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June 25, 2004
"Abby Scher, Independent Press Association-New York"
Welcome to this online interview with Abby Scher, Director of the Independent Press Association-New York. Questions and answers will appear below starting at 1 pm EST on Friday, June 25. Scher will discuss her strategies to raise the voices of ethnic and community press in New York, especially in the wake of September 11 and increasing media consolidation. Read background Leadership for a Changing World
Welcome to Leadership Talks with Abby Scher, Director of the Independent Press Association-New York, and a 2003 Leadership for a Changing World awardee.
Abby, can you tell us how you got involved in social justice work?
Abby Scher
I found myself at the University of Chicago during the Reagan presidency, when it was generating a lot of the intellectual justification for dismantling the New Deal. Chicago also was behind in opening up its curriculum to women’s studies and black studies, creating a stone age feel that a core group of us wanted to challenge. And so we did that in print. Other students were doing the same thing for their political positions: David Brooks was at the college paper. Jon Podheretz was editing a conservative magazine funded by the right. So writing as a way to be visible and have a progressive political voice in a conservative environment seemed natural, and it still does.
We also saw what it meant to have resources behind you, as Jon did for his magazine. I experienced publishing on a shoestring again while editing an economic justice magazine in Boston in the 90s. I was there when Independent Press Association formed in 1996; its mission made a lot of sense to me: to build joint business ventures that strengthen social justice and other independent publications supporting their communities. In 2000, IPA asked me to start the NY initiative sharing our strategies with the ethnic press.
Cincinnati, OH
You mentioned that one of your goals is to have the community set the agenda...how do you go about understanding what the need(s)is and then trying to meet that need and at the same time make certain you're not falling back into your own agenda?
Abby Scher
First of all, the community that you bring together is one that has some shared concerns to begin with, so our board has set a membership criteria that publications have to embrace our social justice values or at least be neutral, but they can’t be in opposition to them, so that creates some common ground in the publications we bring together. I rely a lot on a steering committee of publishers and editors and they make it really clear what it is that they think I should be doing. And there’s a balance because some publishers and editors might want us to support their business operations. But a lot of our members join in order to participate in our fellowship program or our awards. You use information from your leaders, but also from the broader trends within the organization. Our board has also pulled us back from doing advocacy in relation to big corporate media, so we took on Conde Nast. We used to do campaigns against environmentally bad paper use in the newspaper industry and our board thought that was too far afield given our limited resources and that was our own agenda. So the board pulls us back if we find ourselves not being focused on what our members want from us.
Lincoln, Nebraska
How does a PhD in Sociology help you in your work? Why not Journalism or Communications or something else?
Abby Scher
Maybe I’m one of the dying breeds that became a reporter by interning at a newspaper. It was in a well-off county where I had the opportunity to report on a big junk bond scandal in the 80s, and I had a sense that journalism school would not help me report on the scandal. I felt totally above my head and unable to do the depth of analysis that the situation really required. I didn’t originally pursue a Ph.D. And I think it was the right decision because it was so interesting, but the sociology degree sharpens your analysis and the context. It enlarges the context in which you see events and I think that makes what your writing a lot richer and more relevant.
Lansing, MI
How do you and other ethnic press supporters respond to criticism that having an "ethnic press" at all is akin to voluntary segregation?
Abby Scher
A lot of the editors think that what they’re working for is to support the assimilation of immigrants into the U.S. and that they provide a guide for how to get along in this society and how to build power in the society on the terms of the society. I think that really is true for the non-English language publications. Ethnic press editors and their readers are also reading the New York Daily News or the New York Times. They’re enriching their knowledge and understanding from the standpoint of their ethnic group.
Greensboro, NC
How has the consolidation of major media outlets affected the independent press?
Abby Scher
It is a lot harder to publish. People pay attention to the mergers of newspaper companies. But the distribution companies, printers and other businesses that do work that is basically invisible to the reader also consolidated, raising prices and making it harder for publications to get contracts and enter the business. And about half the independent bookstores closed in the 90s, forcing many independent magazines to find new outlets. That’s why IPA negotiates with Barnes & Noble, Borders and other chains to expand the independents on their newsracks.
