NORTH CO AST TIM ES EAGLE 25TH AN N IVER SA R Y ISSU E, J U L Y /A U G U S T 2004
yet deserve to be celebrated for their personal and aggregate
commitment to the obligations they recognize their unalienable
rights to be.
The Times Eagle and other out on the fringe publica
tions struggle zealously to survive in this age of media titans.
The resurrected Eagle, reborn from three years in a crypt, lean,
usually malnourished, improvident and half-alive since breaking
out of its tomb, is hogtied by its own paradox of self-imposed
poverty, which caused its original demise. Radically inclined,
its vows of penury dovetail with probability and implicitly limit
financial contact with ideologically incorrect sources of wealth
and funding that spread the diseased creed of commercialized
consumer/consumption. Naked appeals for money to readers
are embarrassing but necessary. Public radio and TV stations,
as well as smaller independent listener-sponsored stations
KMUN and Portland’s KBOO, raise capital by on-air pledge
drives a few times each year (plus financial grants, underwriting
and other subsidies).** Small potatoes newspapers take their
begging bowls out on the street like hungry monks or organize
parties with music, poetry, food and liquids, and pass the hat
among fans, sympathizers and rubberneckers who flounder
through the door.***
Our quickly consumerable society takes its momentum
more from waste than production much like emphysema inspires
the lungs by excess CO2 rather than oxygen. Whatever might be
said of the Times Eagle (which many call the Eagle Times) in its
favor or disgrace, it is not quickly consumed unless hurled into
a fire. Bucking a trend toward nanoprint journalism, Times Eagle
articles are long and wordy, often almost essay length, and
require time and concentration, which is sure-death in an
immediate gratification/disposal market. Newspapers by their
nature are perishable, read once and disposed of, but reading
demands active mental involvement unlike passive potato
television. Journalism comes in as many forms as music, high
and lowbrow, elegant and classy, pop-schmaltzy, hot and jazzy.
Its purpose is an almanac of events but also to pierce veils that
spiderweb thought, imagination and ideology.
From an ode I wrote for the Times Eagle's tenth birthday
in 1989, which was double the lifetime of the Old Bird.
The NOTE is a member o f the Poverty Press. It is one
o f a few small presses obsessed with a vision unaffected by
commerce. It is descended from radical newspapers that
blossomed briefly (and) its lineage threads back to the prickly
press that fostered the First Amendment, which denies govern
ment or anyone else the right to interfere with freedom of
speech. The independent advocacy press has few pretensions
toward objectivity and fewer illusions about its probability. Most
small independent journals are chronically understaffed, under
funded and generally misunderstood because they seldom
reflect popular opinion. They act, often myopically and insensi
tively, as consciences and torchbearers, and most are fierce and
shrill advocates o f large or esoteric causes. They are usually on
hard times and fail more often than they are replaced.
Free speech isn’t free — it has an underlying cost: which
is that everyone of us must do what we can to keep speech free.
Sometimes that costs money — such as maintaining a little
David of a newspaper struggling to maintain First Amendment
rights among mainstream Goliaths who are generally shameless
in their singleminded goal of making money, which includes
trampling over free speech and its necessary offsprings of
debate and controversy.
Peter Smith, editor/publisher of the Bay City Slug
(“Tough, Absorbent, Disposable") once wrote that the Eagle
and Slug were brethren. This was in an 1995 article in which he
profiled four Oregon coast alternative newspapers. The papers
were The Upper Left Edge of Cannon Beach, at present on
recess; Bummers & Gummers of Lorane, which is back in print
after a four year hiatus; his own Bay City Slug, never out of
print; and the Times Eagle, of which he wrote about the Born
Again Bird’s 15th birthday:
Liberally illustrated with drawings by local artists, the
15th anniversary issue included articles on social diseases,
including AIDS, deadly herbicides used to control undergrowth
following forest ciearcutting, spotted owl and Clinton Forest Plan,
logging and the destruction o f salmon spawning beds, The Great
Pacific Maritime Strike o f 1934 in San Francisco, known as
“Bloody Thursday,” plus one page o f poetry and several pages
o f photographs (by Robert C. Wilson). As with most issues of the
North Coast Times Eagle, this one was written and designed to
annoy corporate America and bring to view some little known
labor history.
