Editor’s Letter – 8/2/17

Last week, July 27–30, I traveled to our nation’s capital for the annual Association of Alternative Newsmedia Convention—the words “alt” and “alternative” heavy on my mind with the recent rise of America’s alt-right. A display of MAGA hats greeted me at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. (Yes, people are still buying those.)

The theme of this year’s gathering, hosted by Washington City Paper, was “Monuments and Mayhem.”

“We have plenty of both here,” I overheard a woman in the hotel elevator say.

It felt strange to be in D.C. during this Trump era of antagonism, White House chaos, media-bashing, and emotional tweets. (The day before I arrived, our president tweeted his plans to ban transgender soldiers from serving in our military. The day after, he seemingly gave police his permission to be “rough” with suspects in a televised speech.)

For years—and especially in recent months—the political theater of Washington has felt distant to me. But last weekend, as I stood outside the White House, thought of the people just in Tulsa who Trump is affecting, and considered the role of TTV, it felt close enough to touch. (Pete Seeger would’ve thought so, too).

But Trump’s presidential dysfunction isn’t the only thing plaguing D.C. At the convention’s welcome keynote, U.S. Representative John Yarmuth (D-KY) said, “We have the most dysfunctional Congress in the history of the United States … in seven months, I don’t believe one significant piece of legislation has been passed … What matters now is what happens in our states and locally.”

Living in Tulsa, 100 miles away from our state’s capital, I often forget about the immediacy of government and politics, how change can be effected right here, on our own turf.

In one panel, we strategized how alternative papers could push themselves to the center of the national conversation with local stories.

I thought of Terence Crutcher. I thought of Khalid Jabara. I thought of Jeremy Lake. Tulsa is at the center of the national conversation.

And then another panelist challenged us to stop thinking of ourselves as “alternative.”

“These are extraordinary times,” she said. “Who do you want to be in your community? Ain’t no fucking alternative
about it.”

She’s right. The Tulsa Voice is a community paper. And it is alternative only in the sense that AAN defines on their website: “an intense focus on local news, culture and the arts; an informal and sometimes profane style; an emphasis on point-of-view reporting and narrative journalism; a tolerance for individual freedoms and social differences; and an eagerness to report on issues and communities that many mainstream media outlets ignore.”

We aim to tell the stories that need telling. To do that, we need you, our readers, to let us know what those stories might be and to share the ones we do tell. Email me: liz@langdonpublishing.com.