People's Movements, People's Press : The Journalism of Social Justice Movements

241 Pages·2006·1.27 MB·English

by  Bob Ostertag

People’s Movements, People’s Press

People’s Movements,
People’s Press
the journalism
of social justice
movements
Bob Ostertag
Beacon Press,Boston
beacon press
25 Beacon Street
Boston,Massachusetts 02108-2892
www.beacon.org
Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the
unitarian universalist association ofcongregations.
© 2006 by the Independent Press Association
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
09 08 07 06 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper
ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.
Composition by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Ostertag,Bob
People’s movements,people’s press: the journalism of social justice movements / Bob
Ostertag.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbno-8070-6164-6 (alk.paper)
1.Underground press—United States—History—20th century. 2.Underground press—
United States—History—19th century. 3.Social problems—Press coverage—United
States. 4.Social justice—United States. I.Title.
PN4888.U5O88 2006
071'.30904—dc22 2005031735
For a particular aspiring young
social justice activist and journalist

Contents
Introduction 1
The Nineteenth Century 23
abolitionists and woman suffragists
The Gay and Lesbian Press 72
The Underground GIPress and the Vietnam War 117
The Environmental Movement 161
A Note from the Independent Press Association 191
Author’s Note 194
Notes 196
Index 219

Introduction
For the last two centuries,Americans whose concerns and inter-
ests lay outside the accepted political boundaries of the day have
organized social movements as the principal vehicle for advanc-
ing their cause.Their journals have been their most important tool
and have been applied to almost every task these movements un-
dertook.The history of social movements and the history of their
press are often nearly inseparable,and historians frequently peg
the birth of a social movement to the founding of the movement’s
first journal.
It is therefore surprising that the history of the social movement
press has been studied so little.1I suspect this is largely due to the
fact that when judged by the standards typically used to assess the
importance of mainstream publications—total circulation,adver-
tising revenue,length of book,longevity,“professionalism,”“objec-
tivity,”and “lack of bias”—social movement publications appear to
have been of negligible importance.Yet even the most cursory re-
view of the social movement press reveals the mistake of judging it
by these standards.
It is my contention that the history of social movement journal-
ism can be understood only in the context of the particular movements
of which each journal was a part: its internal dynamics and strategies,
1