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.

Twenty years have not softened a word of that. The information czars merely changed platforms.

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 returns, after a 20-year absence, as an online edition — published whenever the news requires it rather than four times annually, which the news generally does.

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. Contents are subject to Copyright © 2005–2026 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. Quoting us with a link, however, is not reprinting. It is the point.

What We Cover

Alternative news, opinion, events, art & music, resources, lifestyle, and reviews — the same seven sections that ran down the right side of the front page in 2005. Particular attention is paid to the Ashland City Council and the Parks & Recreation Commission, whose meetings we attend 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.

Submissions

The AFP eagerly reviews all submissions. The mail slot at AngelPort in the Underground Market has gone the way of most of Third Street's better ideas, so the slot is now digital: 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.

Support

The AFP is deeply appreciative of the small businesses and individuals whose support helps to defray the cost of publishing a top-quality independent press. The online edition costs less to print than the paper one, but nothing worth reading is free to make.

Printed on recycled electrons.