producing journals/newspapers
Oct 10 2006
Permanent Revolution, founded 23 July, already produced two issues of their journal, less than 40 members.
Weekly Worker, negligible membership, produces a weekly paper.
The anarchist movement, between all of us, now produces nothing more regular than a fortnightly. None of its journals or magazines appear more than irregularly, most of them appearing annually.
Why is it that we can't seem to produce regular material, and does it really matter with the internet and all that.
Oct 10 2006
#2
Permanent Revolution mags production quality and the in depth articles are something to commend. The content of those articles are like any other trot group stuff, interesting read though and clearly the comrades have put in loads of effort.
I too wonder what on earth is the issue that we cant produce similar quality publications. Money is not an issue with for instance SolFeds Direct Action mag - it is completely self funding, not a drain to the organisation and has a healthy bank balance. The issue is lack of hands on deck and recently DA has sufferent from the lack of a layout person.
Oct 10 2006
#3
Knowing pseuds corner tho, it was probably a piss take that went over PE's head.
Oct 10 2006
#4
well i haven't read permanet rev but from the quote above i don't think i will in any hurry to get a copy, as to the weekly worker it is the only activity those rather lonely have , but i'm not sure that consitutes a good reason. Fortnightly pretty good, but even if we produced a daily who would read it ?
Oct 10 2006
#5
I think it's also we seem to tend to be more tech savvy - hence we're embracing the future with online content rather than physical stuff.
Oct 10 2006
#6
There's also the fact that for yer Trots the "role of the revolutionary paper" is clearly defined as a tool of organisation & recruitment for a vanguardist grouping. So obviously they're going to hurl resources (both human & financial) at it.
The role of the paper for anarchists is er.... somewhat less well defined.
Oct 10 2006
#7
summat to wrap your radical fried potatoes in, innit 
Oct 10 2006
#8
Jason Cortez wrote:
well i haven't read permanet rev but from the quote above i don't think i will in any hurry to get a copy, as to the weekly worker it is the only activity those rather lonely have , but i'm not sure that consitutes a good reason. Fortnightly pretty good, but even if we produced a daily who would read it ?
was less referring to the content, which we'd obviously disagree with, and more to the capacity to actually get things produced.
Oct 10 2006
#9
Sorry. wrote:
Why is it that we can't seem to produce regular material, and does it really matter with the internet and all that.
WSM produces 6papers a year and local papers in cork and the liberties as well as 2 magazines a year. A lot of trot groups struggle to get rid of their papers and lose money regularly, the SWP here for example have had to move to a monthly rather than fortnightly. I think where your publications end up is probably more important than how frequently you publish them. Trots mostly cannabalise the left and sell papers on marches etc. WSM do door to door distribution around wc areas. A lot of anarchist groups struggle to keep themselves ticking over and don't have subs to fund publications which is why they have less printed material.
Oct 10 2006
#10
John. wrote:
Trotskyist groups generally have much higher levels of dedication than anarchist groups, and lots of them have members give 10% of their income or more to the party. This makes all of them considerably richer than almost any anarchist group, and helps a lot with the publication.
is it just the income, or is it the levels of commitment? why don't anarchists do this?
Oct 10 2006
#11
guydebordisdead wrote:
WSM produces 6papers a year and local papers in cork and the liberties as well as 2 magazines a year. A lot of trot groups struggle to get rid of their papers and lose money regularly, the SWP here for example have had to move to a monthly rather than fortnightly. I think where your publications end up is probably more important than how frequently you publish them. Trots mostly cannabalise the left and sell papers on marches etc. WSM do door to door distribution around wc areas.
the World's Smallest Movement being a different kettle of fish in terms of the dedication and self-discipline of the membership
Oct 10 2006
#12
Sorry. wrote:
guydebordisdead wrote:
WSM produces 6papers a year and local papers in cork and the liberties as well as 2 magazines a year. A lot of trot groups struggle to get rid of their papers and lose money regularly, the SWP here for example have had to move to a monthly rather than fortnightly. I think where your publications end up is probably more important than how frequently you publish them. Trots mostly cannabalise the left and sell papers on marches etc. WSM do door to door distribution around wc areas.the World's Smallest Movement being a different kettle of fish in terms of the dedication and self-discipline of the membership ;)
That'll be the platform.
