The need for local independent news

I know that Haringey Solidarity Group produced a local newsletter for a couple of decades at least (don't know if it's still going?)

However, it was a lot of effort, and I don't know really how useful it ended up being for the organisation if. Any HSG people want to comment? (I was in it but only lived in Haringey quite briefly)

I was involved in setting up the first incarnation of Hackney Solidarity group. The Hackney Heckler was distributed pretty effectively in parts of the borough and got a fairly decent response, if I remember correctly. But that was in the days long before the Internet. I don't know if such a project would work so well in these days of Facefuck and Twatter. But always worth a go doing something like this, as long as you've got comrades prepared to graft for it and write, print and distribute it.

There were loads of local anarchist papers back in the day, I remember Hackney Heckler but also Yorkshire Evening Pest and South London Stress. If you can get articles that are really relevant to people and give the lowdown on stuff happening locally they can be really good. I used to do some of the donkey work for South London Stress and stand outside Brixton tube station handing it out, people did want to read it.

I only helped with distribution of the HSG newsletter but I thought it was worthwhile although it was hard to qualify it. It was good to have copies on the stall and was a good starting point with people at demos etc. People like having the chance to read something good rather thn being badgered into paying for the socialist worker.

There were often quite a few left at the end of a print run and sometimes we'd distribute them door to door, other times there was a bigger run so we could put them through doors. I don't remember anyne coming to us based on reading the magazine when it had come through the door.

HSG also has a postal mailout that I thought was a bit pointless but a lot of people liked it and people had standing orders that covered the cost of it so it didn't lose us anything, aside from an evening once a month to prepare it although to be honest those evenings were quite nice, everyone sat around with a relatively simple task to do together.

Bristol Cable

I don't think adverts are much of an issue, most people use ad blockers now and one of the best local anarchist papers I can think of carried adverts (Walthamstow Anarchist Group's The Underdog). They did that because the adverts covered the cost of printing and many of the small businesses who took out adverts were happy for stacks of the paper to be left in them. These were places like kebab shops and pubs if I recall correctly. I think taking this approach allowed the group to cover two of the problems anarchist papers face, the cost of production and distribution.

I suppose for a site that doesn't need to make money from advertisers you don't need to respect a 24-hour news cycle and you can go a few days between articles and updates.
The problem is finding people who can and will write things and that they can then find things to write about.

I used to do news for libcom and basically I trawled every francophone site I could find for news every single day, I had google news alerts set up for all the key words and so on. It took up a lot of time and I don't know if the results were worth it. But that was an international site and I was doing mostly international news. For my local area, for example, I wouldn't know where to start.
HSG worked because there were quite a few people who were extremely dedicated and spent huge amounts of time organising. And even with that core the newsletter was quarterly. That's the kind of website that people look at a few times and lose interest in because there aren't updates. I think the Walthamstow paper had a similar core of people, I think two were retired, and without that kind of dedication I think it would be difficult to run it. FInding that number of people on a local level and avoiding burnout and natural turnover as people move would be difficult, although it has been done in a few places.

I'd contribute to a local site like that given the opportunity, but I don't have the time, knowledge or connections to set one up.

JK's link to The Cable is interesting, but it proposes paying contributors and it has a huge amount of start-up cash from grants etc which could not necessarily be replicated elswhere even if the funding model could.

The only decent thing I can find is Spiked

The fuck? You think that bigoted pile of shit is decent?

Sleeper

What both are missing is how it can be done online. The only decent thing I can find is Spiked, and yes I do know who is behind it - http://www.spiked-online.com/

lol, well if you like that den of bigoted and idiotic bullshit then it's no wonder you don't like libcom (although kind of bizarre you spend so much time here)

Well, spiked does have lots of articles and no adverts that I can see.

But the articles I read were either openly bigoted or dog whistle politics.

It isn't a local news source either.

Spiked is an unmitigated pile of shite.

Never read it, never likely to... but going off the Wikipedia page, I notice there's ex-AWG involvement :o

Sleeper #18

At times it is better to say nothing, than to reveal you have nothing to say.

Sleeper

I'm still wandering if it's even possible to put out an independent news source on a daily basis. Technology wise is it possible?

Yes and it has been for a long time. You can set it up as a blog and use a free service like wordpress. You can set it up to have admins and contributors etc. It's a good idea to get your own site address rather than use one that they provide is what I was told. If you know more complicated stuff you can set up a front page like libcom has as well. A front page like spiked's isn't too complicate deither I don't think.
If you asked nicely the libcom admins would probably give you some advice, they helped set up a discussion forum a few years ago that had loads of people who were banned from here, so they're not too petty.

Your problem would be getting the content. Updating local news on a daily basis when you have no revenues means you need a decent-sized organisation to pay for hosting etc (not too much) and willing to find, write and edit content (not at all easy)
It also requires a fair bit of co-ordination so you don't end up with people researching and writing articles on the same subject.

Jeff is correct. There are plenty of wordpress themes you can can download for free, which take the form of a newspaper. Lots of people do it. It's really quite easy to set up a pretty professional looking site. Driving the traffic in your direction is another thing.

I used to write for a local online newspaper. It was a pain in the ass, nobody got their stuff together on time and you really need someone to be willing to boot people up the ass to get their copy in on time for the deadline.

Sleeper

Thanks for that. It seems like you have just under a thousand paying contributors. It's a model for how things can be done.

Yesterday I picked up issue 26 of NERVE which is a wonderful free or donation mag in Liverpool. This is another model for how things can be done. - http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/

What both are missing is how it can be done online. The only decent thing I can find is Spiked, and yes I do know who is behind it - http://www.spiked-online.com/

Joseph Kay

Bristol Cable

What, you mean vile stuff like "The tyranny of the Trans Movement"?
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-tyranny-of-the-trans-movement/18367#.V0AuQpEguM9

Sleeper

It's what left of the RCP who were active in the 1980's and in to the early 1990's. Particularly active in Irish politics and anti-fascism. They were behind Living Marxism magazine which was different at the time, as Spiked was when it started. Have you had a look at Nerve? It's a local arts and community based mag that manages to get out a couple of times a year if they're lucky.

Living Marxism also denied genocide in Rwanda and denied allegations that Serb paramilitaries were carrying out ethnic cleansing of muslims in Bosnia. It also supported Fox hunting as being really fun, I actually found that article on line and re-reading it, it doesn't seem to be satirical
http://web.archive.org/web/20000304100503/www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM108/LM108_Foxes.html