Newspapers

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

Hey everybody,
OK, well despite being a working-class Socialist from a working-class family, I somehow ended up at a college where (except for the minority of other working-class kids like me who happened to make it in) the vast majority of students are upper class. As you can probably guess, the campus (and school administration) tends to be a bit liberal on the social side of issues, but is nonetheless staunchly capitalist and reactionary. The official school newspaper clearly reflects this: the editorials run the gamut from tepidly-Liberal to super-reactionary-shit that is basically racist and classist, the paper ignores news/issues that happen in the community right outside campus (which happens to be working class), the entertainment/society section is meant for the super-wealthy etc. Anyway, its been a dream of mine and my friends to start our own campus newspaper, one that is comprehensive, but most importantly comes from a left-wing/working-class perspective. Getting writers/creative people wouldnt be a problem, I know many communists/anarchists I could get to contribute. My question is: what does it take to start up a paper? printing presses? how much does it cost? etc. Anyone here with experience starting up a paper/zine or whatever? Any advice on publications would be helpful. Would it just be easier to start up the paper online?

[RNK]

I have a small bit of experience.

First, you want to look at what format you want your paper. When I was taking part in a zine project (by a group of left-wing college/university kids in Montreal, Canada), one of the problems that came up was, like you said, funding, printing, etc.

Some of the options we came up with was: using used paper (donated by some campus organization); recycled paper (somewhat low quality, but very cheap); binding ideas came from simply using glue, to hand-sewn string binding, to staples; whether it would be standard zine size (unfolded sheets of standard printing paper) or "half-size" (made up of horizontally-bent standard sheets to make a half-sized zine). I think we decided on simply printing it via a regular computer printer. Programs like Wordpad are good for making simple-looking pages, though if you have access to something better, by all means... You can either print your entire zine (and all copies) via a computer printer or get people to roam the campus for copying machines and have them take up an entire morning or something.

Also, if possible, ask pre-existing papers how they do it, or better yet, find out if there is some sort of printing "group" or faculty organization. I'm sure if so many zines and papers are being printed, there must be somewhere you can go.

If not at your own college, you could try community colleges nearby, to see if they can help.

[bayano]

u should see if ur school is willing to pay for it. ive seen schools, private and big state schools to, fork over thousands to any student group that wants to make a paper. for some reason, theyre often really big on that. if u live in a town/city with a leftist or poc printing company, patronize them. if u want a diy zine for free, use every available hook-up (ive done that to the tune of hundreds of issues).

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

If you're doing short runs, try google.

For instance, I found www.jsprinting.com, $180 for 200 papers. Prices go down as the quantity goes up.