It seems to me that building democratic media structures should proceed in certain stages. The first stage is a planning one. And in order to plan properly, we need to know what we're up against in terms of reasons that people do not read, as well as find answers to what people do want to see in their media. In other words, what features of mainstream media are politically alienating, if there are any? And what sort of features would be empowering, if they were included in media institutions? What steps can we take to alter the face of media such that people feel better informed, but also feel politically effective? In short, how can we transform media to help radicalize people and promote participation? Or are the prospects limited?

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Updates have been sparse lately due to my moving to Austin. Yes, it's true: I did officially quit teaching after a year, and I am presently enrolled in the graduate program at UT-Austin's School of Journalism. Go Longhorns. (Not really.)

My courses this semester are introductions to qualitative research methods, quantitative research methods, and mass communication theory. I'm taking three courses on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays only, but I already expect the workloads to drown me. I've been to each of my three classes once so far, and already I have a couple hundred pages to read before Tuesday. It's totally worth it, by the way.

Each class requires that I write a scholarly paper suitable for publication. I'm not sure what direction I'm headed in for my mass communication theory class, but I have been toying with ideas for my quantitative and qualitative classes. I'd like to throw some of this stuff out there, to see what others think.

Some possible topics, briefly sketched, for quantitative research:

• Desire for radical, labor, and progressive media. Do people seek this media? Would they prefer to read openly biased--albeit diverse--news from a variety of sources? Before the era of media consolidation and the drive towards professionalization and objectivity in journalism, it was generally expected that people read diverse content from several different presses. Would people like to see a return to this? (Or see it for a first time, rather.)
• Desire to participate in journalism/media. Do people feel that newspapers represent them? Would they like to participate in journalism? Would they like to see participatory institutions in general? If not, why?
• Whether radical media actually radicalizes people. To what extent do readers of radical media (Z Magazine, for instance, or SW, etc.) feel that this sort of media actually makes them radical? I'm actually not sure whether this falls more under the qualitative aspect of things.
• Reader ages. At what ages do people consume the most radical media? If they used to read it and stopped, at what point did they stop and why?
• Readership and MonkeyWrench Books. What sort of media are people reading who come into MonkeyWrench Books? What effect does it have, if any?
• The usual suspects. And of course, there are the usual questions I have about the death penalty, U.S. foreign policy, human rights abuses, and so on, and the ways these are treated in media.

Of these, the first four loosely defined topics deal with creating democratic media structures. The first one is the most interesting to me.

A couple possible topics, briefly sketched, for qualitative research:

• Media use in the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign. The effort to save the life of Kenneth Foster from his Aug. 30 execution date made extensive use of media. Why did this work? What lessons can abolitionists draw from this example?
• Anarchist news media. There are lots of things about anarchist news media and journals that interest me.

I had a couple others, but I've forgotten them already. (This is why I'm typing these.) For now, the first topic above is the one that interest me the most. This is probably because it's fairly recent, I know many of the participants in it, and its implications are still unfolding.

On that note, if anyone has copies of the Socialist Worker or any other lefty/progressive/independent newspapers or magazines that discuss the Kenneth Foster case, I would be much obliged if you would save them for me or send them my way. I would like to compare content in these publications to the more mainstream coverage. 

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(I would really like feedback on this idea from people who are interested in working with Turning the Tide, and especially if they're in cities other than Austin.)

I've only brought it up recently, but setting up "news bureaus" for Turning the Tide in different Texas cities has been on my mind for a while now. The idea is fairly straightforward: different groups of activist-reporters in different cities--Corpus Christi, Austin, Denton, Dallas, etc.--report on, edit, revise, and submit news to Turning the Tide on a monthly, bi-monthly, or on whatever basis the magazine is published. After content is received by the editorial collective in Austin, it's given a once-over to check for spelling errors, space constraints, and such. The people who physically prepare the magazine (presumably in Austin as well) then assembles this content in InDesign, takes it to the printers, and begins sending copies back out to distribute it. It might not be exactly this arrangement, but that's the general idea.

Turning the Tide's stated editorial values include decentralization and participatory democracy, and one of the magazine's stated goals is to provide a voice and organizational apparatus for people (especially Texans) seeking to disentegrate institutional failures. By establishing different bureaus in different locales, we can begin creating a federated (so to speak) activist magazine that embraces these values and works towards our goal of connecting radicals.

