Madison, WI Independent Newspaper to “Throw In the Towel”

A post to the Madison IMC newswire indicates that the last few remaining members of the Madison Insurgent collective intend to quit publishing their newspaper, citing a lack of interested participants and funds.

The Insurgent is a monthly independent, collectively-run and non-profit newspaper that’s similar in style to many newspapers put out by IMCs, like New York City’s Indypendent, and my local IMC’s Public i.

The Insurgent lasted two and a half years, which is not a bad run for a monthly non-profit paper that is distributed for free. Heck, that’s longer than the last two runs of for-profit alternative weeklies here in Champaign-Urbana.

But putting together a hard-hitting and independent newspaper on very little budget is not an easy task. I know that the Public i has been struggling with getting together the relatively small funding necessary to print the last issue.

I think IMC-based papers, like the Public i, do benefit some from being associated with a larger media organization from which to pull volunteers and support. I think IMCs really become useful when they’re able to branch out into different media ventures, like print, radio and video, rather than be stuck with just an Internet presence. Perhaps the Insurgent will arise again as part of Madison’s growing Infoshop.

My congratulations go out to the volunteers of the Insurgent for a successful run, as well as my empathy for all the hard work it takes to keep such a project going.

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