Why did you and Lydia Sargent embark on South End Press and then later Z Magazine? Why did the magazine rise; why did it decline?

With many others, including Lydia’s son Eric, we had earlier begun and worked at South End Press, publishing books. After years of highly innovative book publishing we began to feel that as positive as that work was, having a more regular relationship with a stable and hopefully growing audience via a monthly magazine would be a good addition. Lydia and I had become frustrated that we had no way to engage more often and more directly with the people South End’s books were reaching. While the length and breadth of the books was great, we wanted a more regular two-way connection. So we proposed a magazine. The South End collective felt it was too risky to tie the press to a new project of such magnitude, so we began it as a new project that was financially separate, but of course mutually supportive. 

I think Z Magazine rose for an obvious reason. From years of publishing we had wonderful connections with many wonderful writers. Z’s aim to provide analysis but especially vision and strategy was timely. So too was addressing race, gender, class, and authority interactively, without privileging one above the others. 

I should say, a big factor in the life of South End Press and the early rise of Z was a number of particular writers and their books, for example, Bell Hooks whose first book, Ain’t I A Woman we published at South End Press and who later wrote regularly for Z, Noam Chomsky whose books we had published and who wrote a long essay every month for Z, and also Ed Herman, and likewise Holly Sklar, Howard Zinn, Manning Marable, Jeremy Brecher, Alex Cockburn, and many others who became frequent or every issue contributors. I think Z’s decline, much later, was also at least in part simple to explain. We had reader support but we had no funds beyond that. And over time the growth of the internet provided free content—and we did that as well via ZNet—which sufficiently undercut our paid audience to reduce our funds too severely to withstand.

You were partners with Lydia Sargent for just under fifty years. What impact do you think she had on Z and on you?

Regarding the magazine, first the obvious things. She affected what was solicited, what was published, the layout, and everything about the product. Then there were crises that she helped navigate. Lydia also filmed and produced videos and assembled ZBooks, along with being incredibly strong and inspiring by way of her radical theatre work. Lydia also thought up and pushed for another big project, Z Media Institute, and her humor and energy, along with her teaching, set its tone. ZMI was, I think, arguably our most effective project, albeit only happening once a year. 

 

Regarding me, I think Lydia enlarged my commitment to feminism, refined my commitments to participation and self management, moderated my tendencies to excess, and nurtured what good there was in me so I could do better, as well as making my days brighter.

Why did you go online; why did that effort dramatically and rapidly rise, and a lot later slowly subside, and what makes you think it can now rise again?

It is almost the same explanation as for the magazine. Going online could provide daily interaction, not just monthly, so it was another step up that path of greater connection, and that was the main impetus. I suppose it is similar to why bands like to perform live even after they don’t really need it for promotion or income. This time I happened to have some relevant learning to get things going so it didn’t require excessive start up funds. And, again, because of our contacts and focus, our online projects quickly became, arguably, the place for serious anti capitalist, anti imperialist, anti racist, anti sexist, and anti authoritarian community. And it went beyond being against what was bad to emphasizing things to be for and how to attain them. So Z’s online efforts grew quite quickly, though at the same time, there were various missteps and complications. 

At the large scale extreme, we tried to argue for and even create a truly left alternative to Facebook and Twitter. In fact, we tried that before those platforms were widespread with something we called Shareworld, and then later, we also tried again when those platforms were dominant. The stories and what I saw to be associated lessons of those and other projects are related in the book Remembering Tomorrow. As far as decline, as time passed, there were steadily more sites doing what ZNet was doing, and thus ZNet came back toward the mean, becoming one among many. 

As to the updated, rebuilt ZNetwork, I think it will rise dramatically because again the time is right for its particular inclinations, because it is so damn attractive and user friendly, but even more so, because its international staff is incredibly talented and creative. I expect a year or two down the road ZNetwork will be a major destination with a whole range of innovative and original offerings.

Can you remember some of the most scary moments of doing Z and particularly ZNet?

