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Events
Publishing workshop starts soon, maybe
The act of producing a real in-print newspaper is the key to effective writen-based subversion
By Kevin Potvin
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The third ten-week community workshop on small publishing, offered by Republic publisher Kevin Potvin through Britannia Community Centre, has two purposes to it. One is to capture, refine, and propagate current popular opinion on the matter of the 2010 Olympics and all the issues the hosting of the event by the cities of Vancouver, Richmond and Whistler brings to bear on residents.
The other purpose is to take workshop participants through a hands-on, quick-and-dirty process of planning and producing a real in-print newspaper. In this case, the “paper” produced by the end of the course will be a four-page supplement to a future issue of The Republic. But aside from the much greater cost of running through the printers a stand-alone newspaper, the experience will be in every way complete and indistinguishable from producing an actual stand-alone newspaper. The experience should arm participants with the knowledge, experience, and confidence necessary to seriously contemplate their own newspaper projects in the future on subjects of their own choice.
It is currently tempting to suspect that aside from incurring extra costs, there is essentially no difference between this proposal and an online blog. The truth is otherwise, and never more so than in the age of the blog, or what is now the tired age of the worn-out blog.
It has been estimated and reported in the press that over 80% of online news and opinion-reading traffic originates from web departments of traditional and large print newspaper companies. While it is widely known that a vast majority of Canadians get most or all of their news and opinions from television, it remains true in our society that in the realm of original ideas, it remains the printed word that drives (in sometimes difficult-to-appreciate ways) the engine of all news and opinions populating all other media.
It may be so that only 10% of Canadians ever read non-fiction books and only a slightly larger percentage regularly read newspapers and magazines of news and opinion. But as in most things in life, it’s the quality not the quantity that really counts. That 10% or so who regularly read the printed word in books, newspapers and magazines are the 10% who occupy political offices, executive suites, directorships of NGOs and take a leadership position in their communities, their work places, and in their own lives. If Mao was right to say the revolutionary only needs to kill one reactionary to find a thousand abandoning their resistance, then it’s also right to say the writer only needs to connect with one reader to find a thousand other people subscribing to the new point of view.
The advent of the online blog revolutionized and democratized self-expression, at least for those with regular access to a computer. But certain inescapable facts of blogs, the very things that make them so democratic, also ensures they individually reach very few people on average, and connect in an intellectually altering way with readers on even fewer occasions. Blogs generally have no space limits and they cost essentially nothing at all to publish. This has allowed blogs to proliferate in both number and size. But it has also removed from that style of publishing any built-in requirement to select and to edit. And it is those two previously unrecognized activities of publishing that turn out to make the difference between having an effect with writing, and making no effect at all.
Traditional newspaper-style publishing, by contrast, is severely restrained in circulation by the real and unavoidable costs of production on paper, and they are severely limited in size by the same overriding fact. At first glance, these constraints are what had long made traditional newspapers the private domain of wealthy individuals or corporations. But it is those very same constraints that had also made traditional newspapers the dominant media of effective news and opinion propagation. It is the selectivity of stories and their editing down to essential sentences, imposed by old-world hard cash restraints of the printing press, that still makes newspapers the kings of news and opinion in the realm of original ideas. This is true of all newspapers big and small.
In my own personal experience, directly after the completion of the previous Republic publishing workshop course in April of this year, I was subjected to severe nation-wide rebuke for things I had written and published in The Republic about 9/11 years before. If I had written the same things and published them only in a blog, I am certain the same attention would never have accrued to my words. It was precisely because my words were printed in a real newspaper, no matter how small, that they were taken so seriously, and were subjected to such heavy condemnation. Printing the same words in a real newspaper achieved an obviously high level of effective propagation of original ideas that can never be achieved by any strictly online publishing venture.
My experience in April has only confirmed for me that teaching others how to produce a real newspaper is, for my role in society at least, by far the most effective act of subversion I am capable of.
The new course, set to begin September 19 at Britannia Centre, will establish a theme built around the true costs of the Olympics that Vancouver will be hosting in 2010. The scheduled start is fast approaching, and if the civic strike is not settled by then, I may be able to arrange an alternate meeting place. Those interested in participating should write me directly at kpotvin@republic-news.org to receive updates on where and when the course will start. The cost is $100.
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The Republic of East Vancouver masthead
The Republic of East Vancouver supports no party, advocates
for no cause, represents no group, serves no master, and considers
problems with no preconceived notions. We hope to afflict the comfortable,
both materially and intellectually, and comfort the afflicted—of
both kinds as well, and we are trying to do both things at the same
time.
Publisher, Editor
Kevin Potvin
Managing Editor
Kara Foreman
Copy Editor
Janis Harper
Website
Chris Lavigne
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Chris Richmond Kevin
Potvin
Support
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Jack Etkin, Janis Harper, Carl Johnson, Hilary Jones, Chris King,
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Contributors in this and recent issues
Bruce Alexander, Dan Adleman, Toby Alford, Kevin Annett, Santo Barbieri, Bob Broughton, Mike Bryan, Stephen Buckley, Matthew Burrows, Maria Calleja, Ron Carton, Chad Christie, Joshua Corber, Dan Crawford, Gail Davidson, Eric Doherty, Joe Donaldson, Lorena Jara Patty Ducharme, Shadia Drury, Taivo Evard, Reed Eurchuk, Farnaz Fassihi, Thomas Feakins, Anthony Fenton, Reza Fiyouyzat, Andrew Gordon Fleming, Ryan Fugger, Sasha Gagic, Matt Goody, Guy Hawkins, Spencer Herbert, John Irwin, Nick Istvaniffy, Junius, William Kay, Mike Keep, Kate Kennedy, Donald Kropp, Chris LaVigne, James Lindfield, Brian Lindgreen, Karen Litzke, Keith MacKenzie, Michael McLaughlin, Sonya McRae, Rafe Mair, Sonia Marino, Jennifer Matsui, Michael Millard, Isaebel Minty, Michael Nenonen, Wendy Nylund, Derrick O’Keefe, Stephen Osborne, Sean Orr, Evan Augustine Pederson III, Stephen Peplow, Kim Peterson, Kevin Potvin, Mary Rawson, Andrea Reimer, Erin Riley, Phil Rockstroh, Becky Scott, Jason Scott, Chris Shaw, Jeff Steudel, Alex Tegart, Scott Turner, Elbio Grosso Trentini, Patrick Vert, Chris Walker, Sean Wilkinson, Brad Zembic
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