Print media in 2017

Print media everywhere is dying, which is a real shame as I can't bear reading long articles on a screen, let alone a full magazine. In terms of quality magazines (and yes, I realise quality is a relative term) the AF still regularly produces Organise magazine.

As for definitive, if you mean by this a broad sweep, big tent anarchism, with every rag, tag and bobtail element included, then thankfully we don't have this.

There's scope, but no support base. Freedom and Black Flag both died not because there was no interest in reading journals (it's still possible to sell quality magazines with unique content and a good front page will always shift copies at a Bookfair), but because no bugger wanted to go to the effort of selling or promoting them. It's more a symptom of the anarchist movement being at a low ebb than anything else imo.

As a personal example I could put out 1,500 copies of a new Freedom magazine in a week or so for free distro if I thought anyone would actually hand it out, with a fair number of reasonable quality articles, but on the evidence of the last few years people say "I wish there was a magazine" and then magically disappear when any actual work is asked of them to make it happen. And that's not particular to Freedom.

London AF is on issue #5 of Rebel City, which is a freesheet. IIRC, they get about 1,000 done and shift them all, producing one about every three months. It's short news items and commentary rather than analysis, seems to go well on demos, and also the odd distro at tube stations (the pitch being "Fancy a change from the Metro?"). Don't want to steal battlescarred's thunder, but it's fair to say at this stage that it's open to contributions from other groups & individuals, and won't be a London AF publication forever.

I see a role for print media (partly no doubt out of nostalgia, having been exposed to anarchism by Black Flag, back when it was a newspaper rather than a magazine). Rebel City has kind of the same remit as the old monthly editions of Resistance, which was all about stories about, er, resistance -- so the most recent issue has stuff in there about shady goings on at Millwall FC, the Schools Against Borders for Children campaign, antifascism, other things I can't remember. I suppose if you can tell a few hundred people every now and then (who won't necessarily be anarchists or even particularly "radical") that bad shit is happening and -- more importantly -- people are organising themselves to fight back, that's worth something. And putting a physical publication in someone's hand is one way of doing it.

The first three issues are here on LibCom:

https://libcom.org/library/rebel-city

..... as you'll see lessons have been learned about font size since the first one :-D

That's another frustration for broad-base publication. Individual groups will sometimes put out good stuff (Occupied Times for example) and put a huge amount of effort into reinventing the wheel, often at significant cost, mostly because they like to fully control their own output, which generally lasts until the core group runs out of steam/cash (or there's a split, or both).

Edit: Sorry if this sounds downbeat, I've just seen an awful lot of print projects start out enthusiastic, totter along for a few years and then vanish without trace when the designer sods off or the person who goes to all the demos moves on, which bolloxes continuity and is frankly a massive waste.

Organise and Resistance speak strongly to the importance of having a specific organisation underwriting a publication if it's to be distributed (this is also the sole reason for the Morning Star's continued existence, I suspect the Socialist Worker too), but without that focusing effect, you're left with the above.

Do any of these orgs have money to pay people to hand em out? Could be a good way to do it.

Do any of these orgs have money to pay people to hand em out?

Short answer no. Long answer, some could afford to do it a bit, but always have more pressing things to spend money on and ideologically there's a strong sense that political orgs should be able to distro their own stuff.

The advantage of print media is that you can reach people who would never stumble across whatever it is normally. Same for posters, flyers etc. It's also nice to have something concrete if you have a stall or a physical presence somewhere.

A leaflet distro is pretty easy, I've done it a lot of times, any group that can get a leaflet printed should be able to hand it out.

Magazines are a bit different, freesheets too depending on the size. Due to the amount of work put in you don't want the same level of wastage as you live with with a leaflet. Again you can always distribute them door to door, I helped a few times with HSG because we had a new issue coming out and here were a lot left. I think HSG used to put out 4 issues or so a year of Totally Indypendent and I think there were usually about 1500 copies.

I think what Rob says stands up pretty well though, when you have an organisation then the print media is a secondary thing so people will be asked to do stuff if needed. If the organisation is the media then you have less slack of that kind and as he said you're vulnerable if a key person gives up. Also the goal of a magazine that is stand-alone is a little more abstract and I think it motivates people less. I never actually learnt to use the software but training was put on a couple of times to avoid relying on the two people (at first) who could use the software.

Honestly AK Press should just have a magazine. They are in the publishing industry after all and have experience making this work. Anarchist organizations should probably put their efforts behind convincing them to do that. I think it's mostly about making sure there is a well oiled machine of an organization behind it, with people experienced in print media, though having specific or union organizations could help.

AK having a magazine sounds like a good plan since it could basically be extracts and reviews of their own publications. Heh.

On reflection, there's actually quite a lot of anarchist print media at the moment (Strike!, Occupied Times, Resistance, Organise, Rebel City, stuff I don't know about, etc). None of it positions itself as being the publication of the anarchist movement, but that's probably good because a) there is no anarchist movement in the UK, let's not pretend otherwise and b) if they did try and be the publications of a nonexistent movement, all that would happen is a load of meetings about getting a magazine together and fuck all would happen.

Print media has been dead for years. At least in the ways it was once recognizable.

I really see only two different models for leftist publications. You either are willing to operate at a large loss, and are subsidized by participants with money (Crimethinc) or an organization that eats the loss (Industrial Worker newspaper, now magazine).

