The Cover of Today's METRO? Why can't dozy anarchos come up with something that good?

[Fozzie Bear]

One thing the AF is doing at the moment is completely overhauling the design of our bulletin, Resistance. What we hope to end up with is a tabloid style (more Metro than the Sun) free newspaper with a clear and consistant style. Whether or not that'll work remains to be seen, we're very much in the early stages of this.

Sounds good, fair play. I see from Ian Bone's blog that CW is attempting to go monthly as well.

I'll be looking forward to both of these - I think there is a lot of potential at the moment, despite me being fairly cynical about anarchism and revolutionary politics right now (like anyone gives a fuck what I think!) and it would be good to see some populist stuff...

 

[chico enrico]

This is the key issue I think - it is easy to demonstrate the injustice of beagles with aerials inserted in their heads. It doesn't need any explanation really.

and, similarily, to bring this thread round by a full 360 degrees the 'injustice' or western 'celebs' earing grubs etc to increase their chances of winning £30,000 or whatever it is and african kids eating grubs to, errr, live.

i think in essence what i am saying is propaganda is often most successful and messages most easily conveyed when their medium is as reductionist as is possible.

 

[chico enrico]

Did you read it? Take a look at the text from one of the pages Taxamo posted. Where's the jargon?

AR is pretty light on jargon, or as light on it as it can possibly be, while still explaining the core concepts. It also goes to fairly great lengths to explain the ideas behind technical terms (for instance, the surplus value as the value produced by the extra labour necessary to convert a bunch of ingredients into a meal and deliver it to the table).

It does what it sets out to do pretty well, it doesn't assume a level of knowledge most people won't already have and it doesn't throw around jargon without explaining it first. To be honest, it strikes me that you're saying a lot of things about it that obviously aren't true if you actually take the time to look at it. It's a pretty short pamphlet, it wouldn't take you ten minutes to read.

all fair enough. maybe i will read it some time. i was just making my comments based on that quite by 'Ria Stone' on the back which is just the kind of crap folk have been spouting for about 40 years just turns me off as much as if , for a graphic, they had used a photo of a big cock spunking over a toddler's face.

 

[chico enrico]

Sounds good, fair play. I see from Ian Bone's blog that CW is attempting to go monthly as well.

is he writing for CW again? will have to check it out if so. he's a pretty peerless polemicist, is Ol' Boner.

 

[_float_]

What about Schnews?

This week's issue: Iceland Burns!

I think they get the writing about right but to attract more apolitical people and young people they could add more graphics/photos, a bit of celebrity-chit-chat-piss-taking, some flash games, music and so forth - make it a lot more myspace/facebook/etc-like. Their website was fine 10 years ago but it has hardly changed since then.

I think that anyone wanting to launch an anarchist/radical version of a 'tabloid' should not be looking at 'old media'/newspapers - they should first of all aim to get *traffic* by featuring for example games, music, videos, pictures, dating, parties, discussion forums, social networking or whatever they can manage...

...you need to think about making the site a place that lots of people will go to as a kind of 'portal' that can link them to a whole range of other stuff on the net, be it serious news or just fun and stupid stuff.

Once you have actually provided something that people like and therefore have an audience, you can then use it to 'editorialise'.

I'd argue that this is what the Big Issue does to some extent: it includes TV and film reviews and interviews with celebrities etc. and once it has attracted in a mainstream audience with 'fun' stuff it can then do more serious articles related to subjects chosen by the editors.

 

[Taxamo Welf]

One thing the AF is doing at the moment is completely overhauling the design of our bulletin, Resistance. What we hope to end up with is a tabloid style (more Metro than the Sun) free newspaper with a clear and consistant style. Whether or not that'll work remains to be seen, we're very much in the early stages of this.

I'd be very very impressed if you pulled this off - best of luck

 

[Taxamo Welf]

all fair enough. maybe i will read it some time. i was just making my comments based on that quite by 'Ria Stone' on the back which is just the kind of crap folk have been spouting for about 40 years just turns me off as much as if , for a graphic, they had used a photo of a big cock spunking over a toddler's face.

that would be fully win

 

[Taxamo Welf]

just finished reading the thread - so the AF wants to launch a monthly paper, Class War wants to get its paper monthly, Freedom is a fortnightly (15 pages and full colour) paper -

this is unfuckingbelievable

I had no idea desire for anarchist newspapers had reached such historic levels

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I had no idea desire for anarchist newspapers had reached such historic levels

Ha ha!

 

[teuchter]

This morning I noted that Metro has had a subtle redesign.

I think they are trying to look more like a real newspaper.

 

[free spirit]

This morning I noted that Metro has had a subtle redesign.

I think they are trying to look more like a real newspaper.

and less like the AF's upcoming redesign...

 

[Taxamo Welf]

This morning I noted that Metro has had a subtle redesign.

I think they are trying to look more like a real newspaper.

yep - they been poked into this by the sheer pap of london lite and that other one. Metro reads like the FT by comparison.