Occupied Wall Street Journal
The Occupied Wall Street Journal,” a four-page, full-colour broadsheet newspaper, has gained surprising traction as a tool of protest at the Occupy Wall Street rallies in Manhattan.
The newspaper has flourished even though many of the demonstrators are preoccupied with digital media.
The Occupied Wall Street Journal is a professionally produced, four-colour, four-page document of the demonstration, which began on September 17 2011.
Forgive an old newspaper hack a moment of sentimentality, but it is somehow reassuring that a newspaper still has traction in an environment preoccupied by social media. It makes sense when you think about it: newspapers convey a sense of place, of actually being there, that digital media can’t. When is the last time somebody handed you a website?
“The act of one person giving another person a newspaper is important,” said Arun Gupta, one of dozens of people who helped put together The Occupied Wall Street Journal. “We wanted to come up with something that was beautifully designed and well-written that gives a tangible form to what is under way.”
A call for the financing of the pop-up, instant newspaper went out on Kickstarter.com at the end of last month. An ad hoc group set out to raise $12,000 and has now surpassed $75,000. The initial print run of 50,000 was augmented with an extra 20,000 copies as the money rolled in, with promotional assists from Michael Moore, Andy Bichlbaum of the performance artists the Yes Men, and others.
Although the sentiment and some of the informational anarchy of the event is reflected in the newspaper, it is produced by experienced, if far from objective, journalists. (You can get a PDF of the newspaper at bit.ly/qi05ls.) “We didn’t think there would be much in the way of coverage of the event, so we thought it was important that there be a media outlet that reflected what was under way,” Mr. Gupta said. “A newspaper is tactile, engages all of the senses, and leads to more immersive reading than what people might do online.”
While some of the recipients of the paper clearly saw it as little more than a souvenir, an artefact that demonstrates that they were present, many others opened up the paper and were reading it when I visited on Thursday.
Christopher Guerra, working an informational table at the protest, is a fan of the newspaper, and newspapers in general.
“A website will come and go, but this could be here 100 years from now if the mould doesn’t get to it,” he said, holding a copy. “People say that newspapers are dying, but there is something about its physical properties, the fact that when you hold it in your hands, you end up with ink on them; that serves as a reminder that this all is real.”
Handsome as it is, no one is going to mistake The Occupied Wall Street Journal for its namesake — “the name just seemed like a natural,” Mr. Gupta said. (A spokeswoman at The Wall Street Journal declined to comment on the appropriation of the newspaper’s name.)
Print and protest are frequent fellow travellers. It’s worth pointing out that at the beginning of the Arab Spring, the protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo also produced a newspaper called Liberation Square.
Jeremi Suri, a professor of history and public policy at the University of Texas at Austin, said that newspapers would continue to play a durable role in social movements.
“In a newspaper is an element of analysis that you don’t get in a sign or a pamphlet,” he said. “In both the ‘20s and ‘30s, and during the protests of the ‘60s, underground newspapers played an important role in bringing people together to create something in common.”
This is an abridged version of the article. Read the full version: The New York Times: A Protest’s Ink-Stained Fingers by David Carr; October 09, 2011.
October 2011