From Publishers Weekly
Names such as Freedom's Journal, Mattachine Review and RAIN may have little resonance today, but Ostertag's succinct, well-paced study, growing out of a report commissioned by the Independent Press Association, reveals the "crucial and neglected" role they and other "social movement" journals have played, and still do, in bringing about social change. Ostertag focuses, thematically rather than chronologically, on five movements (abolition, women's suffrage, gay and lesbian liberation, Vietnam antiwar, environment). In treating the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements, he brings together the conventionally divided "story of the early 'black press' and that of the predominantly white 'abolitionist press.' " In treating an underground GI press, Ostertag describes how the antiwar movement in the military ("almost entirely clandestine [with] almost no identifiable organizations") found its voice. Ostertag shows how advances in printing technology (e.g., for the Whole Earth Catalog, "one of the most startlingly innovative journals in the history of publishing in America") and the gradual shift "from the sparse, privately owned media environment of the nineteenth century to the corporate media saturation of the present" alter the shape of the independent journal, but not the visionary significance of the "accidental" journalists motivated by "a sense of social justice." (June)
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The major American social movements have all spawned alternative media that have encouraged, informed, and chronicled the discontent and progress as some movements evolved into the mainstream. Ostertag examines the journals and newspapers that grew out of five significant movements: abolitionism, woman suffrage, gay and lesbian issues, environmentalism, and the underground GI press during the Vietnam War. Eschewing the measurements of success standard in mainstream media, Ostertag looks at the ultimate effect of journals, for example, from William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator to the century-old Sierra to the profitable Earth First! Journal. Alternative media have served to keep issues before the broader public, prod social change, and sometimes scoop the mainstream media on major issues such as the spread of AIDS. Ostertag examines the passion and personalities behind the publications, some long-lived, others no more than "one-issue affairs," as well as internal struggles, and the different trajectories of the movements from which they have arisen. At a time of rising corporate ownership, readers interested in the intersection of the media and social movements will appreciate this insightful book. Vanessa Bush
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