For Z Magazine I guess what was most scary were the early fund raising appeals, and waiting for returns, knowing they were literally life and death. For ZNet, I suppose it was when we were under systematic hacker attacks and trying to deal with that and then recover from it. For both together, I suppose it was when the IRS repeatedly came after us with a vengeance that lawyers told us they had never before seen the likes of. We weathered it all, but I’d be lying if I said none of it hindered us. Psychologically, somewhat. Materially, quite a lot. 

Can you remember some of the most frustrating moments of doing Z and particularly ZNet?

Well, if you set the bar really high, and I obsessively do just that, then even as you progress you will very often fall short of your aims, hopefully to try anew. So there were plenty of such moments. For example, a somewhat unusual frustration was that with Z Magazine—and this was at the outset, for few years, so it was decades ago—when we would ask readers for their views on Z and their advice, those who responded would with considerable regularity say, “it is too long. There are too many pieces that are so good that I feel I should read them. But I don’t want to. Cut it back.” To us this seemed, to be civil about it, ridiculous. Why couldn’t they read what they wanted without feeling the rest shouldn’t be there at all. I remember saying, “You don’t say that about The New York Times, Scientific American, or Sports Illustrated. Why do you say it about Z?” 

After a while we understood. Some people who responded—and we could tell it was by and large, and seemingly ironically, academics or, if not, then quite well read and privileged readers—were really saying, often quite explicitly, “give us Noam, Ed, and some other good stuff on international relations, and a little on current economics, and leave out the rest.” They were saying, in other words, “leave out the pieces focusing on race, gender, sexuality, and activism. Leave out the vision stuff. Leave out the strategy stuff. It is too much.” Of course we doubled down against that sentiment. Partly, we knew it was only a subset of readers, albeit the subset that was most prone to send us advice. Partly, even if it had been every reader, we wouldn’t have complied. Our agenda was primarily political not primarily fiscal. We sought precisely to emphasize the stuff readers didn’t want to have to skip over. But when we thought more on it—it got even more distressing. The readers saying “cut a lot, I don’t even want it in the magazine, I don’t want to see it,” were saying, “look, at some level I know that stuff is important, and so I feel guilty when I don’t read it, and I would rather not feel guilty like that, so leave it out so I don’t have to feel guilty.” Really, that is what was going on, at least for a time, and for some readers. And that was indeed extremely frustrating.

For ZNet, honestly, I guess the most frustrating thing aside from sometimes getting analogous comments to the above, and the lack of response to our efforts to generate new social media, was the extent to which sites that reprinted from all over creation would steer clear of reprinting from ZNet. Maybe they didn’t like me or Lydia. Or maybe they didn’t want to acknowledge ZNet or contribute to its growth. But why? Maybe they didn’t like the distinctive views that came from ZNet, often addressing controversial issues like fund raising on the left, alternative media policy and structure, and new vision. Honestly I don’t know. No one ever said why. But it was true, and it was most true for anything that had vision in it, especially participatory vision. Hopefully that situation, if not entirely past, is largely past.

And then, for frustration, there was the year the World Social Forum asked us to put together a set of sessions on vision and strategy. They wanted it as a theme for the whole event so the Forum would have ample sessions devoted to a new world worth winning, and to how to win it, with Z chosen to organize lots of folks to attend and to present, and with the Forum promising to promote whatever we came up with very aggressively. This was posed to us, in other words, as them wanting us to help inject a clear visionary and strategic focus into the event. We were surprised but elated to get the invite. They also asked us to prepare promotion for this thematic part of the Forum, which they would circulate, and they asked us to help them get keynote presenters, even beyond the people on our panels, and so on. It was a very big deal and we were excited, humbled, and motivated by their interest and trust. And so we assembled and brought about thirty folks from around the world to conduct about 20 interrelated sessions, including arranging housing for them. I don’t remember exactly the number, but all of the sessions were on vision and strategy and they were interrelated to compose a thematic whole, as requested.