Or you focus the bulk of the work on online content that is regular, continuous and relevant on a website that is user friendly. You save the printed media for the core of your audience mostly through subscriptions, and give them content that is not all online (Like Jacobin, virtually all mainstream newspapers and magazines). The printed media is not going to be cheap for the consumer, but you might not operate at a loss/as much of a loss.

Seems one of the problems of leftist publications is that they do not acknowledge this choice.

Also, many leftist publications seem to lack a clear editorial purpose. Or even know who their audience is or who it should be.

On reflection, there's actually quite a lot of anarchist print media at the moment (Strike!, Occupied Times, Resistance, Organise, Rebel City, stuff I don't know about, etc).

Strike recently switched to quarterly (never a good sign) and Occupied Times became base publication, which has been struggling along with a tiny staff coming out irregularly, and all three of the other ones you mention are AF-backed. If all of them co-ordinated their releases it could just about add up to one monthly publication. Compared to when I came into the movement (and it was already in decline) when there was Mute (monthly), Freedom (fortnightly!), Schnews (monthly), Do or Die was only just closed, Peace News (monthly) was more active, Direct Action (quarterly), Organise (quarterly?), Resistance (monthly?), Catalyst, Class War magazine, Now or Never! plus a freesheet or two in most regions.

Unless people aren't bothering to stock in Freedom, there's not much that you don't know about out there, at least nationally. Local sheets I know of are Bristolian, Totally Indypendent and a couple of Hecklers, but otherwise it's pretty barren and they're largely the same folks who have been doing it for years.

Bloody Hell!

We at "The Cunningham Amendment" must be doing something wrong.
Going for 43 years. Full colour. Profusely illustrated. Three times a year. Competitively priced.

But then we never complain about would-be contributors or unresponsive outlets or moan about finance.

We just get on with it.

Sorry forgot about you folks, I like your work a lot! But see "largely the same folks who have been doing it for years." If your core people who show up at the bookfair every year stopped, so would the show no?

This isn't about whinging (it's not like I don't put my money where my mouth is, I was the one who sorted out the bookfair issue of Freedom last year, which did shift all 1,500 copies in short order), it's about assessing what the movement is and isn't sustaining compared to even a few years ago, and what the prospects appear to be in terms of getting regular print publications out on a mass basis.

Print media isn't completely dead in a commercial sense but it's heading that way. Nearly all the major newspapers and magazines in the UK have seen circulations decline over the past 50+ years. There's a couple of notable exceptions (like Private Eye) but on the whole the trend we're seeing in society is people are reading less printed media and more online.

The big political media success story of the past few years is probably Breitbart, the "mouthpiece for the alt-right" which is backed by deceased neoconservative billionaire Andrew Breitbart. It's come from pretty much nowhere to being the 29th most visited website in the USA according to the latest Alexa ratings (for comparison, this site is 29,035th).

If we're trying to build an anarchist media the most effective place to put resources is online.

If we're trying to build an anarchist media the most effective place to put resources is online.

We've disagreed on that score for a good 15 years now ;). I still believe there's a place for printed material, because it has the potential to offer a very particular form of outreach online doesn't match (which is why direct mail is still a thing). I also think putting together the sort of paper that could make a serious impact (high-quality, attractive, regular, well-distributed, ideally free) requires a level of organisational sophistication, co-operation, planning, commitment and resources that the British anarchist movement simply doesn't have.

Rob Ray

We've disagreed on that score for a good 15 years now ;).

Yeah, although I think I'm a lot more pro-print than I was. I'd love to be working on a print publication again, I just don't have the time or the energy to do it on top of everything else and I really need to be putting more time and energy into upgrading this site at the moment.

I think one of the problems is the breakdown of political organisations and growth of the internet. When I first became an anarchist I had been on the fringes of some Tankie groups and then joined the AF. While I was in the AF I learnt how to lay things out in Adobe Pagemaker from working on Resistance and that was what gave me the confidence to work on Freedom. I basically got an education in print production from working on a political organisation's publication. A lot of people who're new to politics now just don't get that. I can think of comrades who've been around for a while but have never worked on a print publication. They'll have their own tumblr, blog, Instagram etc. and be happy writing but won't know much about how to produce a regular print publication.

Another issue is people not understanding the audiences they're writing for. Nearly everybody I can think of in groups I'm involved with who writes is a humanities student or graduate and the writing they produce can be really academic in style. People who're comfortable writing essays but can't write news articles for shit and aren't really interested in producing something which isn't advocating at length a political position they believe in. It does my head in that the anarchist movement seems to be able to produce essays en masse but has abandoned writing news.

One of the best ways of promoting anarchism is through news writing, reports on struggles and actions and reports on general political and economic life from an anarchist perspective. People largely aren't even attempting to do this. One day I'd love to get the news section on here to the standard it was during the anti-CPE struggle, but that's probably a while off.

Yep to all of that. Also the big one for me is the actual handing out of stuff. Simplest thing in the world, but getting people to actually do it is like pulling teeth. I dunno if people think their time is too important or what, but personally I'd take one person prepared to just regularly go to demos (or heaven forfend walk the street) handing papers out over a dozen writers poring over their latest grandiose analysis of the fetishisation of anger in male bonding rituals (or whatever). If I had a couple available at Freedom I actually would be putting out another issue right now.

Yeah, definitely. Distribution is a lot harder to get right than production. It's also another one of the reasons online is going to be a lot easier for us to start getting right than print sadly.