Oct 10 2006
#13
have to give it to WSM though, the "theoretical" mag is good, and Workers Solidarity freesheet is most often exellent production.
guydebordisdead, do you critically evaluate the impact the paper is having and the investment of resources vs. results etc?
Oct 10 2006
#14
a very lazy riser-esque question JDMF 
good question though
Oct 10 2006
#15
JDMF wrote:
have to give it to WSM though, the "theoretical" mag is good, and Workers Solidarity freesheet is most often exellent production.guydebordisdead, do you critically evaluate the impact the paper is having and the investment of resources vs. results etc?
We sure do. In fact we're having a whole session at national conference to discuss just that.
(I wonder can I say that on here?)
Oct 10 2006
#16
Quote:
do you critically evaluate the impact the paper is having and the investment of resources vs. results etc?
Suggesting we do cost-benefit analysis on a vital means of achieving the future anarchist communist society? I am ashamed of you.
Oct 10 2006
#17
Print media in general is moving on-line - increasingly any new publication will have either online only or online and offline versions, not that much is started off only in print.
Personally, my impression has been that print publications are a lot of work for very little reward. Online, you don't have to produce complete issues all in one go, so there's no need to pull everything together at the same time, it's easier to refer to previous articles or other sources, and it's much more event driven than deadline driven.
Stuff posted to libcom news generally gets between 50-250 reads within a day, sometimes multiples of that amount, and can pick up several thousands over the years. They can also be updated, corrected or expanded as events progress - all very difficult to do in print. Since we don't have a publication schedule, we can report stuff as soon as it happens, which doesn't stop us from going back and doing something more in-depth later.
There was some discussion before, I think started by Skraeling, about getting a journal off the ground, lots of people were interested but nothing came of it. Also a lot of leftie print publications don't publish accurate numbers for distribution/print-runs, but especially those Trot ones I bet they aren't very high. Same thing with websites tbh though.
With the print publications that exist, the main issues seem to be a lack of people providing content regularly. I also think there's a lot of duplication in the publications that are around, with individual publications trying to be too many things at once, whilst other types of content gets neglected.
Oct 10 2006
#18
Important to note that printed stuff still has its purpose in other ways e.g. copies sent to prisoners that often get passed around inmates.
Oct 10 2006
#19
It’s certainly seems a lot easier to have an impact online (I say this as someone who does both ) but it’s difficult to see what sort of direct impact it has – we’re getting 1,000 visits a day on the regional website for example but little participation on the forums, people rarely come to the physical meetups because they saw it online, the figures are distorted by spambots (to the point where I don’t trust a lot of the stats I see any more) etc…
I do think it’s wrong to say that it doesn’t stick around – particularly with lefty publications the damn things can hang around for years – just look at what stocks Libcom’s own library. And save for the stable websites, it takes only a failure to maintain backups or renew domain names and the content could disappear forever. Also bear in mind that with a working collective of nine disciplined people it would be possible to put out an absolutely kick-ass newspaper.
TBH I think the two types of media need to be seen as complementary, NOT contradictory, but I’m at work now so may not have time to go into the subject properly.
Oct 10 2006
#20
imagine what libcom would be like if it had a collective of nine disciplined people behind it!
Oct 10 2006
#21
little_brother wrote:
Important to note that printed stuff still has its purpose in other ways e.g. copies sent to prisoners that often get passed around inmates.
This is true but I don't think you need newspapers/magazines for that. TBH I think the best printed material you can have is pamphlets - you can print thousands, they last for ever, and they stay relevant for years (depending on subject matter).