Also, it is hard for independent publications to get the capital – loans – they need to invest in their operations and grow. That is a longstanding problem that bank consolidation has not helped any. That’s why IPA started a revolving loan fund.
The Latino weeklies and dailies have become a takeover targets by mainstream newspaper conglomerates. Takeovers weaken the ties of the publications to the local communities, and those staff who can’t play in a corporate environment tend to leave. And those are the very people who tend to make the smaller publications interesting and controversial.
Eugene, Oregon
Will change in the media come through reform or from opposition? In other words, will quality media evolve because of change within the existing mainstream media or through the development of what are now alternative publications?
Abby Scher
I’m not very optimistic about the possibility of reform in the mainstream media and the quality of news that’s coming out of corporate publications is just declining. The only thing I could see that would really help is regulation that would cap the profits that media companies could extract from their newspapers and magazines. Right now Wall Street demands huge profit margins from media companies of 25 percent margins that they don’t demand from other sectors and that’s bad. It gives the media corporations permission to extract ever more from the news operations. The U.S. Government will never cap profits, so I am not hopeful. And that’s why IPA is determined to strengthen the independent sector and to strengthen the reporting there really challenges the status quo. And good reporting can stimulate copycat reporting in the corporate sector, so we’re hoping for a trickle up effect, but I don’t expect wholesale change.
Louisville, KY
Is your organization a "stepping stone" for helping independent publications to find sustained resources and legitimacy or is it the peak for independent media?
Abby Scher
We want to be a steppingstone for the independent publications to strengthen themselves. I don’t know what is meant by us being the peak, I’m not really sure what that means. Inside our organization we know we’re just a drop in the bucket of what’s required. We would like to do joint circulation initiatives, newspaper distribution, joint health insurance that could support small businesses. All of these ideas have come from our members for what they’d like to see to strengthen their publications. I was just at the Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association meeting yesterday, and the people there were talking about the difficulty in getting distributed and getting their publications out into the world where people see them. This is a central challenge for non-corporate media and that’s why we, in 2000, took over a magazine distribution brokerage and we now handle distribution of 75 of our members.
San Francisco, CA
What are you doing to link your work in New York to national efforts to promote independent media?
Abby Scher
We work in alliance with national efforts for independent media. We participated in the Madison, Wisconsin, Conference for Media Reform and our organization as a whole advocated for reversal of the FCC rules on cross-ownership. We have everything we have done is as part of our national organization, but it is something the staff discusses how much time we should put into the national advocacy efforts related to government regulation. We don’t have a lot of resources and the advocacy time we spend is directly related to our members’ needs to have affordable postal rates. And we hired a lawyer in Washington to represent independent publications before the Postal Rate Commission. This is not something that gets a lot of attention in media reform circles, but postal rates are the lifeblood of our members that have paid circulation. And we find ourselves in opposition to the Magazine Publishers of America, which is a highly resourced organization that represents large publishers’ interests in front of the Postal Rate Commission.
columbus, Ohio
What do you see as the most pressing media access concerns that the public faces today?
Abby Scher
The most pressing media access issues right now, one is the creation of one-newspaper towns and many of those newspapers are owned by companies like Gannett which maintain a small news hold and weak news coverage. That is due to media consolidation of course. The other pressing media access concern is the drivel that’s on mainstream TV news and the news becoming driven by the celebrity culture. I think one thing we might do as critical journalists is start writing about the celebrity culture more and use our more investigative and critical skills to reflect on that culture, and that might be a way to engage readers and viewers to take a deeper look at the culture that they’re part of. Many of us go into this business and we’re news junkies and our perspective is driven by more traditional news judgments. And I think we have to start engaging where people’s interests are, not the way TV news does, but from a critical perspective because the celebrity news culture reduces all of our critical consciousness.
Syracuse, NY
What were the biggest challenges facing the ethnic press after 9/11? How have things changed since then?
Abby Scher
Well, there were business and editorial challenges. Publications closed. There already was an advertising drought because of the dip in the economy in 2001. And then 9/11 threw cold water over immigrant enterprises, the businesses that basically support the ethnic press with their ads. The September 11th Fund and other philanthropies provided us with about $150,000 to use to place ads with emergency information in the pubs (we translated it into 22 languages). It was a small drop in the bucket but I’m sure it helped.