It is a long story and I think it’s again in Remembering Tomorrow. Suffice it to say, at the last minute, literally a week or so before we were to leave for the event, and so after people had prepared and bought tickets to travel and after we had arranged rooms for everyone, and so on, some WSF higher ups pulled the rug out from under the whole effort. They sent us a cursory note, offering no reasons, saying they had decided to dump it all. Threats and demands followed and they finally said, okay, you can all come, and we will put your sessions in the schedule. And they did, sort of. They put our sessions in venues spread all over creation—not together as planned—and with no promotion despite our preparing and sending tons of materials which they just dumped. If someone attending did manage to find a venue where one of our events was held—literally like in exile, since to attend was very difficult and almost impossible without taking a taxi—the person would wind up so far from the main areas that they couldn’t attend one of our sessions and then make it back to go to something else for the next session much less go much further to try and attend another of our sessions.

What happened to cause the last minute about face? My guess was that those who invited us didn’t have final power. They were totally sincere, but then those who had final power got wind of it, and they presumably didn’t like the content and intervened. Ah well. It is distant past.

Can you remember some of the most positive moments of doing Z and ZNet?

If you believe, rightly or wrongly, that something you do generally, or some specific thing you do, or something that you provide, potentially matters, you feel good about that. And there was lots of that. We would sometimes undertake associated projects, gatherings, organizing campaigns, and so on. And when they worked well, it was a positive moment. Even just a good issue, a good article, was a good moment. But the truth is, speaking for myself, I always aim way higher than will plausibly occur, so even successes nearly always fall well short of hopes. 

 

Since the birth of Z, in a time pre-internet, has the media landscape changed much and did this affect the work of Z and ZNet?

I suppose the biggest change has been the character of the media, and the implications of that. Back as Facebook, Twitter, and whatnot were first being born, Lydia and I were very harsh critics. We took a beating for that as even good friends felt we were being purist, and sometimes took our criticisms of the new social media as criticisms of them for using and even celebrating it, and bristled back. They were right in one sense, but wrong, I think, in another. The sense they were right was that we would lose audience relative to other progressive media by dissing social media and not using it, but we knew that. Actually, Lydia held her ground on that even better than I did. The sense they were wrong was that social media was and remains largely an abomination—though a left version of social media, which we tried and failed to create, could have been incredibly positive. So, perhaps it is self serving, but I think our losses on this front weren’t so much because we were aggressively critical of existing social media and adventurist in trying to develop left social media, as they were because others were insufficiently critical of existing social media and unreasonably defeatist in not trying to develop left social media. 

The continuing impact of change in media is, I think, huge but also hard to precisely pinpoint. Information is nuggetized. Attention spans are seriously decreased. Debate grows too often defensive and uncivil, by now often verging on violent. In the old old days, to organize something you had to go door to door and talk for an extended time with people. For that matter, to put written words in range of eyes, you had to use a mimeograph machine for hours on end, and then put the leaflets under doors or hand them out on the street. The internet came along and reduced hours to minutes in various respects. That had promise. But with social media much progressive activity became mobilizing an already committed group via internet communications, but not talking to new people beyond the committed group’s borders. You might say much activity became mobilizing but not organizing. Thankfully, or perhaps hopefully, I think that perhaps reaching out and organizing is again becoming a priority. 

ZNet was one of the first websites to take the internet seriously as a publishing and dissemination platform and that seems to have contributed to its success. However, when the so-called “web 2.0” came along, that is, the social media platforms, you called for an effort for the left to develop its own, collectively self-managed social media platforms (“Z Social”), which never managed to take off. Talk about your thinking behind that, why you rejected the more popular privately owned social media platforms, and why the Z effort to create left social media didn’t take off.

