Agenda Turning 10!
AGENDA Turning 10!
Next month AGENDA tums 10! What better time is there to ask you - our readers - to write and tell us what you think of AGENDA'S first 10 years of publishing? Favorite articles? Favorite writers? Memories, impressions, likes and dislikes in general, things you want to see more of, less of? Questions? Whatever! This is your chance to let it fly! Hundreds of writers and countless photographers, editors, and graphic artists have spent 10 years telling you what they think... now it's your turn!
Send us your letters (300 words max) and we'll devote a whole section to them in the April 10th-Anniversary issue. This is not a solicitation for syrupy back-slapping congratulatory tomes with donations attached (though we won't refuse such demonstrations of affection). The goal here is for you to write about the newspaper - what our presence in the community for the past 10 years has meant to you - and how we can improve in the future.
Over the years we haven't directly communicated very well- through editorials like this - our intentions and needs as a publication. For our purposes here - to get you to write us a letter for publication - the following tidbits are proffered as provocations for your pen:
Since 1986, we have tried to be an alternative source of information to the mainstream print in town, to provide the news behind the news, and in recent years to extend that same coverage to A2's thriving cultural scene. We are proud of our publishing strategy and editorial content - to hold up a mirror to parts of the community that the traditional media shy away from - even if it has meant losing the occasional advertising account. We have survived the first decade, in a very competitive market, by the sheer force of will (hours of underpaid/free work, loans, donations) of many hard-core supporters. They are too numerous to name here, but we encourage you to recognize their role over the years as writers, photographers, editors, graphic artists, and distributors.
In particular, AGENDA'S current staff of writers and editors deserve some feedback: Jamie Agnew (book reviews), Arwulf Arwulf (loose cannon), Orin Buck (Arts Agenda, cover designs), John Carlos Cantu (Screen Scene), Phillis Engelbert (reporter, editor), Alan Goldsmith (The View From Nowhere), Eric Jackson (Report From Panama, book reviews), William Shea (music reviews), Ted Sylvester (editor, cover designs), and Laurie Wechter (editor). Month after month, these people write and edit the articles that make up the bulk of what you read in AGENDA.
One of the things that make AGENDA an alternative newspaper is the unique articles and points of view we publish. Feature articles in the past year include interviews with author Jamaica Kincaid (Arwulf Arwulf) and poet Patti Smith (Ted Sylvester): speeches by civil rights attorney Bryan A. Stevenson and nuclear non-proliferation expert Natalie J. Goldring; and a condensed Unabomber manifesto.
Articles on the Detroit newspaper strike in September (Phillis Engelbert) and again in December (Margaret Hartley) highlighted the year in our news department In the analysis category, our articles have focused on free speech on the U-M Diag (Jonathan Weber), welfare and Newt"s "Contract on America" (Valerie Polakow), and November's Libertarian city council candidates (Phillis Engelbert).
Eyewitness accounts include reports from the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico (Debbie Billings), from a D.C. hunger strike to close the "School of Assassins" (Phyllis Ponvert), and from the homefront, battle for the freedom to say the F-word on U-M's Diag (Stoney Burke).
By and large, these articles are representative of the kinds of stories we have published for a decade. They are usually written because someone with a special knowledge or experience came to AGENDA with a desire to communicate their point of view to the greater community. Most of the writers are not journalists, but many are professionals or experts in their fields: attorneys, scientists, activists, educators, students, etc. Their contributions to - and support of - AGENDA are what make the paper a credible and vibrant source of information and ideas for the community.
As an alternative press, Agenda Publications has over the years relied heavily on reader donations and subscriptions. Yes, you can subscribe to a "free" paper (over 200 people do) and have it mailed to your home or business ($15/year). Like public radio or TV, the alternative press depends on this kind of support for its very existence. Though we have advertising, the nature of our editorial content makes it much harder to procure than mainstream publications that are more entertainment oriented or which practice a kind of "chamber-of-commerce" journalism.
Support for AGENDA comes in all forms: the most important in terms of dollars is advertising. Though we would never claim that AGENDA advertisers support our editorial content in any way, we are grateful for their patronage and can hardly begin to describe how important it is to AGENDA'S future that its advertising base grow. This has always been a goal, of course, met with varying degrees of salesmanship on our part but we have never really made it clear to you how advertising dollars affect our publishing and how you can affect those advertising dollars.
There is a direct correlation between the number of pages of any given issue of AGENDA and the amount of advertising space sold in that issue. Though it's often said that it looks like we have a lot of advertising, the ratio of ads to editorial copy is around 50%, much lower than the industry norm. In the last year, the number of pages in any given issue has ranged between 16 and 28 pages. In short, the more advertising, the more pages - the more pages, the more articles.
Therefore we urge you to patronize our advertisers. Tell them when you see their advertisements in AGENDA. It may be awkward and take an extra minute but it could be the single most important thing you can do as an individual to support this alternative press. Advertisers try all the time to get your attention: coupons, sales, snazzy designs and snappy copy. In this case it would go a long way to let them know when they succeed. This is especially true when advertisers are closely monitoring their response to an ad, as with a coupon or a sale.
This may sound like an awfully odd thing for an "alternative" newspaper to say , but the reality is that it takes money to make the presses roll (our printing bill alone is over $2,000 a month), to pay a bare-bones editorial and sales staff, office expenses and the phone.
In recognition of the important role that advertising dollars play in publishing AGENDA, we will announce in April our selection of the "Advertiser of the Decade!" And since we're in a celebratory mood, we're also making it a contest for AGENDA readers. Be one of the first 10 individuals to correctly identify the winner by mail and we'll send you a pair of tickets to the State Theater. Here's your clue: This particular advertiser is the only one to run an ad in every issue of AGENDA since May, 1986!
Send letters to: AGENDA 220 S. Main St. Ann Arbor, Ml 48104