I learned lots from Colin Ward's "Anarchy". Come rain or wind he single-handedly got issues out over 10 years.

He had a particular way in approaching and winning the confidence of contributors. Most Anarchists I come across are only too willing to express ideas and opinions. "A call for papers" only works with journals that have a sense of trustworthiness about them. And that can take years to establish.

I've always been wary of journals produced by collectives. Many break down over work schedules and ideology after three or four issues. The best come from oddball individuals who take on the responsibility to keep on producing. Take a look at "The Match!" which has been going since the mid-60's and has a few thousand loyal supporters.

I also believe there are hundreds out there (working away in different projects) who have never come across the mainstream movement.but, nonetheless, are sympathetic towards Anarchism.

Sorry to preach. If you bought me a beer I'd go on for hours.

I know all about the rain or shine bit, I did Freedom for five years as a fortnightly, sometimes single-handedly ;). As I say I've never had a problem getting people to write, ime opinions are cheaper than water and usually more enthusiastically proffered (though Jim's right I think that there's a huge difference between getting opinionated people to be opinionated on paper and getting disciplined writing/skilled layout to order, that definitely does rely a lot on reputation and is possibly a declining skill base).

It's the boring bits of admin, distribution and marketing that's always been the let-down for me, and I think that's something which has gotten significantly worse since Ward's time. Freedom used to have a guaranteed network of shops to put its wares in, a selection of distros, people selling on the street (and to some extent, people buying). All that's mostly vanished now which doesn't hurt too much at smaller scales — we can sell out of new book titles on short runs without any trouble at all — but generally makes bigger scales problematic and complex to navigate.

Jim

Another issue is people not understanding the audiences they're writing for. Nearly everybody I can think of in groups I'm involved with who writes is a humanities student or graduate and the writing they produce can be really academic in style. People who're comfortable writing essays but can't write news articles for shit and aren't really interested in producing something which isn't advocating at length a political position they believe in. It does my head in that the anarchist movement seems to be able to produce essays en masse but has abandoned writing news.

One of the best ways of promoting anarchism is through news writing, reports on struggles and actions and reports on general political and economic life from an anarchist perspective. People largely aren't even attempting to do this. One day I'd love to get the news section on here to the standard it was during the anti-CPE struggle, but that's probably a while off.

Personally, as a degree holding writer who publishes here, I try. For me, it's just hard to have an idea that you want to express about current events and then put it on the page, finding the time to do it all.

For me I just try to contribute in a very small way to publishing information that otherwise would probably not be widely disseminated. I'm guessing others would feel similarly.

Nearly everybody I can think of in groups I'm involved with who writes is a humanities student or graduate and the writing they produce can be really academic in style. People who're comfortable writing essays but can't write news articles for shit and aren't really interested in producing something which isn't advocating at length a political position they believe in. It does my head in that the anarchist movement seems to be able to produce essays en masse but has abandoned writing news.

This is a great point, but I think it cuts both ways. I think a lot of anarchist writing just isn't very good: it's too wordy, it's rambling, it's jargony, it doesn't know its audience. Not to criticise the hard work that goes into gathering articles, doing layout, and meeting deadlines (I've been there), but I feel like a lot of anarchist publications need an editor who edits.

FWIW, I think all anarchist publications (and especially those aimed outside the movement) should have a 500 word limit per article, with the exception of a 1500 word feature. And then, editors that help people to make their writing concise and coherent.

Two other quick points:

1) I just want to say, again, how awesome this shit is. For me, this is the model: http://www.weareplanc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/bulletin-4-front-back.pdf

2) Whatever happened to that SolFed online writing course? Maybe we should publish it on libcom instead?

Wow! quite a nice little bulletin there Chili.

Maybe Libcom could have a way for groups to contact the admins to request coverage for their campaigns.

Jim

I think one of the problems is the breakdown of political organisations and growth of the internet. When I first became an anarchist I had been on the fringes of some Tankie groups and then joined the AF. While I was in the AF I learnt how to lay things out in Adobe Pagemaker from working on Resistance and that was what gave me the confidence to work on Freedom. I basically got an education in print production from working on a political organisation's publication. A lot of people who're new to politics now just don't get that. I can think of comrades who've been around for a while but have never worked on a print publication. They'll have their own tumblr, blog, Instagram etc. and be happy writing but won't know much about how to produce a regular print publication.

the button wrote about this a few years back, saying that despite the problems the unions used to train people to write press releases, handle media etc. But the libcom writing guides and posters on here did a pretty good job at helping me and others with advice and proof-reading when we started out.

Another issue is people not understanding the audiences they're writing for. Nearly everybody I can think of in groups I'm involved with who writes is a humanities student or graduate and the writing they produce can be really academic in style. People who're comfortable writing essays but can't write news articles for shit and aren't really interested in producing something which isn't advocating at length a political position they believe in. It does my head in that the anarchist movement seems to be able to produce essays en masse but has abandoned writing news.

I think essays are more self-congratulatory and you're more likely to get a response from someone for expressing an opinion that someone agrees with than writing a neutral news article.

One of the best ways of promoting anarchism is through news writing, reports on struggles and actions and reports on general political and economic life from an anarchist perspective. People largely aren't even attempting to do this. One day I'd love to get the news section on here to the standard it was during the anti-CPE struggle, but that's probably a while off.

