INSTITUTE FOR NEW COMMUNICATIONS, INC.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000201080001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 15, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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STAT
We're writing to you because the publications you read suggest you
might agree that the news media in America favor the status quo.
How can TIME and NEWSWEEK possibly report the whole energy story and
simultaneously hustle after Mobil for high-profit, double-page ads?
If we're right, we think you'll be very interested in what SEVENDAYS
is all about.
SEVENDAYS is America's first major, national, alternative newsweekly.
It is a newsmagazine unafraid to explore the activities of the big
corporations and their expanding interests in governments around the
world, including ours. SEVENDAYS believes that an open-minded oppo-
sition newsweekly can be an important force in shaping a new politi-
cal consciousness. By being comprehensive and reliable, we hope to
earn the trust - perhaps even the affection - of a large and growing
number of Americans. SEVENDAYS believes the time is finally here
when Americans actively supporting social change are numerous enough
to need an opposition newsweekly. You'll be pleased to find that
SEVENDAYS is designed for mass circulation, that it avoids in-group
language, and that the breadth and depth of the coverage is unequaled
by any existing news magazine. By subscribing to SEVENDAYS you join
a rapidly growing group of active people (we expect to reach the
200,000 circulation level within eighteen months) who enjoy helping
us spread the word that America finally has a genuine alternative to
TIME, NEWSWEEK, and U. S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT.
You may know that we just recently completed the publication of our
ten preview editions, and that they were received so well that we
are now set - financially and editorially - to launch the official
Volume I, Number 1. Initially we will publish every second week in
order to ensure the smoothest possible transition to weekly publica-
tion toward the middle of the year. Subscriptions cost 600 per issue,
which is 40/ less than the newsstand price.
We're excited about SEVENDAYS and we feel sure that you'll be excited
about it too, as it continues to probe and reveal, week-in and week-
out. Please look over the enclosed materials so you can learn a
little more about us, and when you have, I'm sure you'll understand
my enthusiasm.
P.S. - Be sure to read about our energetic book publishing plans, too.
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INSTITUTE
FOR NEW
COMMUNICATIONS,
INC.
The Institute for New Communications
was founded on the Aristotelian idea that
humans are political animals, happiest when
they understand and actively participate in the
institutions and decisions that affect their lives.
It is a non-profit educational publishing
organization whose major project
is the publication and distribution of a
comprehensive national opposition
newsweekly magazine called SEVENDAYS.
The Institute will also publish hard bound
books.
THE NEED FOR AN OPPOSITION
WEEKLY NEWSMAGAZINE
Overwhelmingly, Americans obtain "the
news" from three major television networks,
local (generally conservative) newspapers,
Time and Newsweek. People may not trust
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these vehicles, but they have very little choice.
In the absence of accessible alternate news
sources, the average person's comprehension
of global and domestic affairs is controlled by
conglomerates that place their corporate
interests above those of the public.
The newsweeklies that now dominate print
journalism-Time, Newsweek and U.S. News
& World Report-are notable for their slick,
uniform treatment of all topics. They level the
news and maintain the status quo by dulling
the reader's sensibilities, raising pseudo
issues, avoiding the vital problems of our
society, overlooking implications, and
resolving contradictions with simplistic
formulae.
The radical press, on the other hand, has
not failed to address the real problems of
American society. However, it has not had the
resources for comprehensive coverage, and
its tone has been too rigorously ideological
and rhetorical for most audiences.
There is a new anti-government
consensus in the United States which, if not
explicitly anti-capitalist, is at least anti-
authoritarian, anti-imperialist, and opposed to
the domestic and foreign policies of recent
administrations, the ruin of the environment,
and a quality of life determined by
corporations in search of profit. A whole
new way of understanding American society
is now emerging and it is time for it to be
expressed in journalism.
This necessity for an alternative to Time
and Newsweek has already been recognized,
but not met, by such publications as Rolling
Stone and New Times. There is a clear and
urgent need in the United States for a weekly
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newsmagazine which is both independent and
critical.
THE MAGAZINE
SEVENDAYS will be published weekly
and will receive first-class mail-delivery
service. Editorial closings will be on Saturday,
the magazine will be printed on Monday, and it
will arrive in each subscriber's mailbox within
three days. It will have the immediacy and
potential for becoming a part of people's
everyday lives that no monthly or even bi-
weekly can ever have.
SEVENDAYS will be primarily a news
publication. It will edit material from reporters
and news services throughout the country and
the world. Current plans call for classified
advertisements as a service to readers, but no
paid display ads. Every week the magazine will
present independent, accurate, and
perceptive reporting and analysis, free from
the corporate interests of the establishment
media.
SEVENDAYS will also present each week
signed news articles and regular columns by
some of the most incisive commentators on
contemporary politics and culture. Many hold
views which would not appear in any other
major American newspaper or newsweekly.
SEVENDAYS will not remain aloof from
groups organizing to make change in the
world, but will provide coverage and
commentary on their activities. Working in
conjunction with these efforts for social
change, SEVENDAYS can make an important
contribution toward altering the political
complexion of the United States in the
seventies.
