As a young newspaper reporter in April 1972 I traveled with friends to the A.J. Liebling Counter-Convention in New York City. Counter-Convention meant this gathering was operating as a counter to the meeting of the American Newspaper Publishers Association, taking place New York at the same time. A.J. Liebling was a press critic and New Yorker writer who famously wrote, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one,” meant as a slap to the fat cat media barons meeting across town. Our convention was about the “new journalism,” as practiced by Tom Wolfe, Gloria Steinem, Dan Rather, Gail Sheehy, Tony Lukas and other luminaries in the room. The possibility of being part of “new” journalism at a “counter” convention made me think of trying to put a positive twist on Liebling’s insult about freedom of the press. It made me want to “own one.”
I got good experience working for great editors at Lindsay-Schaub, a progressive mainstream newspaper company headquartered in Decatur, until 1976 or so when, from the information booth at the Illinois State Fair, I was handed a copy of Illinois Times, a fresh, smart, upstart weekly published in Springfield. Soon I visited the owners and asked if I might start a Decatur edition. No, said Bill and Alan, I should just buy the whole thing. With the help of my businessman father, who thought his son should be in business even if it wasn’t his own business, in July 1977 I became a newspaper owner.
There’s a photo of me from that fall, looking bewildered by my typewriter, probably because the staff I inherited asked for raises, overdue of course. With no idea how to publish a paper without these people, I had no choice but to give them whatever they wanted. Also, Elvis died around that time. I had never seen a newsroom stop so completely still. There were tears and a stop-the-presses moment. For the culturally aware, the world had changed, and I was just aware that theirs was a different culture than my own. I brought wastebaskets to the office, a clock for the wall, and washed the dirty dishes in the sink. I was thinking that they were thinking, “Who is this weird guy?”
About that time I got an uplifting call at the office, from Darrell Oldham at Seattle Weekly, saying he was inviting “papers like yours” to come to a gathering of alternative weeklies in Seattle in January. Before then I hadn’t known there were other papers like ours, or that there was such a thing as an alternative weekly. I went to Seattle in January 1978, to what became the inaugural meeting of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN). I liked “alternative,” as I had liked the “counter” in counter-convention. “New” “alternative” journalism meant we had the freedom, and the responsibility, to be different and better.
From discussions at the convention I also picked up business tips. Some of the papers were experimenting with free circulation, which they likened to a broadcast business model. You don’t pay to listen or watch (back then you didn’t) but because you and a lot of others do, stores and businesses are more willing to advertise. When I came home, we quit charging a quarter, we increased our press run, and advertising got easier to sell. The only downside to making the paper free, one reader reported, was that it became no fun to steal it anymore.
Sometime in the 1980s I spoke to a group of Soviet journalists visiting Springfield through the Commission on International Visitors. I proudly told them that, unlike the USSR, America has freedom of the press. “Yes,” said one of the journalists, “but what do you use your freedom for?” Just then he held up the current issue of Illinois Times with a cover story about alpacas. It was a light story, I admit, but important. I was defensive but I got his point. “What do you use your freedom for?” is a question for all Americans, but especially for journalists and newsmedia companies. Sometimes we in this business need to sit back and realize that the only thing stopping us is us.
There’s a lot more to freedom of the press than being able to say whatever you want. Unlike free speech, press freedom requires a press – not a literal press maybe, although that helps, but at least an institution, a business that can accumulate credibility. Add to that journalism, which implies respect for the craft of responsible truth-telling. And mix in some courage, not only to publish uncomfortable facts, but also to keep at it, and keep the bills paid, for a long time. Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who put it to work.
Fletcher Farrar is editor and owner of Illinois Times.
This article appears in 50th Anniversary special section.