Althought most of that was done by two people it was very encouraging to have some many articles and links submitted by people involved in the struggle. I kept up the news for quite a while afterwards, but gave up because it took up a lot of time and I wasn't really sure there was an effect of that anyone was even reading. When you're distributing a paper at least you know it's being read.

jef costello

Althought most of that was done by two people it was very encouraging to have some many articles and links submitted by people involved in the struggle. I kept up the news for quite a while afterwards, but gave up because it took up a lot of time and I wasn't really sure there was an effect of that anyone was even reading. When you're distributing a paper at least you know it's being read.

On this, I think if you are distributing a paper which people pay for you know it is getting read, however free sheets mostly get thrown away. Whereas at least with online stuff you can see how many exact readers it had (I think that is a good thing about the Facebook Likes, so at least people can get some instant feedback on people who've enjoyed reading stuff people have written/posted).

I think print publication is really important, however from my personal involvement with it from Freedom, we just about managed to get the paper written and out every fortnight (not particularly to a high standard I might add), but the distribution and marketing just wasn't there, so we were constantly running and struggling just to stand still.

I think the only ways you're going to get something like this actually done properly is to have a sizeable organisation agreed to back it - like Industrial Worker in the US for example.

Also as JC points out a key factor is: what is your audience. Most anarchist publications just haven't really figured that out.

I think one publication worth mentioning is Aufheben. It's pretty small, only being once a year, however it is effective, and I think what works best about it is that it has a very clear purpose and audience.

I think it would be great to do a general anarchist/libcom "news" paper with a bit of comment and analysis aimed at a general audience focused on: those involved in social movements and single issue campaigns, like migrants' rights, environmentalism, anti-racism, and shopfloor militants in unions and non-unionised workplaces. However distribution would be incredibly difficult - and infrastructure to do it effectively doesn't exist. So this is where online stuff is much easier. But there still isn't a decent online anarchist news service yet, although we would really like libcom to be this eventually… And I don't think a decent news print publication is possible if you can't even get an online one properly yet

We should forget mainstream distribution. Without strong financial backing it's a no-go.

Of course, there are a few regional Anarchist Book Fairs dotted about the country. They replaced the old alternative shops once found in every town. The Fairs are great markets. Tons of interested punters exchanging ideas and even buying things.

For me, the more Anarchist papers the better. But - and it's a big but - they must be characterised as something imaginative, full of surprise and inspiration. I quite agree with a 500 word limit. Too often articles, and format, are little different from drab Marxist drones.

On the scarcity of contributions I once put together a run of a TU paper in a hospital. Then, like now, staff were wary about putting their name in print. I went round with a tape recorder interviewing people. It worked. Quite incredible to find that the shop floor, and patients, had some acute observations.

A solid reliance on cyberspace is not good. Someday, someone will switch it off.

PeterTCA

A solid reliance on cyberspace is not good. Someday, someone will switch it off.

yeah no that's not going to happen. Of course in some parts of the world the Internet is heavily policed and repressed, like China. However even in places like that online publications in most cases are still the most efficient and effective, if done in a secure way. And even in a kind of dystopian police state scenario like the one you outline (not that that would actually happen, as huge chunks of big business and the state requires the internet to function on a daily basis), you'll still be safer running websites through VPNs rather than trying to dish out leaflets or papers in the street.

More long-term I hope as E readers get better, print will just largely be surpassed by online publication, and the two will effectively merge. This would be fantastic for us, as it would mean being able to "publish" effectively for free

So I agree about what's generally being said here about the need for a print publication but there not being the organisational infrastructure to maintain it. Definitely a huge shame imo. I also wanted to pick up on jef's comment:

jef costello

I kept up the news for quite a while afterwards, but gave up because it took up a lot of time and I wasn't really sure there was an effect of that anyone was even reading. When you're distributing a paper at least you know it's being read.

Yeah, at various points we've had one person who took on the role of basically keeping the site current (the Working Class Self-Organisation blog was another one) and when they stopped then current topics just tailed off, which was bad because they were probably our most popular articles.

I think in the past we definitely weren't as good at letting contributors know how widely read their content was (still not tbh, but a bit better) but, as Steven says, just looking at Facebook and Twitter gives you a decent idea. WCSO articles were getting dozens, sometimes close to 100 and occasionally even more. More recently, Jim showed me the stats on the Richard Spencer blog we put up and that got over 10,000 views in the first day!

So yeah, having current content is a real boost and has the potential to go beyond the usual crowd. Novara do really well with this, though obviously with a really pro-Labour bent, and I see people I know from outside politics sharing their stuff on Facebook as a result. I'd really like if we could do similar here. Given the numbers we get already, it could be a massive boost to the site and (by potentially reaching a wider audience and plugging news into all the other historical/theoretical stuff we've got) our politics more generally.

Steven

Whereas at least with online stuff you can see how many exact readers it had (I think that is a good thing about the Facebook Likes, so at least people can get some instant feedback on people who've enjoyed reading stuff people have written/posted).

Can you actually tell if the post has been actually read? A like may just mean that someone agreed with the headline and/or the first few sentences. Then again, I don't know the Facebook analytics stuff so I don't know if you can actually tell or not,

Steven.

