

Even when I worked on Hackney Independent, which really did have a strict local focus, there was plenty in there which could have been London or nationally based - City Academies, housing issues, olympics etc. While my priorities have shifted over the past four years or so, I still think City Academies, housing issues, and olympics fall-out are worth writing about - and this could easily be done in a national publication - whilst concentrating on localised attempts to fight various things.

You mentioned anti school-closure marches in that issue - were there similar marches elsewhere?. Most strikes and protests are local - apart from the big one-dayers and very occasional events like the postal wildcats last year, however the interest is in showing where those local events are connected to an extent. i.e. strikes at Coca Cola[/url and [url=http://libcom.org/news/heinz-workers-defy-union-walk-out-19072007]Heinz within a week of each other last year (and a few other food processing places too around the same time).

To me it seems like it shouldn't be too hard to work some local issues into a national publication (since they rarely are local - Hackney council's fucked up it's pools too) - and then add a free local insert if necessary - which would be enough space to cover the specfically local stuff anyway. While I've used the Heckler as an example, I think this applies to pretty much anything, and fwiw the Heckler looks a lot better than most.

except of course, a local bulletin helps give a focus to a local group and a sense of 'ownership' that just dosen't easierly translate to national publication. The idea that you can just transfer resources in this manner is a rationalistic fallacy. That's not to say a degree of co-ordination couldn't work.
Nicking or adapting articles from other group s(inc Nats) would reduce workload and feeding local stuff into nationals would generalise coverage.

From a national perspective, I find it quite frustrating that local newsletters don’t automatically think to copy in to Freedom – quite often there’s stuff in there which would at the least get into Get Active or merit a nib or better in the main news section, and in national terms there’s nothing to stop them requesting a couple of the most recent national pieces so they can concentrate on local issues – this is pretty much what the PA newswire does for capitalists.

Picking up on earlier comments, I think that design and presentation is really important, and something everyone could do with working a lot harder on. There seems to be an inverse correlation between design and the quality of the politics. The best designed magazines and publications i can think of are Crimethinc's, but thats all their publications are, all style and vapid non-arguments.

I think that the general volume of publications could be increased greatly (perhaps through rationalisation), and that publications should support each other - hence me splitting my effort between the AF's stuff, Libcom and Black Flag currently. I'd like to see more support of Freedom too, as I think it is one of the most valuable resources we have currently.

I don't think the problem is with local publications at all, but with the state of the national ones.

Maybe there is a problem is people don't feel that they 'own' their organisation. Of course, as you say, you can't transfer resources just like that. It needs a political understanding of the function of the press.

But I am not just saying 'shut it down'. I am saying look at what you are doing and think about what the point is. Could the resources be used better?

I don't think that there was anything in there that was local struggle specific (except maybe the animal rights stuff).

I would presume that the AF agree with me on the need to build an organisation and its press. Otherwise what is the point of having an organisation.

What I said was that if the AF and SolFed wanted to co-operate they should do it. I think it would be a good thing. I also said that I didn't think that getting something together around Black Flag was the way to do it. For obvious reasons.

Sometimes it is better to be critical than constructive. I think we should be constantly re-examining what we do why we do it, and how we do it. Your approach seems to be they are doing something so don't criticise.

Devrim