Common Ground: Taking A Stand

September 2004 | Editor’s Note

Taking A Stand

A concerned reader recently wrote that he considered it a “political offence” for Common Ground to take sides on issues. By doing so, he argued, we risked losing over half of our advertisers and what he termed a “good publication” would be committing “business suicide.” While I respect this reader’s right to object, I differ with his premise. First off, as a free magazine, we are indeed dependent on our advertising revenues. But our journalistic integrity and credibility depends on our independence. Common Ground and Dragonfly Media have already shown this by refusing to accept a lucrative ad contract from American Spirit tobacco, a decision made with transparency by inviting our readers to weigh in on the matter (see Publisher’s Note and letters in the May and June issues). Those letters continue to pour in, and that’s because we didn’t shy away from taking a stand on something we felt strongly about, even if it hurt our bottom line.

Some years ago, I wrote an investigative feature about auction fraud for a New York art magazine. The piece focused on Christie’s, one of the world’s biggest auction houses, and an attempt by a consignor to artificially inflate the price of a painting to set a world record. The magazine, Art & Antiques, had a contract from Christie’s for monthly full-page color ad, so the stakes were high even to run such a piece. But a courageous editor and publisher resisted the pressure from the auction house’s high-paid lawyers to kill the piece. They believed in the story and, before we went to press, called the auction house to give them the chance to remove their ad. They did. After the story came out, New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs investigated and forced Christie’s to end the practice of consign0r bidding. The magazine lost the ad, but the public interest gained immeasurably from its principled stance. I know of very few national publications today that would show such integrity and chutzpah.

The cost of our media’s fecklessness has been huge. Among the more astonishing examples are the recent mea culpas from the New York Times and Washington Post for their lack of skepticism about the Bush administration’s justifications for invading Iraq. These are our newspapers of record, whose editors, by their own account, did a dismal job of exposing the exaggerations, distortions, and misuse of intelligence that have destroyed our standing in the world and taken the lives of American and coalition soldiers and Iraqis. Egregious, too, was the mainstream media’s failure to report the extent of public dissent both at home and abroad. Across the country, says Washington Post’s Executive Editor Leonard Downie “the voices raising questions about the war were lonely ones. We didn’t pay enough attention to the minority.”

One group of journalists that was doing its job was the alternative media, including Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and such web news services as Alternet (www.alternet.com), IndyMedia, Truthout and Pacific News Service. They got the story right. In this issue of Common Ground, you will meet another group of visionaries and activists overlooked by the mainstream media: Contributor Jennifer Liss shows how some East Oakland teachers and students are changing lives in a community torn by violence and poverty; Silja Talvi takes us into the world of Paul Stamets who believes the lowly mushroom may have some practical uses both for Homeland Security and the environment; science journalist Pat Heminger reports on a group of local doctors who are voicing new concerns about toxic levels of mercury in pregnant women; and, in our cover story, local author and hiker Stephen Altschuler takes us down the trail where he found a path to redemption. They are all stories about people who are not afraid to take sides — and offbeat strides — to forge a more conscious community.

— Carl Nagin

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