Analternative news agency (or alternative news service) operates similarly to a commercialnews agency, but defines itself as an alternative to commercial or "mainstream" operations. They span the political spectrum, but most frequently areprogressive orradical left. Sometimes they combine the services of anews agency and anews syndicate. Among the primary clients arealternative weekly newspapers.
Notable alternative news agencies from the past included theAssociated Negro Press, theCollegiate Press Service,Liberation News Service,Pacific News Service, and theMathaba News Agency. Active alternative news services includeAlterNet, theAssociation of Alternative Newsmedia, andInter Press Service.
Theraison d'etre of a 1970s-era service, Community Press Features, nicely summarizes the ethos of the alternative news agency:
The mass media — the metropolitan daily newspapers, television, and radio — are big businesses and are backed, through financing and advertising, by other big businesses. They naturally tend to reflect and report the concerns of large business interests over those of the rest of the population. And although there are at times significant exceptions (usually moments of crisis, when they can't afford not to) they just as naturally hesitate to report on activities and groups which seriously challenge the legitimacy of those same powerful interests. Rarely will they accurately or adequately present those groups' points of view."[1]
One of the first alternative news agencies wasAssociated Negro Press (ANP), founded in 1919 in Chicago byClaude Albert Barnett. Through its regular packets, the ANP suppliedAfrican American newspapers with news stories, opinions, columns, feature essays, book and movie reviews, critical and comprehensive coverage of events, personalities, and institutions relevant to black Americans.
TheCollegiate Press Service (CPS) began in 1962 as the news agency of theUnited States Student Press Association (USSPA),[2] supplying material tocollege and university newspapers. (It was later revealed that CPS was at the time was receiving support and covert financing from the right-wing organizationsReader's Digest and theCentral Intelligence Agency.)[3]
The formation of the international journalistcooperativeInter Press Service in 1964 was vital in filling the information gap between Europe and Latin America after the political turbulence following theCuban Revolution of 1959.[4][5]
The 1966 formation of theUnderground Press Syndicate (UPS) was key to the co-development of thecountercultureunderground press and alternative news agencies. By June 1967, a UPS conference inIowa City, Iowa drew 80 underground newspaper editors from the U.S. and Canada,[citation needed] including representatives ofLiberation News Service. LNS, founded byMarshall Bloom andRay Mungo that summer, would play an equally important and complementary role in the growth and evolution of the underground press in the United States.[6][7][8]
Two alternative news agencies formed in the late 1960s were notable for their coverage of theVietnam War. TheDispatch News Service, formed in 1968, was awarded thePulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1970 along with writerSeymour Hersh, for his coverage of theMy Lai massacre.[9] Similarly, the mission of thePacific News Service, formed in 1969, was to supplymainstream newspapers with independent expert sources and reporting on the United States' role inIndochina during the war.[10]
The explosive growth of the underground press began to subside by 1970,[8] yet a plethora of alternative news agencies were formed in the period 1971–1973. Only a few of those agencies lasted more than a couple of years, with only two —Earth News Service (ENS) andZodiac News Service — lasting into the 1980s. Both agencies emerged from the defunctEarth magazine;[11] ENS was later renamedNewscript Dispatch Service. Meanwhile, Jonathan Newhall,[12][13] another formerEarth staffer, formed Zodiac News Service.[14]
TheCapitol Hill News Service, established in 1973 as part ofRalph Nader's think tankPublic Citizen, was later sold to theStates News Service, run by Leland Schwartz.[15][16]
The left-leaning news agencyAlterNet was launched in 1987[17] with a mission to serve as a clearinghouse for important local stories generated by the members of theAssociation of Alternative Newsweeklies (itself formed in 1978). At its start, AlterNet created print and electronic mechanisms to syndicate both the works of AAN papers and freelance contributors, among themMichael Moore andAbbie Hoffman.
Alternative news agencies of the 2000s have been mostly characterized as Internet-based news sites (and most have only lasted a couple of years).
Launched in November 1987 by the Institute for Alternative Journalism (IAJ)...
DNSI suspended operations March 1973.
A mobile app that allows citizens and community activists to directly report newsworthy events to journalists.