*l was also a USMC reporter/photographer in Vietnam,
which critically exposed me to the formula of policy over truth;
and I suppose my obsession with fringe publications is an effort
to atone for the untruths I helped disseminate regarding the
conduct of a very unpopular and unjustified war. If for nothing
more, I owe uncompromising search for the truth to the dead
who are unable to speak.
** KMUN holds its summer pledge drive August 2-15.
***The Times Eagle has recently been the recipient of
a lifetime grant from a donor who prefers to remain anonymous
and who stipulates the paper continue to receive her bequest as
long as it continues publication, even beyond her death.
PHOTO OF PAUL JACKSON BY J. PIERCE CHRISTI (1991)
P A G E 13
WILLIAM MICHAEL SCHUSTER, ‘CAROL' (1980)
Smith also wrote in that same article:
The day the first press is confiscated or the first
publisher o f an alternative publication is branded a terrorist and
jailed for national security reasons, the mainstream media will
have to wake up. Though corporate owners o f the print media
might try and ignore the event, I ’m certain reporters and journal
ists who work for these monstrosities of misinformation will
sound the alarm. Should they fail in their sacred duty the altern
ative press will become the underground press, and we will have
returned to the black days before the American Revolution.
In spite o f these ominous tidings as long as the main
stream press doesn't do its job, the alternative press will, come
what may. Considering the present state o f the mainstream
press, the alternative press will continue to grow and be with you
— in one form or another— well into the 21st century.
The mainstream media is no longer a corrective to the
corruption and malfeasance of government and its evil axis
of wealth and power — it acts is its proselytizer, the conduit by
which the government boilerplates its actions to the public, and
despite a few recent qualms of conscience, has generally acted
as a cheering squad, or perhaps more accurately, as a militar
ized propaganda platoon.
The continuity of a culture of so-called radical journalism
is essential, which journalism schools seem to be breeding out
of recent generations of young journalists in a quest for centrist,
or “objective” principles of news and commentary. It is extremely
important for widely divergent views of everything have public
conduits — and the very edgy on-the-edge media is just about
all that persists against the conformitilization of American media
and society.
The paradox, of course, is that fringe media is readily
dismissed as not only being outside of mainstream centrist
conformity but also that it preaches to the fringe, and the great
masses of Americans (of whom less than half generally vote)
seldom read, watch or listen to heretic or apostate media —
yet the choir must be kept up with trends of music as medical
people the light-speed changes in medicine. When what is
considered a mainstream source of information becomes
increasingly more like Goebbels-speak (Fox TV news for
example), the fringe media has to pick up the slack of the
quickly disintegrating First Amendment.
Robert Stanley Need and I publish very different news
papers, although the lineage is recognizable. He might be upset
at my evolution of his creation yet our purpose has been the
same — to exercise the First Amendment like a muscle, to push
at it and goad it, to not allow it to slip into Alzheimer’s through
apathy or neglect, and to slap away hands that wish to strangle
it. The First Amendment is a journalist’s only god — Amen!
A final quip from the Born Again Bird's decennial:
Printing an unprofitable newspaper o f limited interest
and circulation at the beginning o f a post-literate era can be
frustrating and perhaps only slightly justified because it comes
from the heart. The NOTE has yet to break even on a single
issue, a now (25) year record which surely must be worth a
category in ‘Guineas’. But enough o f money. It's the Eagle's
blood, not its heart Profit and loss are mechanical processes,
like digestion. What matters is if the Born Again Bird (et al) is
not simply wasting paper. As the first editorial suggested...it
seems quaint to produce a small impoverished publication at
a time when vast political/military/corporate systems imprint
their oppressive agendas upon billions. But Moses Asch, who
founded Folkway Records on a shoestring and seldom made
a dime in 40 years, realized long ago that the very small can
grow and relatively prosper inbetween the cracks of the
megabig, like ferns on a forest floor. Mouses must roar, after
all, and bite at the ankles o f ponderous tyrannies if we are to
keep our heads and humor. Micromedia, flamboyant, irreverent,
raffish and patched, is on the march into the 21st century.
