The American independent punk movement was characterized by all things DIY: independent record labels, underground music venues, self-promotion, college radio, fanzines, slam dancing, moshing – you name it. In this movement, every follower – whether they were in a band or watching one at a show – was an active participant. And what’s more, nearly every band involved in the scene made their recordings and promotional material without the help of the major corporate music industry. As music journalist Michael Azerrad writes in his indie rock-chronicling book Our Band Could be Your Life, in the late ‘70s, “more and more people realized that calling up a pressing plant and getting their own record manufactured wasn’t the mysterious, exclusive privilege of the giant record companies on the coasts,” (Azerrad, p. 5-6). Now regular Joes were establishing independent record labels, pressing and promoting their own bands all by themselves, without the help of the large, mainstream music industry.
Gillmor sees this same phenomenon happening in 21st century journalism. He cites citizen media coverage of 9/11 as “something profound,” declaring “news was being produced by regular people who had something to say and show, and not solely by the ‘official’ news organizations that traditionally decided how the first draft of history would look,” (Gillmor, p. xx). On 9/11, much of the up-to-date breaking news was covered by normal people producing their own reports online. To Gillmor, this was an example of news gathering evolving from the consumerism that traditionally characterized it to something much more democratic and empowering. “For the first time in modern history, the user is truly in charge, as a consumer and as a producer,” (Gillmor, p. 137). In Gillmor’s book, DIY journalism websites like OhmyNews, Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos are seen as innovators of this new, grassroots type of news.
But what Gillmor doesn’t realize is how these websites reflect similar ideologies – in how they produce and promote themselves – to ‘80s indie record labels like Dischord, SST and Sub Pop. Those labels were cornerstones in giving small, non-mainstream punk groups a chance to record and distribute their music in much the same way websites like OhmyNews give non-mainstream journalists a chance to publish their work. Gillmor is essentially applying the punk rock ethos to journalism. To him, the authenticity of this DIY punk ethic is the greatest potential for news gathering in the 21st century.
DIY punk innovators
Perhaps the most defining early band of the DIY underground punk movement was Black Flag. The brainchild of guitarist Greg Ginn, Black Flag was, according to Azerrad, “among the first bands to suggest that if you didn’t like ‘the system,’ you should simply create one of your own,” (Azerrad, p. 14). Azzerad also notes that Ginn’s characteristics as a child, from publishing an amateur radio fanzine to starting his own mail-order business that sold World War II radio equipment, were like that of a computer nerd (Azzerad, p. 15). Except it was the ‘70s, and computer technology was still widely unavailable to most people.
In 1978, Ginn started his own record label, SST Records, abbreviating the name of his previous mail order business, Solid State Tuners. In this, Ginn established “easily the most influential and popular underground indie [label] of the Eighties,” producing and packaging the likes of Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, and plenty of the other defining DIY punk groups of the time (Azerrad, p. 14). Sounds and musical styles weren’t what united these bands of the American indie underground. Instead, it was “the punk ethos of DIY, or do-it-yourself. If punk was rebellious and DIY was rebellious, then doing it yourself was punk,” (Azerrad, p.6).
American punk groups like Beat Happening, Minor Threat and Mission of Burma followed the trend Black Flag started by creating their own indie labels (which were K Records, Dischord Records and Ace of Hearts). Washington D.C.’s Minor Threat, one of the premier hardcore punk bands of their day, embodied the do-it-yourself philosophy that so many citizen journalists hinge on. Its frontman, Ian MacKaye, always wanted to be a rock star as a child but never thought he’d qualify. “There was no hope for me because I wasn’t part of the industry-sponsored, don’t-try-this-at-home nature of rock,” he says in an interview with Azerrad. “You look at rock & roll at the time – [Ted] Nugent or Queen or whatever. They’re gods. So I knew I could never be like that,” (Azerrad, p. 121). He didn’t get motivated to give it a shot until he discovered the looming D.C. punk scene happening in the early ‘80s. The Bad Brains, a D.C. hardcore punk group consisting of African American Rastafarians, largely influenced MacKaye. Their spirituality and righteous politics showed that punk was more than just music, it was “something you could hang an ethos on,” (Azerrad, p. 123).
So MacKaye added an ethos to Minor Threat: straight edge. Unlike so much of what was common in mainstream rock, MacKaye never drank alcohol or used drugs. He added this as a dimension to his group (the chant of Minor Threat’s “Out of Step” is: “Don’t smoke / Don’t drink / Don’t fuck!”). As Azerrad writes, “Renouncing sex, drugs, and drink was renouncing the unattainable rock & roll myth, making music relevant for real people. It was a compelling advertisement – you couldn’t play this incredible music if you were fucked up; you certainly didn’t play it to get laid,” (Azerrad, p. 136-7). Regardless of how much it seemed like Minor Threat was trying to get punks to follow the straight edge ethos, MacKaye was not trying to tell people what to do. Rather, he was most concerned with defending himself against the idea that he was a “freak for not drinking,” (Azerrad, p. 137). In this case, challenging the norm was the true ethos of straight edge. DIY underground punk provided a forum to express views that dissented from the mainstream in the midst of the Reagan-soaked ‘80s.