PeterTCA

A solid reliance on cyberspace is not good. Someday, someone will switch it off.

yeah no that's not going to happen.

i wouldn't be so quick to say that. while i take your point that both state and capital need the internet, i can easily imagine a concentration of control by degrees. perhaps personal servers are a way around this, but i don't know the tech well enough to speculate.

And it does look like the Trump administration is hell-bent on overturning net neutrality. That's a not a shutting down of the internet, but it does mean that internet traffic will be channeled away from radical voices.

That said, I'm with those who see a diminished role for print media in the anarchist movement. As I think Jim was suggesting in one of his earlier posts, the decline of anarchist writing (in print or otherwise) reflects a wider decline in organized class activity and organized radical activity. I'm not against writing projects, but I tend to think that the best (or most coherent or consise or whatever) radical argument won't win over most people unless it's somehow grounded in a relatable or shared experience.

As much as I enjoy Aufheben on an intellectual level or the quality of analysis of the libcom blogs, it's no substitute for the practical activity that would be needed to make radical writing relevant to people not already attracted to anarchism on a political level.

Not specifically about anarchist media but I think that both mainstream and niche media are going to adapt and change in the future and I think that the resurgence of print will be a part of that because I just don't find I can reflect on and engage with onscreen or any other kind of media in the way that I can with print. If print media can find a way of getting around two major issues and maybe others it will be ok. One is that the Internet tends to be free and the other is the immediacy of the Internet. I don't know a lot about anarchist print media but those are just a couple of thoughts. The Internet is a good form of communication but it has inherent limitations. I might have missed the point here.

Also I looked up "anarchist zines" and I found at least 3 nice looking sites with some interesting looking pdfs which is kind of a print/ digital hybrid. I would argue that pdfs are at least partly in the print category but the printing is (sometimes) done by the individual.

I didn't mean to tell anyone how to suck eggs, as for the actual question of why there isn't a definitive anarchist journal in print, I dunno, is there a comparable journal for other political persuasions?

cactus9

I didn't mean to tell anyone how to suck eggs, as for the actual question of why there isn't a definitive anarchist journal in print, I dunno, is there a comparable journal for other political persuasions?

Mostly socialist organisations have their own journals. But in terms of an independent one Jacobin has been mentioned as a good example. I personally think it would be good if we could have a "Jacobin of the ultraleft"…

Chilli Sauce

As much as I enjoy Aufheben on an intellectual level or the quality of analysis of the libcom blogs, it's no substitute for the practical activity that would be needed to make radical writing relevant to people not already attracted to anarchism on a political level.

while I see where you're coming from here, and would agree that practical activity is the most important thing, the "battle of ideas" still has a role to play. I mean look at all of us, none of us came to anarchism through a militant workplace organisation, we all came to it through reading stuff in leaflets, magazines and online

Hey, first of all interesting thread! So here are my two cents:
At first I wanted to write an overview about the German situation, but tbh who cares... So instead some comments about print media, as someone, who was involved in different print projects.

First, I still think that there is the need to produce printed material: situation specific bulletins, (multi page) leaflets, mass papers and magazines. I don't think there is much need for a news centric print product, because we all get most of our news online and there are quite a few opportunities to get them. topic specific online news aggregations are super useful. (And like a lot of the other commenters, I really miss the time when there were more news on libcom.)

But for me a "libcom" paper should give you grounded information about past and ongoing struggles and room for discussions. So for me the ideal length of articles is a bit longer than those 500 words: 4000 to 8000 characters (I'm guessing that are 600 - 1200 words, but word counts are quite difficult in German).

I don't really like the "what audience" question, but it is important to know for what use you are trying to produce a paper: mass propaganda? As Lenin's "collective organizer"? to intervene in the more or less scattered scene/milieu? ... Producing a paper becomes easily just another task you do, so it should be clear what use the paper has for the producing group in their other political activities / in the daily struggle.

Distrubution: Forget book and info shops at least in Germany you sell reletivly few issues in the big cities (like Berlin) and nearly nothing in all others and because of that it is really a pain. One problem is the relatively short lifetime of newspapers and magazines (in comparison to books). So in my experience the only distribution that works is by subscriptions and active resellers. (If you are big and legal enough to be distributed by one of the big distributors and can be sold at "every" railway station kiosk like some German leftist papers and some punk zines, it is another story).
Also a lot people of my generation and younger don't read a lot, and they buy even less. If they buy something printed, it tends to be books... So at least in Germany there is a flood of (often bad) books, which collect articles.

Steven.

Mostly socialist organisations have their own journals. But in terms of an independent one Jacobin has been mentioned as a good example. I personally think it would be good if we could have a "Jacobin of the ultraleft"…

In Germany there is kind of something like that, at least for what is called "radical left" (I'm guessing that is a bit bigger, than what you mean by ultra left). It is called ak, and was years ago an ML party paper called Arbeiterkampf (worker struggle). Today it is called Analyse & Kritik. It is relativly big and has some (part time) paid people.

Steven.

Chilli Sauce

As much as I enjoy Aufheben on an intellectual level or the quality of analysis of the libcom blogs, it's no substitute for the practical activity that would be needed to make radical writing relevant to people not already attracted to anarchism on a political level.

while I see where you're coming from here, and would agree that practical activity is the most important thing, the "battle of ideas" still has a role to play. I mean look at all of us, none of us came to anarchism through a militant workplace organisation, we all came to it through reading stuff in leaflets, magazines and online

Of course, but for me anyway, it's part of a larger issue I've experienced in anarchist circles where there's this idea that if we can just get the right constitution/administrative structure/relationship with other organizations/publications, then we'll have growth and activity.

