The Dissident Press

Alternative Journalism in American History

Kessler challenges the idea that the worlds of media and journalism have ever conformed to a 'free marketplace' image. This present volume investigates a handful of the many fringe groups who, denied access to the mainstream, started marketplaces of their own. Journalistic efforts in six groups are explored: Black Americans; utopians and communitarians; feminists; non-English speaking immigrants; populists, anarchists, socialists, communists; and pacifists, non-interventionists, and resisters from World Wars I and II. The result is an impressive study which shows that such groups have a diversity of origins, and a tradition which spans one and a half centuries.