Editorial -- News of the real
What kind of newspaper is this?
What is the paper you now have in your hands?
We aspire to something intangible, something that does not exist but should exist. We are striving for new forms, new features. If you can tell too easily what this newspaper is about we are not doing our job.
Who is to say what is news? A newspaper validates and fixes reality. The headlines themselves are news makers. Conventional papers are interesting, but they report the news of our blandness, our petty struggles, our sour certainties. They report our inability to grasp subtle explanations or higher truths. And they reveal the level of our happiness, the depth of our souls.
Who is to say what is objective, what is real, what is sensible? The press presses the status quo onto our personalities. Society imposes itself on us, and suppresses our hearts and souls.
What if the actual news were right before our eyes, but we didn’t see it? And what if we woke up one day and realized that all along we had been seeing false images and thinking with incoherent thoughts?
We want to go through, and under, and beyond the static news. We want to find the dynamic, challenging, inspiring news that we don’t have words yet to explain: inner news, news of the shattered and the broken, news of the beautiful and the good.
It’s not about the power of the rich. It’s not about the oppression of the powerless. It’s not about the erosion of democracy, or the loss of community, or the profaning of our culture. All these are true. But they are only byproducts and symptoms of the real news.
The news is us. It is in us and flows out of us. This world is an accurate expression of our current identity. It is not the invention of the rich or the famous, the politicians or the executives. We accept our status as peons and pawns but we don’t have to.
The real news is powerful, transformative. We just need to say it, in the public arena. Just by reporting it, it will happen.
Internet sites are too transitory. We want to dip our hands in the ink. We want to participate in the old world, of physical objects that actually exist, that we see in businesses and common spaces and that we can pick up and peruse.
Our paper, our ink, our life: this is a model for communication and participation and creation of the world that is in us but as yet has no way out. And here is also an invitation to you: Join us, as co-creators, or idea gatherers, or as part of the community of readers who are making the news by reframing the questions.