A lot of that feels like cart before the horse stuff. And I get it, those are things we feel are under our control or that we have experience with. But in a lot of instances they become our idea of practical activity and that's not going to get us to where we want to be - especially if we want to branch out beyond a core group who, like much of us here on libcom I'd imagine, were intellectually or politically drawn to radical politics anyway.

There still seems to be some value in the shorter targeted print runs of such as the ' WorkersWild West' and 'Rebel Roo' and also the more general AF 'Rebel City' and 'Resistance bulletins' in addition to short targeted leaflets for demo's and pickets etc especially as these can be combined with online websites and in formats that allow for printing off limited numbers to suit the circumstances of time and place. Maybe groups and networks need to distribute modern and cheep printing facilities around more to facilitate this? I personally still enjoy reading the 'heavier' magazines in printed format rather than online and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I just wanted to go back to the discussion about news writing. Basically, I think what's been said about anarchists tending towards comment/essay writing is true (and it's probably been encouraged by pieces on stuff like 'Comment is Free' arousing such strong opinions, both negative and positive). I know that, for me, personally, when I think about things I want to write these days, they almost always take shape in my head as comment pieces..

So, I suppose what I'm asking (to Jim or Rob or anyone who's got any idea), how do we go about writing more newsy material? What would radical news reporting look like and what would the difference be between it and mainstream reporting on the same subject (if that difference is not comment)? How do you think we could go about researching these articles when most/all of us also have day jobs?

Sorry if these are daft questions though the last one seems to touch on other people's previous posts: that news reporting arguably involves more work than comment writing but without the 'glory' of being a theoretician/essayist with a unique insight into something..

Also, just to say, I found this news report writing guide on the site. What do people think of it? Apart from the comment at the beginning that "Western consumers are far too media savvy to put up with preachy, badly written rhetoric", it seems decent.. is it something still worth using?

Ed

Also, just to say, I found this news report writing guide on the site. What do people think of it? Apart from the comment at the beginning that "Western consumers are far too media savvy to put up with preachy, badly written rhetoric", it seems decent.. is it something still worth using?

yeah I still think that's good - although we should update the bit about using a tape recorder to say using your phone…

In terms of news, I think a big thing to do would be reporting on industrial action and campaigns going on, and try to get direct quotes from people involved

Basically, I think what's been said about anarchists tending towards comment/essay writing is true

FWIW, I think I'd differentiate between comments pieces and essays. So, like Phil's blog, who sadly doesn't seem to have been very active recently, is very much on the comment side of this. But they're short, accessible, and relevant to current events. Pieces like his have driven a lot of libcom traffic, no?

Ed

So, I suppose what I'm asking (to Jim or Rob or anyone who's got any idea), how do we go about writing more newsy material? What would radical news reporting look like and what would the difference be between it and mainstream reporting on the same subject (if that difference is not comment)? How do you think we could go about researching these articles when most/all of us also have day jobs?

Sorry if these are daft questions though the last one seems to touch on other people's previous posts: that news reporting arguably involves more work than comment writing but without the 'glory' of being a theoretician/essayist with a unique insight into something..

Easiest way of doing it would probably be setting up an email list or Slack channel of people who are up for writing news article. Working out what we want to be covering (I'd imagine struggles, organising attempts, far-right activity etc.) and then encourage people to start writing. People who are familiar with what they're doing probably wouldn't need much help but people who lack confidence or aren't very good at reporting would probably need some guidance.

Radical news reporting differs from bourgeois news reporting in a number of ways. The key difference is in what's covered. Things we find interesting and think people should be aware of differ quite heavily from what your average liberal editor of a mainstream media outlet will think needs to be covered. For example, we're a political website, we've not had any coverage of the two by-elections which took place last week. Most political news sites have talked about little else. While this wasn't a deliberate decision we took it's not something we'd seek to change.

Our story 'Neo-Nazi march to be held in Liverpool' was the first story anywhere about the Liverpool White Man March which eventually became an international news story. By putting that story out we alerted anti-fascists, Liverpool residents etc. that Nazis were going to attempt to march through their city. I think we can make an argument that by putting that story out we helped to mobilise the counter-protests which stopped the march from happening. We were also one of the very few outlets to cover the September 2015 street fighting between fascists and anti-fascists in Dover with our 'Neo-Nazi mob riots at anti-immigration protest' story.

The other differences are going to be in how news is presented. We will see things from a perspective a liberal editor won't. A good example of how our reporting would differ from a mainstream outlet is the story we ran on Bahar Mustafa. We ran the story as 'Persecution and threats against student activist escalate', because we recognised what she was doing was standard practice for the labour movement and she was being victimised for being anti-racist. The first Breitbart story on the same topic used the headline 'Irony Alert: Racially Segregated Event To Celebrate ‘Diversity’ at University of London College'. They then ran a load of defamatory and inaccurate articles about her which effectively started the harassment she experienced.

For an example of something we should be covering, earlier in the month Deliveroo infiltrated a WhatsApp group being used to organise their workers in Leeds, sacked two riders and reduced the shifts of five others. Leeds IWW have launched a hardship fund, we'd want to run an article about Deliveroo targeting organisers in Leeds to raise awareness of the hardship fund and encourage donations. If we'd been reporting on this closely we could have followed the story, so an article on Deliveroo infiltrating the WhatApp group, an article on Deliveroo sacking the workers, then an article on the hardship fund being launched.