For those old enough to remember, back before the World Wide Web and in the days of dial-up connectivity, Z saw aspects of the coming future and so we became a dial-up provider. We wrote a connection program to use through modems, created the platform to connect to, solicited users, etc. It was a mini America On Line, for those who remember those days. Somewhat later, when the world wide web first appeared but dial-up was still dominant, we tried with some partners to create a collaborative online system for the whole left, a Left Online. We called it ShareWorld. Still later we tried, as you note, ZSocial. All of that is described in the earlier mentioned book, Remembering Tomorrow. And, referring back to other questions, there was a fair share of frustration and something akin to heartbreak in all that. 

My antipathy to social media emerged at its outset. It seemed to me to be a vehicle for massive intrusion and spying on the public and for replacing face to face communications with something far less social. I feared a dumbing down of debate and thus of creative thought. It turned out that social media provoked all those ills and that it was also a factory for anti social behavior and diminished attention spans. Like anyone, I could also see the potential good in the broad concept of social media, but I was dumbstruck, you might call it, by the number of left activists who thought mega corporations would be easily side tracked from having their way. You can see with a candle or you can get burned by a candle. If the candle is in the hands of the devil, get some burn ointment. Social media was in the hands of the devil.

Regrettably our efforts to provide an alternative social media in left hands floundered for various reasons, most of which were specific to the times. But for the effort you are referring too—ZSocial—part of the failure was a lack of resources, though the programmer who built it did a wonderful job. But I think the more basic and determinative problem was instead twofold. On the one hand, the corporate platforms by then had everyone signed up. On the other hand, there wasn’t much feeling at that time that their having everyone signed up was a two edged sword. We could use social media some, it was true, but elites could direct it endlessly and destructively. So when it was time to sign up for ZSocial, people’s understandable but I felt short-sighted reaction was that we wanted them to use a social network that nearly no one was on (that’s how you start) when the network they were on, in their eyes, worked well. No thanks, they said. What are called barriers to entry in an industry are usually the very high cost of getting going as well as an uphill climb against entrenched, incredibly well heeled already well established actors. We more or less handled the financial obstacle to creating the project, though not to massively promoting it. But the other factors mentioned above sealed ZSocial’s stillbirth.

ZNetwork plans to concede the battle over social media and participate in its use. What words of advice would you have about what a responsible use of social media ought to look like for a radical website such as ZNetwork?

I know the intent, and I can’t take issue with it. There was a time when we could conceivably create a left-informed, popularly self-managed social media and that possibilty may return, in which case I would certainly strongly favor it. But at the moment, just like you might use a bank, or you might get a vaccine from a grotesque pharmaceutical company, or you might even seek help from police, it is a simple fact that living in the world we currently inhabit requires that we sometimes dance with the devil in order to do what good we can even while we try to avoid becoming devilish. The trick to that is to not lose track of what is going on. Leftists use banks but we don’t then start to think banks aren’t so bad, so maybe capitalism isn’t so bad. In the early days, folks signed up for social media and went from just using it to singing its praises and even singing the praises of the corporations behind it. Many ignored or were even hostile to critical insights about what was going on. So I guess the best I can offer by way of advice is if you use social media to reach out, don’t succumb to the idea that that is organizing so that face to face work is unnecessary. Yes, convey information, but while doing so don’t get bulldozed by what is commonplace on platforms into thinking everything has to be nugget-ized into a little package, with serious substance largely left behind. 

In the same period, has the left and political situation more generally changed and has this affected Z?

Of course the left and political situation has changed, but at the risk of self serving, one large change that is very far along, and one that is percolating, weren’t new for Z. Z had actually been pushing for similar but not identical change long before those two changes gained traction, indeed, all the way back to South End Press days. I have in mind the rise of what is called intersectionality and the rise of attention to what we desire, not just to what we reject. On the other hand, the intensification of defensive ad hominem and otherwise counter productive infighting, certainly by no means new, but also without doubt spread more widely than earlier, has been a serious problem. Another focus of ZNet and Z and earlier has been our emphasizing the existence of a third class and the implications of that for organizing, program, etc. This too is getting greater attention now, including attention to economic vision not only beyond capitalism, but also beyond what has called itself twentieth century socialism. 

Part 2 to follow soon…

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