[This next video features old footage of Ian MacKaye explaining “straight edge” and working at the ice-cream shack where he earned most of his living.]
Reaching audiences of all ages was a major priority of the ‘80s American underground scene. Black Flag, who pioneered putting a punk ethic in touring across the country with no agents or managers, hotels or airplane travels (they used a smelly Ford van instead), tried their best to play all-ages sets, even if it meant playing two separate sets (Azerrad, p. 23-4). Minor Threat took this to another level by refusing to play any 18-plus or 21-plus shows. What was most important was never excluding anyone who wanted in. MacKaye still abides by this policy today, which is clear in the following video of him testifying to the Washington D.C. city council in 2007 against an all-ages band.
The audience becomes involved
The audience members played just as important a role as the band members at punk shows. Seeing these bands didn’t require excess amounts of money and a nose-bleeder stadium seat. Rather, the audience was on the same level with the bands; face to face and screaming the lyrics of whatever song was being played. At Minor Threat shows, MacKaye would always throw his microphone in the crowd so people could sing along with the songs (it would always come back). Minor Threat’s band members never made an effort to kick people offstage who had come up to dance and stage dive. This lack of regulations seemed to work, as audience members were an uninterrupted part of the show (Azerrad, p. 148).
And this type of audience/band member interaction wasn’t just limited to shows. Azerrad writes, “The biggest leap of faith might well have been the audience. They were falling for bands who weren’t on commercial radio and would never be on the cover of Rolling Stone,” (Azerrad, p. 10). Mainstream media didn’t give the scene much of a notice, so audience members instead had to go out and search for the bands by themselves rather than buy into the latest media buzz. The average punk fan had to be investigative and listen to college radio stations, track down the fanzines, and shop at the tiny, local record stores to find the albums they wanted.
This reflected a phenomenon of the audience taking power back into their own hands, a phenomenon that’s extended far beyond music in the era of the Internet. In We the Media, Gillmor tells a story about how he and several others attended a PC Forum featuring then-Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio, who was later convicted for 19 counts of insider trading. At the meeting, Nacchio complained about how Qwest was losing much of its market value, but of course failed to mention that his own illegal management moves helped lead up to the crisis. Gillmor was live-blogging the event when a lawyer named Buzz Bruggeman, who was following Gillmor’s thread, emailed him information that showed how Nacchio had sold $200 million worth of stock right before it plummeted. Gillmor was quick to post this on his thread, and after that, the audience at the meeting turned hostile (Gillmor, p. xxii).
This event showed Gillmor how audiences can, without interference, raise their voices and make up their own minds in a way that’s more accessible than ever before. Months after the event, new media specialist Howard Rheingold was asked at a conference whether events like the Nacchio mockery would have a “chilling effect” on public discourse. In a spirited punk-like response, Rheingold laughed and said, “I would think it would have a chilling effect on bullshit.” Events like these reinforce Gillmor’s optimism in citizen journalism. “This is one of the most important media developments in a long time,” he writes. “We are hearing new voices – not necessarily the voices of people who want to make a living by speaking out, but who want to say what they think and be heard,” (Gillmor, p. 139).
Just as punk rock had opened up an opportunity for non-mainstream views to be expressed in the music scene, the web provides a similar opportunity in the journalism scene. This could have a major impact on U.S. alternative press, which has ironically been very slow in catching up with new media. This could be because of major corporate consolidation. In 2005, New Times Media, an owner of various alternative weeklies, purchased Village Voice Media, bringing the vast majority of metropolitan alt-weeklies under their ownership. This led hip-hop journalist Jeff Chang to dub New Times the “Clear Channel of alternative media.” On a Guerrilla News Network thread, Chang asserted, “There is no longer anything alternative about alternative.”
Unstoppable consolidation has led journalists and non-journalists alike to start their own websites free of corporate strain. Good local examples are Twin Cities Daily Planet and Minnesota Monitor, which publish stories from both average readers and professional journalists. They are fine testaments to the idea of readers and disenfranchised journalists working on equal levels and taking news gathering into their own hands in that righteous punk-like fashion.
Eliminate the gate-keepers
A big and often-cited development in new media citizen journalism is the coverage of then-Senate majority leader Trent Lott’s 2002 toast to Strom Thurmond on his 100th birthday, where he said the nation would have been better off if Thurmond’s pro-segregationist 1948 presidential campaign succeeded. Initially, mainstream media largely ignored the pseudo-racist statement and carried on with its traditional take on the news. But in the blogosphere, things were different.