Saii, very little of what stocks the libcom.org/library is news stories from papers - it's mainly pamphlets, journal articles, book extracts (or full length books). I should've clarified my post by stating it was only about news, which isn't really what this discussion is for.
fwiw I think the "libcom stories get beefed up for Freedom, in-depth Freedom stories get posted on libcom once the paper's out" pattern has been a great one. There's all kinds of ways on-line and print stuff could complement each other, I think the issue at the moment is they really don't in most cases which makes more work for everyone.
Oct 10 2006
#22
Joseph K. wrote:
imagine what libcom would be like if it had a collective of nine disciplined people behind it!
Yeah that's true!
Oct 10 2006
#23
Saii wrote:
It’s certainly seems a lot easier to have an impact online (I say this as someone who does both
Yeah it's hard to track with spambots and crawlers, you have to use a combination of webserver stats (especially search engine referrals) and stuff like technorati and alexa to get an overview of what's happening. About 85% of people who visit the site every day (if not higher) have never visited before, obviously it's nearly impossible to tell how many come back again or what brought them here in the first place, or whether they actually read an article or just hit the link and fucked off again a second later.
Compared to swappies chucking bags of papers in the river to keep up quotas though I think we've got a reasonable idea of how it's used though.
Oct 10 2006
#24
catch wrote:
little_brother wrote:
Important to note that printed stuff still has its purpose in other ways e.g. copies sent to prisoners that often get passed around inmates.This is true but I don't think you need newspapers/magazines for that.
????? what then?
Prisoners write back to Organise! (for example), and we print theirs letters and articles. It's an important way of bridging inside and outside.
Oct 10 2006
#25
little_brother wrote:
????? what then?
I did say in that post:
Quote:
TBH I think the best printed material you can have is pamphlets - you can print thousands, they last for ever, and they stay relevant for years (depending on subject matter).
Oct 10 2006
#26
but since paper based magazines and news sheets clearly have their place still, i dont think this discussion should turn into yet another print vs web discussion. It is a different matter altogether how the printed material is repurposed to web (or that material is repurposed from web).
So if at all possible, how about talking about the quality of our magazines and newssheets and how to improve them?
Oct 10 2006
#27
Yeah I'd just like to say I'd like Freedom to get better, it would be really good to good online/print collaboration. Doing something like the guardian does with its links for related content would be cool with print publications, for example putting links to our tags after related news articles would provide a quick link to possibly hundreds of related articles to a topic.
we could return the favour by having adverts or whatever.
Sorry - the publication issue is of very high priority to leninists due to lenin's writing on the subject. Also I think trots are more dedicated than anarchists generally in the UK anyway because they think that they will lead the revolution, whereas we don't.
Oct 10 2006
#28
Quote:
TBH I think the best printed material you can have is pamphlets
Pamphlets are great - AF publishes a lot of these - more and more in fact. But magazines allow feedback and that allows a prisoner to participate in debates from the inside - that should not be underestimated.
Also, with Organise!, coming out twice a year, the context might be a news issue, but the analysis is hopefully longer lasting. Conversely, our best pamphlets in my opinion have been the ones that were/are intended to suit their purpose during a campaign e.g. Poll tax, ID cards pamphlets - they are not designed to last for ever.
Oct 10 2006
#29
John. wrote:
and lots of them have members give 10% of their income or more to the party.
You serious?
If so, Ha, Ha, Ha!
Oct 10 2006
#30
BB wrote:
John. wrote:
and lots of them have members give 10% of their income or more to the party.You serious?
If so, Ha, Ha, Ha!
Yeah, some it's like 20%. WP was one of them I think.
Trotskyist groups generally have much higher levels of dedication than anarchist groups, and lots of them have members give 10% of their income or more to the party. This makes all of them considerably richer than almost any anarchist group, and helps a lot with the publication.
On a loosely related note Permanent Revolution got a mention in this week's Pseuds Corner in Private Eye for saying "Our inaugural conference continued despite the disruption caused by the decaying infrastructure of British capitalism" (a power cut).