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HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN
ALTERNATIVE PRESS IN THE 20th
CENTURY
Liberal and radical publications in the
United States have traditionally received
strong reader support. They often encouraged
and helped initiate broad movements for
social and political change. During this
century, several of those designed for a broad
audience, as is SEVENDAYS, achieved
significant circulation levels. They made an
impact. Here is a brief history of those
publications.
Half a million people were reading Appeal
to Reason every week in 1905, ten years after
the publication was founded. Eugene V. Debs
began a regular column in 1907, further
boosting circulation. He was also an editor of
The National Ripsaw, a St. Louis tabloid
founded in 1904 by Oscar Ameringer, that
attracted 150,000 subscribers with its lively
combination of news, cartoons, fashion,
commentary and political satire.
By 1912 the socialist press consisted of
323 English and foreign language publications,
ranging from the Halletsville, Texas Rebel to
Chicago's Slovenian Proletarec. Among the
most influential was the Daily Forward, whose
circulation was 142,000. It was a journalistic
innovator, whose initiatives included the first
advice-to-the-lovelorn column.
However, during the teens and through
the twenties, outside pressures such as the
1917 Espionage Act and the postwar Palmer
raids weakened the socialist movement. In
turn, its publications were subjected to
government intervention and repression. For
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example, because of its opposition to U.S.
involvement in World War I, the Milwaukee
Leader was illegally denied first-class mailing
privileges. In 1918 the editors of The Masses
were indicted for their anti-war articles.
The radical press never recovered its
earlier strength, although the working-class
militancy of the thirties stimulated new radical
and labor publications. The independent
People's Press of Pottstown, Pennsylvania,
reached a quarter-million homes each week
with a broad range of news, commentary and
entertainment. Labor had a circulation of half a
million and the weekend edition of the Daily
Worker had a circulation of 100,000 in the late
thirties.
But again, after World War II the
American left was intimidated and harassed.
Cedric Belfrage, co-founder and editor of the
National Guardian (founded in 1948 and now
called the Guardian), wrote that FBI agents
visited subscribers to let them know what
would happen "if your employer should learn
that you read this Moscow Propaganda."
In the postwar years, many potential
readers of the liberal publications were
understandably preoccupied with achieving
the "good life." The alternative press was
relatively dormant during the initial phase of
this period, but it sprang up again in the
sixties.
One of the most influential of the early
postwar publications was IF. Stone's Weekly,
launched in 1952 with 5,000 subscribers. By
the time Stone retired in 1971, the newsletter
had a circulation of 70,000.
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Although older publications like the
Nation (established in 1865), the New Republic
(1914) and the Progressive (1948) published
occasional anti-establishment articles, only
other smaller publications like Liberation
(1956) and the Guardian offered a radical
critique of American society and government
policies. During the sixties, the rise of the New
Left and the antiwar movement changed and
greatly expanded alternative journalism in the
space of a few years.
The Los Angeles Free Press, begun by Art
Kunkin in 1964, is often considered the first
underground paper. By 1968 it had a
circulation of 81,000, making it one of the
largest weekly newspapers in the United
States. By 1969 even conservative cities had a
radical underground paper. Atlanta's Great
Speckled Bird, for example, made no secret of
its anti-capitalist perspective to its 15,000
subscribers. That year total underground
press circulation reached two million.
Ramparts, a flamboyant, glossy monthly,
won a circulation of a quarter-million from the
same audience with exposures of CIA
infiltration of the National Student Association
and other government malefactions that the
mass media preferred to ignore.
The end of the war in Vietnam diffused the
passion which had sustained the underground
papers. Competition from wealthier
publications offering similar features, the
increasing separation between counter-culture
enthusiasts and political activists, and the
continuing economic crisis also hurt the
alternative press. However, sound business
practices, often disdained in the heady days of
the sixties, enabled publications like the San
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Francisco Bay Guardian, the Boston Phoenix,
Rolling Stone, and Boston's Real Paper to
survive and flourish. Today these publications,
along with the Village Voice and the biweekly
New Times, serve a large readership
throughout the country that is intensely
interested in an alternative viewpoint.
We believe that this nationwide
readership can be well served and in fact is
actively seeking a national opposition
newsweekly-a magazine which every week
will provide them with a lively and thought-
provoking alternative source of news and news
analysis. SEVENDAYS is designed to be that
magazine.
SEVENDAYS/BOOKS
Another project of the Institute is
SEVENDAYS/BOOKS, a book club service
available exclusively to SEVENDAYS'
subscribers. Once every six months,
SEVENDAYS will publish an original and
significant manuscript. Often it will be a book
that established publishers are afraid to take a
chance on, usually because the topic has not
yet been proved commercial. We will also be
looking for "work in progress" and support on-
going writing endeavors that we think our
readers would like to see come to fruition.
These works, which will be available first to our
subscribers, will then be publicized and
distributed to the general book trade. But long
before they show up in bookstores, you will
have read your copy. You also will have played
an essential role in getting a hitherto
"unmarketable" book published. For more
information on how to become a member of
SEVENDAYS/BOOKS, see the back of the
accompanying brochure.
