> It's not an either-or thing - were there more action, there'd be more
> publications, and vice versa. The organizational and journalistic
> left are suffering from the same torpor.
I'm writing a friendly response to Jim's post, but I want to ditto Doug's points here. It's important to have the publications and journalism at the same time you have protests, organizations and whatever. Publications help people communicate with each other. They provide education to people in the movement and newcomers. Publications help us tell the story about who we are and what we are doing. They also provide a method to nurture and develop new writers and thinkers who go on to appear in the mainstream media.
Doug touches on an important fact that people are paying attention to. The health of the left press is directly tied to actions and protests. I think that some of the indie left publications that have closed shop recently would still be around if their were visible and growing activist movements out there.
I've seen this first hand with Infoshop.org and seen it in the fluctuating popularity of outher left websites. There has been a clear downward trend in traffic since 2003, with upticks occuring around the time of major protests. I've seen the graphs for our website and I've seen the stats for sites like ZNet. There is a direct tie between the healthiness of the alternative press and the protest movements.
The more liberal left publications and websites will face a crisis in 2009, after the Democrats take office and Bush leaves. The liberal left media is heavily dependent right now on Bush-hating content.
It's probable that the popularity of liberal left websites and publications will end up on the remainder table with discounted anti-Bush t-shirts.
Chuck