Some publications could not meet the political demands of the moment. I asked one Arab American publisher how he was covering the roundups and repression, and he replied that his community was riled up enough and didn’t need him publishing about all that was going on. He was trained to be an establishment journalist in his home country, and was acting that way here in relation to the US government. Well, his publication did not survive.
Other publications had to shift their attention from their home country to here. The Pakistani American papers, for instance, functioned largely sort of a free press in exile. One small paper in Brooklyn covered the roundups immediately, but the larger papers were slower out of the starting gate. Now they are spending a lot of time writing and thinking about US based politics and issues facing the community here. There has been a sea change.
Seattle, WA
What are some of the challenges you have faced since starting IPA-NY that have suprised you and are there challenges that you thought you would have to deal with that haven't been the case?
Abby Scher
One challenge that surprised me was how little time reporters have for their own training. Another challenge that surprised me is the thin understanding in the funding community about the importance of media for social change and organizing. We had to find visionary foundations who could see the link of organizing and grassroots media. That link seems obvious to me.
One challenge we didn’t face that I was expecting was more conflict, more ethnic conflict among the members or with staff or just in general. The publishers and editors are very cosmopolitan and even if they haven’t worked with other ethnic groups, they’re very comfortable with it. Also, when we present business training, coming from our organizing background we make sure that the trainers are from a range of backgrounds. And I’ve been surprised that a lot of publishers don’t care about the diversity of the trainers, they just want the business information.
Another surprise was how little interested advertisers are in a range of ethnic publications. They focus on the large communities, the large Latino papers, and New York is huge and diverse and they overlook a lot of communities that I would think they would find important to reach. So that’s a real challenge of ours to generate advertising revenue, which is what these publications depend on to operate.
San Pablo, CA
What do you see as the epitome of "mainstream" media? Are there one or two traits you can describe that make such outlets so closed to alternative voices?
Abby Scher
The major mainstream media that makes it so closed to alternative voices is the desire to make a lot of money. That means they don’t often take editorial leadership out of fear of losing subscribers and advertisers. Even people who are interested in alternative voices within the mainstream media don’t act on that interest for that reason. I think they’re misjudging their readers, but that’s a dynamic that’s hard to break.
Another structure of the mainstream media that makes it closed is the bribes the publishing side makes to the editorial side, and Geneva Overholser described this process from when she was editor of the Des Moines Register when it was taken over by Gannett. It was an independent newspaper and the business side paid a lot of money to the editor, increased the salary astronomically, in order to get the editor to conform to the business precepts of the corporation. And the editor was required to spend half their time in meetings with the business side, taking them out of the news operation and turning their consciousness into a business consciousness. That’s the process.
Queens
You admit openly that you're primarily working with (and, many would say, leading) communities of which you are not a member. Do you ever find yourself forgetting, or having to be reminded of this? What do you find grants you legitimacy to work within other communities?
Abby Scher
Well, I am a member of the community I’m leading since I was an editor and journalist. And I think that I have legitimacy because people can see I probably was a good editor and journalist. And I also think I have legitimacy because I will fight to challenge the mainstream media to include their insights, especially after 9-11 with the Pakistani and Bangladeshi press and really presenting that to the mainstream press about what was going on in the Pakistan community. Our strategy is effective and that gives legitimacy to what we do and what I do. And do I ever have to be reminded that I’m not from these communities? That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer. Do I ever step out too far? Probably.
Boston
Your work seems to rely heavily on building relationships within disenfrachised communities. How do you effectively gain interest, then build trust, and eventually encourage involvement?
Abby Scher
I’m in a strange position because I am working with small-business owners and intellectuals who are, in some sense, leading disenfranchised communities, so I’m working with fairly powerful people in their own right. And the biggest difficulty for building involvement is their time, where they have the same time constraints as any small-business owner. Building trust, I think you build trust by delivering. That’s how you build trust.
Washington, DC
IPA-NY is fairly new, where do you see it going in the future or where do you hope to see it go?
