Becoming The Media: A Critical History Of Clamor Magazine (PM Pamphlet) ebook

"Becoming the Media: A Critical History Of Clamor Magazine" by Jen Angel

Review by James Generic

Clamor Magazine ran for almost seven years and I tried to read every issue during its run. The magazine, which had a fairly broad audience, was an excellent mix of culture, political essays, and topics you couldn't hear about anywhere else. When it shut down in late 2006, it was a fairly big blow to the small-time publishing industry. When Jen Angel, one of the two founders of Clamor Magazine, put out a history of the project, "Becoming The Media: A Critical History of Clamor Magazine", I was sure to pick it up as quickly as I could. I wanted to know how they could run such an excellent project for so long. I also wanted to understand what happened in the end to kill it.

The founders of Clamor run a yearly conference called the Allied Media Conference in Bowling Green, Ohio aimed at alternative media activists, and it was there, in 2004, that I heard some words that have stuck (or haunt, depending how you look at it) with me for years. In a workshop on how to run an organization, the presenter said something to the tune of "Probably 90 percent of progressive organizations fall apart because of internal conflict, members attacking each other, and not so much outside influences... so I can't really give you much advice there, except to be nice to each other." So how did the group of people who were in charge of Clamor, under enormous pressure, survive those years and still put out such quality work? Jen Angel answered that, what doomed Clamor in the end, and reflections on the whole project in "Becoming The Media".

Jen Angel and Jason Kucsma founded Clamor in 1999 because they wanted to combine the creativity and vibrancy of the underground zine scene with the national outreach of a regular magazine in reporting "the progressive social change movement" in all its forms. Though both Angel and Kucsma identify as anarchists, they never sought to limit the magazine's focus to explicitly anarchist politics and organizing, as they recognized that many people doing amazing things who might operate under anarchist-type principles do not call themselves anarchists at all and shy away from the term. From start to finish the magazine was run by entirely by volunteers who were divided into two different working groups: a publishing group that dealt with business questions and an editorial group that dealt with writing, layout, and trying to deal with such issues as diversity of writers and not getting caught in the "all-white collective" trap. One of the cooler things about the magazine was not just that all writers were paid for their work but that they explicitly didn't have to be "qualified" in that they needed to be academics or previously published. The writers for Clamor could have been anyone and didn't have to be so-called important people. In addition to that, the magazine tackled topics that a lot of others were afraid to touch in mass, like the blatant sexism and lies of American Apparel, a "hip progressive" clothing chain that is anything but. In that case, American Apparel attacked back with all kinds of threats of legal action and lies, but Clamor did the right thing and stuck to their guns because they were 100% right to do so! It also did a great job at representing the Midwest (Bowling Green, Ohio), instead of the usual places for radical publications, like San Francisco or New York city. That was really important since a good amount of people live in the Midwest and in small towns far away from big cities. (Indeed, left-wing and especially anarchist movements are generally confined to major cities.)

Like any well thought out "post-script", Jen Angel also examines what went wrong and the dangers the Clamor people had to navigate through. She points out that from the business side of things, Clamor probably overreached a bit in trying to put the magazine in as many bookstores as they possibly could. The problem with that is that magazines generally lose money on bookstores because they need to keep them well-stocked in order to try and attract subscribers. When a new issue comes out, the old ones end up getting throw away, which cost the magazine thousands of dollars. There were also tensions between the older collective members and the newer ones over ownership of the project (something very common in long-running collectives); Jen and Jason in particular put a huge amount of their time and energy into the project to keep it running - to the point where they couldn't really leave. Since they were an all-volunteer collective and were thus not paying the workers, Jen had to work at a very demanding non-profit job in the day to keep everything afloat. Jen also includes a passage about something rarely talked about in activist circles - being in a relationship with a fellow collective member. Some advantages of that was that they trusted each other completely, some disadvantages were that a lot of people talked to them like they were one unit and not separate people with different opinions. I think it's pretty darn brave to talk about something that personal and she offers some good insights into how to walk that line.

In the end, a major factor in the closing of Clamor was the Independent Press Association lying about its debt, and failing to pay Clamor or keep it on the stands.This was in addition to the mountain of debt the magazine had. This caused a downward spiral that led to Clamor not being able to continue, though it did put out one last issue, on the topic of body image. In the pamphlet, Angel suggests that every organization should have someone who is very familiar with budgeting and finances to consult with, because during much of Clamor's operation, they did not have one of these people. According to her, they might have actually closed a few months earlier if they knew the trouble they were starting to get into. She points out something very important: that grassroots left-wing progressive groups tend to shy away from the money aspect of operating because they associate money with greedy capitalists or consumerism, when it really does take money to keep a major operation going. Because left-wingers shy away from fundraising on a major scale, they lag way behind right-wing groups in being able to reach a lot of people and also in just sheer scale of operations. Another problem that she notes is that since Clamor tried to be as cross-movement as possible and didn't focus on specific parts of that movement, it became hard to get advertising because many progressive groups want focused advertising. An example she points out is that even though more than 50 percent of Clamor's readers were vegetarians, they had trouble getting vegetarian groups to take out advertisements because they thought the magazine's politics were too general. They ran into similar problems with other groups like women's rights organizations. Other progressive/radical magazines, such as Left Turn, might seem more focused, but in effect they are building themselves up for later outreach, according to Angel. All of these problems added up and finally forced Clamor to stop publishing at the end of 2006.

Jen Angel's pamphlet is a rare glimpse into a major group that was able to reach many people yet still kept a dialogue of how the staff interacted and thought. For example, simple exercises like bringing up if consensus decision making is really all that democratic helped spark big debates, I think. It's also a look into the mind of a hard-working and driven individual who got stuff done, consequences be damned. Angel made many financial and personal sacrifices and the Clamor staff put themselves through hell to put out a magazine that seemed entirely professional to me when I was reading it. (I was very surprised to learn that it was published by an all-volunteer staff!) As someone who's worked in organizations for years and I think had similar worries, it really captivated me. Also, the pamphlet gave me a nice glimpse into the trials and tribulations of being involved in a collective that published a nationally distributed magazine. Pick this one up and be prepared to be amazed at what the Clamor people accomplished in seven years.

This is geat inspiration for ANY DIY project. Even if you find yourself have the same issues that eventually brought down Clamor, it's still better than sitting around wathing TV, right?