To spark interest in the project, we could host workshops in interested cities on certain dates. These workshops would be hosted by various people who wanted to start bureaus, and include basic advice on jumping into journalism. Jumping into advocacy journalism really isn't that hard once you have basic notions of how to write a story. The fact is, professional journalism standards are a fairly recent invention that have admittedly improved writing quality, but at the cost of homogenizing news coverage. Back in the day, it was generally expected that you read several different newspapers, from several different biased groups: the labor press, the conservatives, racial and ethnic groups, etc., all had their own newspapers. This is not a fundamentally bad idea, and no one should be afraid to attempt reporting simply because they have not done so before.

After bureaus form and begin contributing, they could purchase copies of Turning the Tide to sell locally. I need to find out how much media mail is, but it currently costs roughly a quarter to print each copy of the magazine (at least, in its 32-page, b/w format). If a bureau could scrounge up ten dollars and shipping costs, they would have about forty issues to sell.

Sell these for a buck each, or whatever the suggested cover price is. (If we bump up to a 64-page magazine, two dollars is very reasonable.) Encourage people to subscribe to it. Ten dollars yields forty dollars. For each dollar that is taken in for that particular city, give a cut back to Turning the Tide's main offices in Austin (maybe half, to cover printing costs, etc., and advance the magazine) and then let the bureau keep its own cut to either pay workers, funnel into local activist groups, or otherwise use as it sees fit. Alternatively, radical groups in Texas might simply sell the magazine as a fundraiser. Fifty-fifty might be a fair split per issue, or it might not. It's something you'd have to flesh out in practice.

On top of all this, we can also posit that a certain number of pages are set aside each issue for feature essays, interviews, and such dealing with issues and themes that affect all, or most, Texas radicals: immigration and the death penalty, for instance. We can also set aside space for book reviews, free advertisements and announcements, a directory of radical groups in Texas, and so on.

If these bureaus were set up on a large scale (say, several cities in Texas), we could promote and connect causes and events we support without relying on advertisers. And we can do so in a way that gives each chapter an incentive to contribute to and promote the magazine: namely, a piece of the pie.

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Before Portside Books Collective (PBC) disbanded and decided to close the store, I would often come home from volunteering with scrap flyers that had notes on the back. Most of these notes were just reminders to myself to email people, pick up supplies, and so on, but occasionally they were ideas for extant and future radical projects.

Some of these notes deal with remuneration, i.e., paying people. One of the things that bothered me about Portside was that we didn't remunerate collective members for their work. I realize that this would have been impossible, of course, since we didn't make enough money for that kind of thing. But the very idea of remuneration was completely off the table; it wasn't even acknowledged. I think there might have been a way to codify some basic remuneration mechanism into PBC's bylaws, so that it just sort of "clicked on" if and when we got to a point where remuneration was feasible.  To some extent, this thought process dealt with another burning question, which was, How does a business maintain a non-profit status while paying workers? (I don't know much about non-profits. For all I know it could be either a pretty easy or a tricky fair.) Still another concern was, How does long-term planning occur?

In my head, it made sense to codify into the bylaws that money Portside took in through sales might go through some sort of process. A rough sketch, based on my notes:

1. Expenses to maintain the store would be taken care of first. Codify what amounts of money must first be set aside for rent, ordering more books, buying supplies, etc. This is just to keep the store going for that particular month. This is for the store's immediate needs.
2. Then ensure that money is set aside for taking care of next month's primary expenses - rent in particular. Perhaps codify that the upcoming two or three months must be taken care of before any other funds are allocated. This could help the store maintain financial footing.
3. Perhaps then set aside X number of dollars in a bank account for long-term planning and emergencies. Maybe the store will burn down (as in the case of Sedition Books), or maybe the collective decided that it would like to move to a renovate a new location before moving in.
4. After this, allocate money for remunerating workers. Make sure fair mechanisms for this are in place.
5. After that, put the remaining money in the bank. Maybe even donate it to social justice groups or other collectives persuing similar ventures.

This sort of thing would not have worked for Portside, obviously. Although I haven't put a lot of thought into it yet, it's pretty obvious that it would have been too detailed and assumes cash inflows we could only have dreamed of. But it might be worth debating and expanding if it were applied to a conceivably profitable business, such as a worker-run restaurant (something I've been thinking about lately).

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