Websites like Talking Points Memo kept the story alive and chastised mainstream media for ignoring it, making critiques of both Sen. Lott’s statement and mainstream media’s unwillingness to recognize the issue. Eventually, the story caught on to Big Media, causing a national controversy and Lott’s resignation as Senate majority leader.
This event marked a significant progress in citizen journalism; non-professional journalists had helped break a story that led to the demotion of a powerful U.S. senator. In a sense, it showcased the ability of how citizen journalism could, as Black Flag would say, “rise above” traditional norms.
It’s also an example of how journalism that would otherwise be left unnoticed by mainstream media can have a positive effect in citizen media. Similarly, much of the underground punk groups of the ‘80s that had a major influential effect on later rock groups would have otherwise gone unnoticed if they didn’t go through the route of DIY self-promotion. The DIY punk movement began “simply because there were great bands that would never be signed to major labels,” (Azerrad, p. 6).
Doug McGill, a former New York Times reporter who launched his own DIY journalism website The McGill Report, argues that the Times would have never picked up his story on how the genocide in Darfur affects the Anuak tribe of Ethiopia. But after he broke the story as an independent journalist on his website, it received national attention.
Many DIY journalism websites have also been the first to break important stories. Minnesota Monitor was first to break news about Minnesota U.S. Attorney General Rachel Paulose being under investigation for mishandling classified information. And MinnPost, a Minnesota news website that employs many of the downsized journalists who formerly worked for City Pages, Star Tribune and Pioneer Press, was the first news organization to break the Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson scandal over her disenfranchised staffers. To be fair, the person who cracked both stories, Eric Black, is a professionally trained journalist. But since MinnPost and Minnesota Monitor are independently owned websites that rely on marketing only journalism, they're still part of a movement taking journalism away from corporate gatekeepers and putting it back into citizens’ hands.
Just as great punk bands made a difference by doing it themselves instead of saving their talents for the corporate music industry, many great journalists are making a difference by targeting their talents toward other citizens rather than toward the corporate media industry. Both the DIY punk movement and the DIY journalism movement conduct business on their own instead of having gate keepers tell them what is and isn’t marketable. The freedom of DIY journalism is comparable to the freedom of DIY punk.
Crossing over
Even if the mainstream is far behind in giving an initial response to growing underground movements, it usually doesn’t take too long before it recognizes their marketability potential. By the mid-1980s, major record labels started noticing bands from the American indie underground. As this happened, indie labels were starting to be seen more as farm teams for the mainstream rather than a separate alternative scene. During the second half of the ‘80s, “‘college rock’ was now a viable commercial enterprise,” (Azerrad, p. 159).
The first key underground punk group to sign to a major label was Minnesota’s own Hüsker Dü. Even from the get-go, they had never intended to limit themselves to small indie labels. “It wasn’t a PR move,” says Hüsker Dü frontman Bob Mould of becoming a part of punk’s underground. “It was the best we could do at the time,” (Azerrad, p. 6).
Pre-major label Hüsker Dü
Hüsker Dü started their career DIY by signing to SST Records, but after releasing a few albums and establishing a key local and national following, multiple major labels started knocking on their door. Eventually the group settled with Warner Brothers, but, to carry on the DIY tradition, made sure the contract would allow them complete creative control, from the album’s cover design to the music recorded (Azerrad, p. 190). This paved the road for how many indie groups would sign major label contracts in the years to come.
Although they were still calling the shots after being signed to a major label, many members of the punk community were shocked by Hüsker Dü's major label move and considered them sellouts for it. What’s more, Hüsker Dü started making their music more melodic and less thrash-inspired. While they made their mark at the 7th Street Entry, Hüsker Dü was now appearing on the Today Show and the Joan Rivers Show. Their support went from a local grassroots following to a worldwide fanbase.
The Hüskers on the Joan Rivers Show, after signing to Warner Brothers
As the ‘80s drew to a close, more and more punk groups that started out DIY were signing major labels. Groups like Sonic Youth, the Replacements, and Soul Asylum, who all started out DIY, now had major corporate record deals. Punk’s capital marketability finally exploded the day Nirvana’s Nevermind album hit number one and soon sold over 10 million copies. It had taken over a decade, but the music industry finally found a way to capitalize on the underground indie movement.
This was a vivid contradiction of a sound that started as an alternative to the mainstream. To the music industry, indie music was at best a good marketing path. The DIY punk groups “painstakingly developed grassroots national followings and then, once all the hard work had been done, a major could snatch them up and cash in,” (Azerrad, p.494-5). Because of Nirvana’s success, 1991 became known as the Year that Punk Broke – for better or for worse.
