Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 10, 1993 TAG: 9303100028
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: M.J. DOUGHERTY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
FREE PRESS AT 10: THE MISSION'S THE SAME
After a decade of publication, the purpose of the New River Free Press hasn't changed.The newspaper looks much different than its 1983 debut edition. Typesetting is done on laser printers instead of typewriters. The quality of writing and editing has improved. The size of the paper and the advertising content have grown.
Even the purpose statement has been reduced from five paragraphs to one.
But those changes all are stylistic. The substance of the New River Valley's alternative news monthly remains the promotion of social justice, peace and a healthy environment.
That same spirit was alive 10 years ago when Ron Kaminkow and John Enagonio decided to create a newspaper that would reach a wider audience than their radical underground publication, The Steam Tunnel.
"They decided to see if there was any community support for a new newspaper from the various action groups that existed at that time," remembered Mariann Caine, who became involved 10 years ago because she knew Kaminkow.
She continues to be active in the Free Press as a correspondent and photographer.
"They called together a meeting of those people. . . . They offered to be the voice of those groups, so effort wouldn't be duplicated and [the groups] could get their word out."
In that meeting of about 20 people, the New River Free Press was born. The meeting site, a house on Progress Street where Kaminkow and Enagonio lived, became the offices for the newspaper during its formative years.
As the paper went through its growing pains, new volunteers and followers were attracted.
"I used to read the paper, I used the community calendar to decide what I was going to do with my free time," said Susan Anderson, who has been working at the Free Press since 1984.
"Then one day I was looking at the paper and I saw a whole lot of typos. I thought, `I could proofread for the paper.' So I wrote a letter to the Free Press, offering to help."
That help over the last nine years has included bookkeeping, selling ads and handling correspondence as well as proofreading and layout.
The paper continued to grow and expand. It moved from the Progress Street house to a second-floor office on South Main Street in Blacksburg.
Kaminkow and Enagonio eventually left the area. Kaminkow is president of a labor union local in Madison, Wis. Enagonio works in the publicity office of the United Package Workers in Nashville, Tenn., and still contributes a column to the paper.
Meanwhile, others came to the area and succeeded the pair. Some were attracted because of the Free Press' unique managerial structure - it doesn't have one. All jobs rotate throughout the staff. And no article appears in the paper unless three members of the staff have reviewed and approved it.
"It's kind of a model of group work and consensus decision-making," said Kim Kipling, who has worked at the Free Press since 1985, writing editorials, editing copy and coordinating the printing of the newspaper by the Galax Gazette.
"We try to put into practice what we preach - participatory democracy. Nobody is in charge and everybody has a say in what goes on."
The result has been a newspaper with a common theme but with different voices. Don Mackler, who does writing, editing and layout, realized how that was possible soon after he started working at the Free Press.
"I wanted to see the Free Press become more involved in environmental issues," said Mackler, who has worked for the paper off and on for almost nine years. "What I've learned is how close the environmental movement is to the peace and justice movement and the feminist movement. When people get too much into a movement, they don't realize that."
The decentralized approach of the Free Press also gives writers an opportunity to write their stories without having to worry about the usual newspaper constraints.
"You get to write about an issue in depth; you can create a clear picture," said Beth Wellington, who has written news stories and editorials for the past four years and helps organize the newspaper's annual literary supplement, Appalachian Voices.
"You get to show the sides of issues that the conventional media doesn't, things that don't make it [the conventional media] at all, things that don't make it right away, things that don't make it in a sustained fashion."
As it continued to bring a different perspective, it soon became time for the Free Press to move to different space once again. About three years ago, the offices moved into larger quarters, a 1,200-square-foot room in the New River Valley Management Services building in Christiansburg's Cambria neighborhood.
The room has everything from a library on peace and social justice that is open to the public (by appointment) to computers for bookkeeping to light tables for layout.
On those light-tables this month are the fruits of a decade worth of labor - a 12-page special supplement celebrating the Free Press' first 10 years.
Times have not always been easy. But through generosity of contributors and garage sales, the paper has survived. Now 7,000 or so copies of the paper are distributed each month through subscriptions and at newsstands statewide.
"Compared to our five-year anniversary, it seems we have more input, letters of thanks, from the local community," said Caine. "So there is more support out there for what we've been trying to do all these years."