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TIME AND
NEWSWEEK ARE
TWO OLD WAYS
TO SEE
THE WORLD
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ON 711 RND A) TE,
IS THE NEW WAY
The news you want to know about
as it actually happened--not the way
someone else wished it had happened.
SEVEN DAYS is an independent news maga-
zine published by the Institute for New
Communications Inc., a not-for-profit educa-
tional organization.
SEVEN DAYS avoids in-group language and
is designed for mass circulation. Its world-
wide coverage will always be comprehensive
and its information scrupulously accurate.
SEVEN DAYS prints the news the establish-
ment mass media ignore. The news that
reflects the values and concerns of the
Sixties and Seventies. The news that you
want to know about as it actually happened
- not the way someone else wished it had
happened.
SEVEN DAYS will never present the news in
isolated fragments. You will be able to
connect seemingly disparate events in differ-
ent parts of the world. We believe news of
movements for social change should be
covered as part of the general news.
SEVEN DAYS is a reader-supported maga-
zine. It will not fill its pages with advertising
promotions paid for by corporations other
newsweeklies hesitate to investigate.
Many well known writers and artists have
already agreed to share their work with us:
Judith Coburn
Susan Sontag
Dave Dellinger
Allen Ginsberg
Jules Feiffer
Florence Howe
Seymour Hersh
Robert Chrisman Barbara Ehrenreich
Denise Levertov
Ellen Frankfort
Richard Barnet
Michele Clark
Ram Dass
Joyce Kolko
Julius Lester
William Worthy
Stanley Aronowitz
SEVEN DAYS explores the daily lives of
people around the world from their point of
view. Other weeklies send their own people
to other people's countries. One of our
exciting concepts is to give voice to people
on the spot who seek out the underlying
forces behind the news.
Nanette Rainone Carol Brightman Rita Mae Brown
Gabriel Kolko Noam Chomsky Martin Duberman
Carol Lopate Kay Boyle Andre Gorz
SEVEN DAYS will also publish articles by
writers you have probably never heard of-
people whose views have not been favored
by the establishment press.
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An exclusive SEVENDAYS subscriber service -
ONMETATO/ Books
Forget every other book club or book library or guild-of-the-
month. Those are the names that mean that when you return
the form you are permitted to purchase books that you could
already have bought in any book store. Those are the names
that mean you've made a commitment to purchase a certain
number of selections, often from a range of uninspired titles
chosen by long-winded "establishment" editors. But worst of all,
those are the names that mean not publishing, but republishing.
SEVENDAYS/BOOKS will be "d" - none of the above.
SEVENDAYS will publish ONE book every six months. Which
book we publish will depend on a number of factors, including
your opinion. In every instance it will be a work that other
publishers don't have the nerve or the guts to be associated with,
or the nerve or the guts to put their money into. We'll publish it,
we'll make it available FIRST to our subscribers, and then we'll
try to promote it, publicize it, and distribute it to the book trade.
You'll know about it FIRST because you'll have already read it by
the time it hits the bookstores.
A SUMMARY OF THE SEVENDAYS/BOOKS SERVICE
1. Every six months, a new,
socially significant, never-before-
published manuscript will oe
published.
2. The selection will be mailed
automatically to SEVENDAYS/
BOOKS members months before
it reaches the bookstores (if in
fact it ever does), and at a price at
least 20 percent less than the
bookstore price.
3. If a SEVENDAYS/BOOKS
individual is dissatisfied for
any reason whatsoever with a
particular selection, SEVENDAYS/
BOOKS is responsible for return
postage.
4. After we have chosen the
book for publication, the title and
a summary will appear in
SEVENDAYS so that members will
know beforehand what you will
be receiving.
5. We pledge to read and
seriously consider any manuscript
of 35,000 words or more sub-
mitted by a SEVENDAYS/BOOKS
individual for possible publication.
6. The books themselves will
be hardbound volumes of top quality.
If SEVENDAYS/BOOKS sounds interesting, please be sure to
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PLACE
STAMP
HERE
206 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10010
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vI q 'I11!Ri
SAVE 40% OFF NEWSSTAND PRICE
check one:
Please enter my subscription for 14 issues at $8.40.
Please enter my subscription for 40 issues at $24,
and send me absolutely FREE the gift I have checked.
Payment enclosed (make payable to SEVENDAYS)
Bill my credit card account:
Master Charge #
BankAmericard #
897 77-05 R 20013001
PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PO BOX 1282
WASHINGTON ()C 20013
L J
PORTRAITS OF
CHINESE
WOMEN
IN
REVOLUTION
BY
AGNES SMEDLEY
Eighteen rare fictional and
journalistic pieces from
the years of war and
revolutionary turmoil....
WOODY
GUTHRIE
4 BOUND
FOR GLORY
An incomparable
autobiography by America's
great folk singer
IMPORTANT: Check here if you also wish to participate in Please choose 1
~~,, of the above.
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