Thinking about the Deliveroo thing a bit further, what we have actually done reporting wise is one news story on the wildcat strike. What we would have done in an ideal world would have been:

- talking to the union before the strike started and running a story on working conditions
- someone reporting on the first mobilisation when the strike started
- someone going out on a moped and doing a story on the flying pickets
- doing an analytical feature on the strike by interviewing multiple striking workers
- reporting on each individual day of the protests/status of negotiations with the company
- reports on each place the organising has subsequently spread to (Brighton, Leeds, Bristol etc.)

That's possible, but it'd need a large pool of people writing to make it happen.

meinberg

I don't really like the "what audience" question, but it is important to know for what use you are trying to produce a paper: mass propaganda? As Lenin's "collective organizer"? to intervene in the more or less scattered scene/milieu? ... Producing a paper becomes easily just another task you do, so it should be clear what use the paper has for the producing group in their other political activities / in the daily struggle.

Hi, that's basically what I meant: what is the purpose of the publication.

Steven.

Mostly socialist organisations have their own journals. But in terms of an independent one Jacobin has been mentioned as a good example. I personally think it would be good if we could have a "Jacobin of the ultraleft"…

In Germany there is kind of something like that, at least for what is called "radical left" (I'm guessing that is a bit bigger, than what you mean by ultra left). It is called ak, and was years ago an ML party paper called Arbeiterkampf (worker struggle). Today it is called Analyse & Kritik. It is relativly big and has some (part time) paid people.

hi, yes by "ultraleft" what I meant was the general scene comprising libertarian communists, anarchist communists, left communists etc

Steven.

yeah no that's not going to happen.

It might not be going to happen to you, but it does partially happen to me on a regular basis. The Turkish state has regularly blocked certain parts of the internet over the last few years particularly Facebook. I agree that it's probably not likely for the whole thing to be taken down for very long, but I can imagine it happening.

Devrim

Steven.

meinberg

I don't really like the "what audience" question, but ...

Hi, that's basically what I meant: what is the purpose of the publication.

Yeah, sorry, my answer should have read more ironic: because "the audience question" and what I described are pretty similar...

News articles were another point, where I was maybe unclear: I don't see much need for those short news articles, which basically only say that something happened, but you can't really understand the significance from reading only the short news article. A lot of news articles had that problem (for example in the Direkte Aktion of the FAU (RIP, I kind of miss the DA), but the last article of Red Marriot about Bangladesh could also be called an news article, and does not suffer that problem...

Steven suggests three comments:

Business studies is alive with the buzz of the "Silo Effect". Departments working for the same organisation are in competition with each other, decline to share information and have scant knowledge - or interest - in other parts of the same company.

The switch to cyberspace brought in a new system of administration (i.e. we don't have to bother with it because it's bourgeois). Correspondence not responded to, donations not acknowledged, a general absence of "emotional housekeeping".

Audience. Amazing how many sympathisers out there who are hardly touched by mainstream Anarchists. Last year, at the funeral of Prozack in Bradford, over 150 turned up.

While there is an audience for heavy abstract theory it is a limited one.

I've been producing Anarchist publications for over 40 years and there aren't many problems that are insurmountable. When things go wrong refer to "another way of working" group.

Practical? If you are FOR print media then get behind a journal or form a publisher's group.

meinberg

News articles were another point, where I was maybe unclear: I don't see much need for those short news articles, which basically only say that something happened, but you can't really understand the significance from reading only the short news article. A lot of news articles had that problem (for example in the Direkte Aktion of the FAU (RIP, I kind of miss the DA), but the last article of Red Marriot about Bangladesh could also be called an news article, and does not suffer that problem...

I completely disagree, short news articles are vital as they allow people to keep abreast of what's going on without having to dedicate large amounts of time to studying a topic. Red's articles about Bangladesh have been great but it'd be better for us if we had people regularly writing short news articles as well as Red's more in depth articles. People want to consume news in a variety of ways, it's a mistake to think that there isn't space for short news articles.

Would it be worth setting up the equivalent of an RSS feed to something like Labourstart?

Short articles can be good as a way to just let people know that things are happening, it can encourage people, give them ideas or even just reassure them that every day isn't just an endless stream of workers' defeats.

If you're willing to put in an hour a day then you can put up a short article or two very easily. It's more a question of whether on a day to day basis you feel that it is worth it.

In terms of the internet obviously the internet isn't going to be shut down, but as Dev says facebook has been shut down repeatedly by various governments. If the market is big enough then the company will give in to the government as in China to keep business going. Governme,nts are also quite willing to take a hit if it keeps them in power. How many years has the Syrian government been hanging in there now?

Net neutrality is a thing to think about, it could choke out alternative voices, also provider blocks (for example my mum's provider blocked every download website I could think of or even google, and google are 'depreciating' pirate results too). There are always ways around things but these ways will become harder to use in the face of repression. The samizdat network was very impressive in many ways, for example, but I think they'd have preferred to publish in a less dangerous situation and probably would have reached many more people.

With all the talk of echo chambers and feed curating and all the rest I think we also have to think that the chances of people stumbling across radical ideas are probably not that high and perhaps a more vibrant working class news section might help.