DIY online journalism has yet to break into the mainstream in the same way that punk did. As major newspapers continue to suffer from decreased ad revenue and online competition, online news still hasn’t fully been capitalized on. But, just as major labels began picking up indie punk groups in the mid-‘80s, online DIY journalists are starting to be picked up by major news gathering organizations.
Perhaps the best known DIY crossover journalist is Amanda Congdon, the former host of the daily news video blog Rocketboom. The Rocketboom website is best described as a newscast with a comedic slant. It’s DIY in the fact that it chooses what it wants to cover without having to worry about gatekeepers. It also operates on a small budget, despite the fact that it has an audience comparable to cable news. Rocketboom started out in 2004 with just 7,000 viewers, but that number quickly grew to 70,000 in the first 10 months, gaining notice in mainstream media conglomerates like CBS, Business Week and Wired Magazine.
In 2006, Congdon left Rocketboom and started her own video blog, Amanda Across America, which had her traveling across the nation and meet up with other DIY journalists. One of Congdon’s posts featured an interview with DIY journalist Josh Wolf, who at the time was imprisoned for refusing to turn over videotapes he had recorded of a 2005 anti-Group 8 protest in San Francisco. By seeking out other DIY journalists, Congdon was helping to establish an underground network where citizens and journalists were on equal ground. She also focused much of her attention on the web’s grassroots democratic potential, as she does in the following video while speaking to Minnesota U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison about how his campaign used the web to spread the message his political message.
But just as punk bands from the indie community were tracked down by the major music industry, mainstream media organizations saw the marketing potential of Amanda Congdon and capitalized on it. Congdon was soon picked up by ABC and hosted a weekly video podcast on its website. Now she was part of the mainstream news, but still operated as if it were her independent video blog.
Amanda Congdon on ABC
Just as punk groups like the Replacements and Hüsker Dü signed major record label deals but still failed to crack into the mainstream and eventually disbanded, Congdon’s career at ABC was short lived, lasting for only about a year. No DIY-turned-mainstream journalist has crossed over as successfully as the way Nirvana did in the music industry, and only time will tell if this possibility is even feasible.
Professionals become citizens
One big phenomenon seen more and more in DIY journalism is professional journalists leaving their jobs at newspapers (or, more often than not, getting laid off) and starting their own independent news gathering websites and blogs. Skews of journalists, from Eric Black to Josh Marshall to Jeff Jarvis, got their start in mainstream media and later made the switch to DIY websites and independent blogs. Due to the shortage in print media, it continues to happen at a quick rate, perhaps because it’s the only option left for so many downsized journalists.
And as more professional journalists turn online, the opportunity to criticize other media organizations is widened. Jim Romenesko’s Poynter Institute media blog is vocal in critiquing and delving into the substance of current media coverage. Gillmor argues that since professional journalists “are among the most thin-skinned people around,” this trend of increased media criticism is a very healthy development in 21st century journalism. Locally, David Brauer’s media coverage on MinnPost resembles Romenesko in that Brauer is unafraid to take shots at any news publication, be it The Rake, the Star Tribune or Mpls. St. Paul Magazine (the latter of which he sometimes writes for, although it wouldn’t seem like it after reading some of his posts). Brauer’s criticisms have led to discussions on his threads and even incited some of his targets to defend themselves by posting rebuttals on their own websites. All in all, it’s led to more transparency and public discussion, as citizens have become more actively involved by posting comments and arguments.
DIY’s Future
DIY journalists like Jeff Jarvis, Dan Gillmor and Doug McGill have successfully shown that mass media’s future will offer citizen journalism as well as mainstream journalism. “Journalists aren't the only ones with a license to operate journalism,” Jarvis said in a recent episode of Frontline. “Anyone can perform an act of journalism. When you witness news and capture it on your phone or laptop, you’re doing journalism.” The idea of anyone being able to gather the news and contribute to the public conscious is undeniably liberating – as liberating as being able to manage your own punk group, free of outside gate keeping. Just as this punk attitude in the music scene has stayed alive and evolved to new, diverse forms in social networking websites like My Space, it will probably stay alive in journalism as well.
Even prolific DIY punk trailblazers like former Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins are experimenting with new media DIY journalism. On his website, Rollins continues to assume his role as a public intellectual of the punk culture in new ways by keeping an updated web journal that lists plenty of tour dates and coverage of other punk artists mixed with Rollins’ usual banter about himself and society. It truly abides by the “if it’s not there, start it yourself” spirit of punk.
And DIY journalists like Gillmor predict that the punk spirit in the web is here to stay. Even if big corporations and big government hypothetically attempt to restrict public control of the Internet, Gillmor predicts that “technology will win because it is becoming more and more ubiquitous,” (Gillmor, p. 238). In that sense, DIY journalism is only at the brink of its impact and is only going to continue to develop as the 21st situates itself.