Abby Scher
I would like to see us starting a radio program maybe called the Best of the Ethnic Press and have the reporters and editors speak directly about the issues in their communities. I would like to see us work even more on building cooperatives on the business side among publications here and in Chicago, where we are starting a chapter. I think we have seen the importance of working locally. There’s a depth of relationship and work on the business that you can only do locally with independent newspapers. I think that’s why our organization is putting some effort behind the Chicago chapter, which was initiated by local members, by the way, as was IPA-New York. Local publications asked us to do this. We work in alliance with a similar organization in California called New California Media. Together we can create a broader intervention to the sense of what is news in this country.
Boston
Who have you looked up to in getting to where you are or tried to model your way of leadership similarly and why?
Abby Scher
One person I look up to is the founder of IPA, John Anner, who was editor and publisher of Third Force magazine when he started IPA, and John combines vision and pragmatism. I tend to lead toward the pragmatic and he’s a reminder to keep the vision going. Sometimes you model your leadership on who you don’t want to be like and I learned a lot by working in organizations where you didn’t have a lot of say. I guess I learned a lot of leadership in the first political work I did, which was in a women’s organization, and it worked without hierarchy and was very aware of how power dynamics shape or limit an organization. And I was challenged a lot by older people in the group to basically do what I say and not live in a fantasy of what I would like to do. It was a very grounding experience.
Chicago, IL
How do you work with different groups that may oppose one another (i.e.- Arabs and Jews)? Do you engage them in discussions together?
Abby Scher
Not directly. We just have events where people support each other. I told my cousin who reads a large Jewish paper that its publisher was sharing great inside tips with a young Arab American publisher at a recent business forum, and he was really surprised given the politics of the paper.
We have a fellowship program for immigrant journalists, and they learn a lot from one another in their monthly seminars. The reporters and editors are quite cosmopolitan, and open. There are funny moments. One Polish American journalist said anyone who can pick up a hammer can get an illegal construction job in the city, and a Haitian American journalist laughed at the idea that that would be true for black immigrants. We all learned from that.
Hartford, CT
What resources are alternative publications lacking most at the moment? Is it readership? Advertisers? Technology?
Abby Scher
I guess out of that list I would probably choose advertisers and maybe have that for a shorthand for all the different money streams that go into a publication. IPA helps build readership through our loan fund, which pays for direct mail efforts to find subscribers, along with our newsstands and brokerage, and that is for not having capital to invest in building your circulation or revenue generating activities. It’s a real hardship that keeps them small. Another thing that IPA members experienced early on is when you have a small staff and staff turnover then it’s hard to retain a business acumen that you need. That’s one reason why we have technical assistance manuals on different aspects of publishing to try to stabilize the knowledge within small publications.
Another resource the alternative press could use is a sense of humor. When you look at The Onion, which is probably the most successful alternative publication in the country, it’s achieved stability through its humor, and I think other publications can learn from that.
Leadership for a Changing World
Last question for today:
Abby, how do you sustain yourself and your staff to avoid burnout?
Abby Scher
I was really struck when two young staffpeople said they had no idea before joining IPA that you could really change things. They did not know you could change the course of the river. I have that faith. I experienced it during the last days of the women’s movement, and I knew it from reading about the fight against Jim Crow and for workers rights during the Depression.
That’s the vision thing. I know we can form a network of cooperative ventures that will sustain independent publications against the crush of consolidation. I know that the publications can be more powerful and influential if the rest of the public knows more about what they write and if they have the editorial contacts and resources to serve their communities.
We also work really closely with visionary and wonderful editors and publishers. Some are holding together publications with three or four staff, or putting out dailies with an eight person newsroom. There are doing the work, day after day, while writing articles that help galvanize their communities, or reframe a problem. Many are great strategists and I just drink up their wisdom.
I’m also a believer in reasonable hours. When I was at Dollars and Sense, the economic justice magazine, the board ensured staff worked no more than 40 hours a week. When there are so few institutions out there able to step up when important struggles need to be waged, you feel like you have to do everything. Well only if it fits into a 40 hour week. You need balance, especially if you have a family or are active in organizations in your community after work.
Leadership for a Changing World
Thank you again for joining us for today's Leadership Talks with Abby Scher. For more information about Abby:
Abby Scher
Director
Independent Press Association - New York
143 W. 29th Street
#901
New York, NY 10001
Phone: 212-279-1442
Email: abbyscher@mindspring.com
Web: www.indypressny.org
Please join us again for the next Leadership Talks.
Abby Scher
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