Think of progressive left.
Salon, The Intercept, alternet.org, tomdispatch, counterpunch.

These websites host essays, but they have readership that libcom.org could only dream of I think because the content is so consistent. The content is produced regularly, and upon reading contains nuanced analysis that the mass media simply don't have.

Libcom having news articles would be great, but so would having more essay writers; people are craving logic amidst confusion.

And actually I think this year the website is looking pretty good.

I used to be a subscriber to the Morning Star and was impressed by their level of support, they had a monthly donation drive to raise £16,000 each month, and while they rarely reached it and most large donations were from CPB branches they weren't that far off. And that was just one revenue stream, they had fundraisers, sold shares, and convinced Unions to buy into it. And the obligatory webshop.

The Labour party also has a pretty sophisticated network for its propaganda. Even the local branches will have contacts with printers and other businesses for election times. And more importantly they also provide training and workshops for most activities. How to talk on the phone, how to canvass, how to set up stalls, how to deal with criticism, etc. And they always organized teams.

I said in another thread about a newspaper that a major problem is that a lot of people seem to be underestimating how daunting a lot of this is to people who have no experience of it. Its easy to lament the lack of support your getting, but if you don't actually provide support and training (in the beginning at least), then your not going to solve the problem.

I hate talking to people on the phone or in person when canvassing or fund raising. Had I not had some practice and the support of a team out there with me I wouldn't of done it. On paper its the easiest thing in the world and something most of us do all the time informally, but for me and quite a few others doing this on an official basis was really difficult.

I guess what I'm getting at here is do any of your organizations have any practical support and training for members who aren't already veterans on these things?

This post ends up in characteristic fashion. No real decisions, lots of abstractions, no sense of mutual aid. Very different from people sitting around a table determined to produce a paper.

jondwhite did you get answers from your initial questions?

Were any action points evident?

Aside from the points I made earlier in my post No 40, jondwhite as a member of the spgb is maybe more concerned here about the questioning within the spgb of their continuing with the costly printed version of the 'Socialist Standard' which (for all it's annoyingly persistent electoralism) does on the whole regularly manage to provide easy to read basic socialist material, attractively designed, which others might learn from. I for one would miss it as would others who may have limited or intermittent on-line access. First contact with on-line web material often only follows from having first picked up a magazine or leaflet at a demo, picket, or bookfair etc. In marketing terms such printed material might be seen as a worthwhile'loss leader'.

Just lost a long reply here by closing the wrong tab, a few points I'm not sure were covered by the discussion so far:

1. A lot of breaking news content happens on twitter now. It only gets into articles as 'explainers' and later comment pieces in may cases. This is a massive change to CPE in 2006 where we were translating and copying photos of French indymedia and similar. However if you do an explainer, it can then get a lot of traffic from social media. We did a quick thread of old articles about the 2005 and 2008 riots in France on our twitter account as background to #justicepourtheo, and it got seen by 17,266 people and just under 100 RTs https://twitter.com/libcomorg/status/829717073697845249 although actual click through to articles more like 5-20 each (but these were years old essays not current content).

Thread on the 96th anniversary of the Kronstadt rebellion yesterday, again just posting links to articles https://twitter.com/libcomorg/status/837389717343776770 this got 80+ RTs 10,000+ views and 100+ link clicks on the first tweet, then a handful RTs on the subsequent ones - again just posting links to stuff already on the site.

People also re-share articles that are shared by our twitter account (via the twitter button on articles), and those in turn get traffic as well.

However there's no indication on articles that any of this has happened, and not sure how easy it would be provide it even if there was. https://www.sharedcount.com/#url=https%3A%2F%2Flibcom.org%2Fblog%2Funiversal-basic-income-freedom-workers-13122016 does it for Facebook (over 100 shares on fb for that blog post). Might be a better site than that.

2. Two newish sites in the US, that are online only:

http://www.unicornriot.ninja has had actual reporting from #NoDAPL from more than one person.

Similarly https://itsgoingdown.org had report backs from the Berkeley Milo protest and similar.

These two sites seem to have taken over from indymedia in the US, and afaik no UK equivalent at all (except us maybe, by we're definitely not flying people around to report on protests...).

Speaking of which did anyone go to the LD50 protests in Dalston who fancies writing it up?

3. I agree with people saying the pre-requisite to a print publication is a steady flow of 500 news pieces and 1500 word articles. What might help with people writing stuff for libcom news and blogs, is if we had a way to collaboratively work on pieces before they're published. i.e. you put up a stub or draft piece, people with 'contributor' role can see it and edit it etc. that way you don't have to write an end-to-end article and hit publish before anyone else looks at it. This would have to wait for the redesign though.

Another idea would be using something like Trello - have to invite a load of people, but can then post article ideas and drafts in there before they get to the site.

That collaborative/editorial process for new online content is more likely to produce content suitable for print.

I really liked Base's first issue (only read it online though). I don't know how they do distribution, but for example has Freedom spoken to them about sharing distribution and similar? It would likely be easier for 4-5 irregular publications to share some infrastructure than to have a single publication coming out more regularly.

Good post, Mike.

What might help with people writing stuff for libcom news and blogs, is if we had a way to collaboratively work on pieces before they're published. i.e. you put up a stub or draft piece, people with 'contributor' role can see it and edit it etc. that way you don't have to write an end-to-end article and hit publish before anyone else looks at it.

This is a good idea.