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Today's Top News
Small Magazines, Big Ideas
It's time to send an SOS for the least among us--I mean small independent magazines. They are always struggling to survive while making a unique contribution to the conversation of democracy. Magazines like National Review, The American Prospect, Sojourners, The American Conservative, The Nation, Washington Monthly, Mother Jones, In These Times, World Magazine, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Columbia Journalism Review, Reason and many others.The Internet may be the way of the future, but for today much of what you read on the Web is generated by newspapers and small magazines. They may be devoted to a cause, a party, a worldview, an issue, an idea, or to one eccentric person's vision of what could be, but they nourish the public debate. America wouldn't be the same without them.
Our founding fathers knew this; knew that a low-cost postal incentive was crucial to giving voice to ideas from outside the main tent. So they made sure such publications would get a break in the cost of reaching their readers. That's now in jeopardy.
An impending rate hike, worked out by postal regulators, with almost no public input but plenty of corporate lobbying, would reward big publishers like Time Warner, while forcing these smaller periodicals into higher subscription fees, big cutbacks and even bankruptcy.
It's not too late. The Postal Service is a monopoly, but if its governors, and especially members of Congress, hear from enough citizens, they could have a change of heart. So, liberal or conservative, left or right, libertarian, vegetarian, communitarian or Unitarian, or simply good Samaritan, let's make ourselves heard.
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10 Comments so far
Show AllBy all means , do as Bill Moyers says and protest to the USPS . Then do as Gandhi did and protest with your wallet : "walk to the sea and make salt". Boycott Time-Warner et al by not buying at the news-stand or cancel your monthly subscription . Next , contribute to your favourite independent periodical by adding a love offering in addition to your subscription.
Protests are good but open,law-breaking defiance is better : In India , making salt from seawater and not paying the customary tax was strictly illegal. That action along with illegal cotton-spinning together with many other Gandhi-genius button-pushers AND legal demonstrations finally pushed the British Raj out of India .
Martin Luther King Jr. and his fellow civil-rights movers didn't re-invent Gandhi's stategy at the Montgomery Bus Boycott ; he just modified and refined it .
Likewise , keep Gandhi's and King's tricks it mind when challenging USPS and its sugar-daddies , BigGlossies.
I'm always taken aback when magazines like Mother Jones and The Nation are labeled "small." I mean, yeah, they're small in comparison to Time or People, but they still have mind-bogglingly large circulations, coming from my perspective, which is that of a micropublisher. I produce a monthly magazine with a circulation of -- ta dah! -- 500. Tiny periodicals like this have already experienced a 30% rate hike, since we don't generally have enough subscribers to qualify for periodical rate, so we're going first class postage. You think it's tough when you've got a subscription circulation of 15,000? These guys haven't been hit yet--they've still got a chance to prevent the postage hike. Me, I'm thinking that I have to double my cover price and increase my subscription rates by 25 percent. That, or go to PDF only.
The rate hikes are really, really going to hurt the small, local publications, never mind the national ones like the American Conservative.
I too publish a very small magazine and as a worker supported effort, the increased postage rate will hurt -- even with bulk rate.
Another aspect of this stemming from the privatization of the postal service is that even as rates go up, service goes down. What once took a week for delivery now is taking four to six weeks if it is delivered at all. Privitization not only means that something as vital as the postal service is expected to support itself and even turn a profit, it means it is less accountable and less responsive to public pressure -- not that we shouldn't do as Moyers asks.
This smells like another right conservative plot. This one to get rid of small progressive mags and make people rely totally on their MSM. We still have the Internet, but it's another conservative target.
Conservatives want you to shut up! I've had them email-bomb me and send many and well-worded complaints to website managers about posters whom they hate, calling for their ban from the site. Even managers of progressive sites who are big on freedom of speech are often intimidated and will ban such posters.
Liberals and progressives tolerate diversity. Conservatives want uniformity at any cost and are united in their goal. Let's stop shooting ourselves in the foot by saying that conservatives are frugal protectors of our constitution. That was a long time ago.
"A liberal is a conservative who's been arrested."
from "The Bonfire of the Vanities"
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of mankind's oldest pursuits; finding a moral justification for greed".
John Kenneth Galbraith
Follow this link to express your thoughts to the Postal Board of Governors about this proposed rate increase- THEN- contact your representatives and tell them what you think.
http://action.freepress.net/campaign/postal
Fight back at the big glossies. Each issue usually has 2 to 4 postage paid cards to be used to start a subscription. Put them in the mail, without personal data, and send them back blank to the publishers. (Don't do this to the small magazines).
I have already emailed all of my friends concerning the support of small magazine publishers. With the problem of increasing postal rates, everyone could pitch and subscribe to at least one small magazine of their choice. Due to increasing subscription rates, I have had to drop a few of the magazines that I supported. This is truely a call to keep the many voices alive.
You can go to freepress.net for a link to an email that can be sent to the Postal Board of Governors.
It just may be that there are too many voices and not enough action. There has been an ocean of words printed and electronically transmitted about the destruction of equality, wealth and power.
Nothing seems to make a real difference because of the iron grip of greed and fear. We don't need more words but some way to recover control of our lives. How many nuances of shades of opinions will do this?
It seem to many of us that the faster the collapse the better, because the sooner there will be a demand for reform. We are not there yet.
To really see what has been going on with this, read Preserving the People's Post Office. The book came out earlier this year and can be bought on line. The post office has been undermined by privitization and massive lobbying efforts by the for profit shippers and huge mailers for years. This tells the whole story and what people can do to reclaim one of our government's oldest and most effective services.