This 25th anniversay birthday card to the reborn
Times Eagle is a smorgasbong of persistent efforts to
compile a cogent and lucid history of its bifurcated life.
‘THE GOAL IS TO CONTINUE’
BY DAN ARMSTRONG
A few attempts have been made to attain grants for
the Times Eagle All failed. Dan Armstrong made a valiant try
to answer questions o f one grant form, with much less boiler
plate than most applicants His answers have been consolidated
into a single text.
The North Coast Times Eagle presents itself to the
people of the North Oregon Coast as an instrument through
which their separate and collective voices, irrespective of creed,
color, political bent or age may speak out in determination of
their own future.
Robert Stanley Need was the first editor and publisher
of the North Coast Times Eagle. He maintained the publication
for five years (1971-1976). Between 1976 and 1979, the NCTE
languished for lack of funds and Mr. Need's inspiration. The
paper was resurrected July 20, 1979 by Michael Paul McCusker,
a writer and editor for the original. Though times and issues
have changed, (25) years later Mr McCusker remains at the
helm, upholding Robert Need’s original concept of the paper's
purpose, “because First Amendment newspapers have become
as rare as the nation's symbol, the Bald Eagle" (from MPMc’s
first editorial).
The North Coast Times Eagle has dedicated itself to
maintaining an independent voice in a society of increasingly
dependent media voices. Its ongoing work is to address social,
political, environmental and human issues in both the North
Coast community and the nation at large. Its material (social/
political commentary, poetry, short fiction, photography and
graphic art) is drawn largely from local writers and artists
(ranging from grade schoolers to professionals to octogenarians)
but also includes reprinted essays taken from regional and
national publications. Though topics often touch issues of
national or even global concern, the central premise of the
publication is to reach the North Coast community and expand
the awareness of the problems and issues faced in this region.
Throughout the years the primary achievement of the NCTE has
been to provide both a long standing open forum of ideas and
artwork for local artists, writers or anyone who has an opinion to
express, and an interactive bulletin board for community organ
ization.
The North Coast Times Eagle is dedicated to social
change and always has been. Its articles invariably center
upon the debate of social change, whether it be labor unions,
education, environmental degradation or gender awareness.
The NCTE offers indepth articles and commentary where local
syndicated publications simply pull stories from the AP wire and
advertise. Artistically, the NCTE offers its readers a wide range
of artwork, poetry, short fiction and political insight...The NCTE
is very much an educational, literary newsletter, (a) citizen level
independent publication that allows noncommercial public
initiative and organization. Unequivocally, the NCTEs gain is
the community’s gain.
The North Coast Times Eagle's editorial goal, essentially
unchanged through (25) years of publication, is to continue
to provide a thought-provoking, yet also community oriented,
topical newspaper of quality and wide sentiment. Infusion of
grant funds would enable the NCTE to push for higher quality,
increase its readership and enhance its reputation as Oregon’s
oldest alternative newspaper. As it is, the NCTE persists through
modest advertisement income, intermittent donations, benefit
socials that combine music, dancing and food that are usually
attended by families as well as singles — and the formidable
obsession to publish by its editor.
The North CoastTimes Eagle, through hell or high water,
accomplishes its goals by sustaining. Any money awarded this
publication will go to securing and expanding the circulation of a
critical umbilical for grassroots organization and an unfettered
mouthpiece for local issues that is already in place and perform
ing. The NCTE has done what no other independent publication
has done in this state. That is, persist through difficult times. The
NCTE’s objectives are accomplished as long as it continues to
go to press.
The issues of racism, sexism, homophobia and classism
as obstacles to social evolution have been targets of the North
Coast Times Eagle since its inception Any single issue of the
NCTE in any year exemplifies this.
In a world of increasingly large voices and megamedia,
the NCTE is fundamentally committed to giving all voices,
especially the small and less heard, a place to express their
ideas. The goal is to continue to do this.
Dan Armstrong has been a contributor to the NCTE for
many years although moving to Eugene has interrupted his flow
His last feature was in the May 2003 issue, “The Real Deal"
exposing the corruption behind Enron