About the Ashland Free Press

Our Mission

To provide Ashland and the larger Southern Oregon and Northern California region with fearless reportage and critical analysis of local, national, and international issues. To give voice to topics of importance to people and groups that are screened out of media coverage. To serve as an example of how a small, independent publication can help a community recover its unique human and environmental identity. To reverse the trend toward homogenized media produced by information czars whose agendas are controlled by corporate and government apparatchiks.

That is the original Free Press’s mission statement, as it ran in 2005. We reprint it unedited because twenty years have not softened a word of it.

The Ashland Free Press is a news and opinion journal published in Ashland, Oregon, in a continuous online form with occasional limited-run print editions. It is a mirror held up for the community to consider where we are, who we are, and why we are here. It reports with factual integrity on issues of local concern, and on issues of global concern from the only vantage point we have, which is here. It is premised on the idea that the people of this valley have the creativity, desire, and energy to make a better world, starting where they stand — and it solicits their work accordingly.

Publication Information

The Ashland Free Press was founded in 2005 as a print quarterly, distributed the old way: stacked by the door, handed across counters, left on the tables of establishments whose owners were brave about that sort of thing, and dispensed from twelve yellow newspaper boxes of its own, stationed around town. It ceased publication sometime around late 2006. Twenty years is a long time between issues — Rip Van Winkle slept exactly that long, missed a revolution, and wandered back into town expecting his old seat at the inn. We are not Rip. We are more like the ones who found the musket rusting in the grass and decided the hunt still needed finishing: that paper is gone, and this one does not claim to be it. The online edition is its spiritual bastard descendant — no shared owners, no inherited files, just the name, the mission, and the conviction that the job the original championed still needs doing.

Authors may utilize pseudonyms, in keeping with the tradition of American freedom of the press as established by the Founding Fathers, who published their seminal work on government, The Federalist Papers, pseudonymously, and made it lawful to copyright artistic works pseudonymously through the US Copyright Office. Some of our staff exercise that right; their real names stay between them and the publisher. Contents are subject to copyright as works of the Ashland Free Press and/or the respective authors and artists whose work is published herein. Aside from the fair uses permitted under 17 USC 107 and 17 USC 108, these works may not be reprinted in whole or in part without permission. Quote us with a link, though, as much as you like. That is why we publish.

The paper also keeps a page at facebook.com/TheAshlandFreePress, where new pieces are posted as they run. We would rather this town argued in a hall with a door, and we said so at more length on the privacy page; until it does, that is where the arguing happens, so that is where the paper stands. Everything we publish is free here first and always, whether or not you ever open that platform.

What We Cover

Alternative news, opinion, events, art & music, resources, lifestyle, and reviews. Particular attention is paid to the Ashland City Council and the Parks & Recreation Commission, whose meetings we attend and whose transcripts we sift through so that you may live your life. A free press is the guardian of a free society, and a guardian who does not sit through the consent agenda is merely a mascot.

The Masthead

Nixie Worthington — Publisher & Staff Writer. Covers the civic beat and tries to write toward the direction the wind is blowing.

Vicky Hesher — Arts & Music Editor. Sees the whole picture, occasionally before it exists.

John Stanislaus — Staff Philosopher, Opinion. What doesn’t kill this town gets a column.

Alan Decault — Public Records & Archives Editor and Research Assistant. Discipline and publish.

CONTRA — Resident Artist. Design, pastiche work, smeared pixels. All art in these pages is CONTRA’s unless credited otherwise.

Betty Ramone — Webmaster. Keeps the presses rolling; one-two-three-four.

Corrections

We work from the public record — meeting captions, packets, filings — and the record is imperfect: the captions are machine-generated, the packets contradict themselves, and officials misspeak. Our standing rules: quotations are conformed to natural speech with bracketed interpolations where a repair is interpretive; names are attached only where the record confirms the speaker; figures are as stated in open session; allegations made in testimony are reported as testimony.

When we get something wrong anyway, we fix it. Corrections are made in the article itself, promptly and without ceremony, and material errors are noted at the foot of the piece. To report an error, use the contact page and select “Correction,” or write [email protected]. We would rather be corrected than comfortable — that is the whole premise of the operation, and we hold ourselves to the standard we hold City Hall to.

Sources

We protect our sources. A person who talks to this paper on condition of anonymity stays anonymous — in print, in our files, and under pressure. We do not name sources to officials, to lawyers, or to anyone else; we do not confirm or deny who spoke to us; and we would sooner retire a story than surrender the person who brought it. A town this small cannot have a free press any other way: everyone here works for someone, rents from someone, or sits on a committee with someone, and candor has a price we refuse to pass on to the people who supply it. If you have something the public should know, see how to reach us — and say what protection you need before you say anything else.

Submissions

The mail slot is digital now: submit your piece here, or email [email protected]. Reporting, essays, letters, art, music, verse — if it is honest and it is about this place or this moment, we want to read it. We read everything. We print what deserves it. For corrections, tips, or anything that isn’t a submission, use the contact page.

Support

Small businesses and individuals help defray the cost of publishing a top-quality independent press, and we are grateful in the plain sense: their money buys the electrons. The online edition costs less to print than the paper one did. Nothing worth reading is free to make.

Printed on recycled electrons.