Radical social journalism is about ideas -- not profits -- and cannot be judged by the standards of its mainstream counterparts, argues a UC Davis scholar in his new book, "People's Movements, People's Press: The Journalism of Social Justice Movements."

"When judged by the standards typically used to assess the importance of mainstream publications -- total circulation, advertising revenue, length of book, longevity, 'professionalism,' 'objectivity' and 'lack of bias' -- social movement publications appear to have been of negligible importance," says Bob Ostertag, a faculty member in the Technocultural Studies Program.

In his book, Ostertag gives examples of how the opposite has been true by examining the history of publications used by the abolitionists and suffragists of the 19th century, the gay and lesbian press, the GI press in the Vietnam War, and the environmental movement.

He contends that the social movement press can only be understood in the context of particular historical movements.

For instance, in the 1950s environmentalist David Brower first created the Sierra Club Bulletin to rally public opinion against the Echo Park dam in Dinosaur National Monument on the Colorado-Utah border and then was successful in opposing subsequent national dam proposals.

Later, in the late '60s, environmentalism fused with the counterculture, Ostertag says, with the "back-to-the landers who wanted to create an entirely new society."

"Out of the counterculture kaleidoscope of lifestyle experimentation, criticism of actually existing society and psychedelic-drug use, emerged one of the most startlingly innovative journals in the history of publishing in America: the Whole Earth Catalog," Ostertag says.

He concludes that the recipe for successful independent press supporting various social justice movements "is simply a vision of what people can do to make their lives more meaningful."