From bertoldi@astro.Princeton.EDU Sat Jun 22 00:14:57 1991 From: Frank Bertoldi Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 13:29:33 EDT To: instmedia@igc.org Cc: BERTOLDI@astro.Princeton.EDU, harelb@cabot.dartmouth.edu, mathrich@umcvmb.BITNET Subject: UseNet newsgroup etc. Dear Bill Schaap and Brian Tenenbaum, Following up on our telephone conversation earlier today, let me briefly summarize who "we" are and what we do. To start, "we" are not an organization, but a loose group of individuals scattered across the country, mostly at universities. We mainly know each other through electronic mail, have no financial budget, but the common idea to utilize electronic media as a participatory news source, a communication and organizing tool for progressive causes. The driving source behind this year-old project are Harel Barzilai (Dartmouth) and Rich Winkel (Univ. Missouri). One year ago, we have set up an Internet mailing list that distributed information and served as a discussion forum for progressive organizers across the country. The list is called ACTIV-L, has about 1000 subscribers, and carries about 20 postings per day. As a next step, we have just initiated a UseNet newsgroup called "misc.activism.progressive" that is moderated by us and that you can access through peacenet as the conference "misc.activism." - have a look and judge for yourself. UseNet is a worldwide, anarchically run, but well organized news and discussion bulletin board that has an estimated 1.6 million readers. About 6 million people have access to UseNet by having accounts on computers that carry it (essentially all universities, private corporations [AT&T, e.g.], and other networks such as PeaceNet, FidoNet). The most popular of UseNet's more than 1000 newsgroups is read by an estimated 160,000. The UseNet audience is rapidly growing. Since UseNet is free and widely accessible, we think it is the ideal alternative medium for the distribution of (non-corporate media) news and opinion. The next item on our agenda is an electronic news service that shall distributes print-ready news articles drawn from alternative sources to progressive campus newspapers, such as the one I am editing at Princeton, "The Information Gulf" (a bi-weekly, 4 page (soon 8) tabloid, no ads, free, 6000 circulation). This news service will be an integral part of ACTIV-L and misc.activism.progressive. We believe that the work you are doing with "Lies Of Our Times" is a very important resource for critical analysis of the corporate media, and we would therefore like to occasionally reproduce an article of yours and distribute it on ACTIV-L, m.a.p., and the future news service (eventually reprinted by campus newspapers). Beyond this, if you would find it worthwhile, we would welcome your active input, in the form of criticism, advise, and stories to be distributed that didn't make it into LOOT. We also suggest that you think about posting all of LOOT on PeaceNet as an electronic journal. Howard Frederick, who manages PeaceNet, has some very good ideas on how this could be done to everybodys benefit and you should contact him about it. As you suggested, we will ask you explicitly about each article that we like to post, and when we post it, we will add subscription information. Thank you in advance for your collaboration, and good luck with your excellent LOOT. Frank Bertoldi You can respond to either my PeaceNet account "fbertoldi" or, better, via Internet to: bertoldi@astro.princeton.edu