Part of the question of what makes alternative media "alternative" might be answered by understanding what it is that makes mainstream media "mainstream".
For any culture, there is a dominant idea of what is considered to be common knowledge, usually promoted by those in power in any hierarchical system. Those in power are usually the same people who benefit from the agendas and priorities that are important in keeping the existing societal structure intact. Some would think that this was the way of things, that any structure would seek to perpetuate itself at any cost, and I agree; that is the very nature of
any organized system.
However, for those in the alt-press who pride themselves on "thinking outside the box," structures benefit from a strong system in place that serves to highlight problems to be remedied. This is when a structure becomes more intelligent, like cells dividing with good programming, and less cancer-like, where cells keep replicating with errors built in.
According to the video
What Makes Alternative Media Alternative?, featuring a lecture by Z Magazine's Michael Albert, the agenda of alternative media is:
"…To provide information, analysis, vision, strategy… to communicate material which will help people understand the system that we live within, understand our society, and understand the point of view of changing it to benefit those who are oppressed in it."
He goes on to delineate the various specific foci these alternative media may alight upon: economics, politics, activism, identity, and so on.
Along with the various foci alternative and mainstream media could pursue, there is a wide range of technologies currently available for transmitting ideas and analysis. And, as in previous times in human history, these powerful, world-reaching technologies are available to the common person.
Some could say that the practice of alternative media might have started with the invention of the printing press itself. Gutenberg's invention was what helped facilitate the spread of dissent that occurred when Martin Luther challenged the dominant paradigm represented by the Catholic Church. This dissent helped not only to establish Protestant thought (and through this, the Lutheran faith), but also popularized the idea that lone humans could question something as societally substantial and "immutable" as Catholicism's take on reality itself.
It is worth noting that revolutionary ideas tend to spread along with the advent of new technologies. The easier it is for the average human being to have his or her opinion communicated, the more possible it is for radical ideas to emerge into the collective consciousness of humanity. Gutenberg's press and the subsequent rise of the Protestant faith is only one example of this phenomenon; a more recent example is the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web with "blogs" being an example of elegantly organized opinion and thought, easily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.
Information, as stated by Brian Martin in his book
Information Liberation, is a part of any system of power:
"Top bureaucrats try to control information as part of their control over subordinates and clients. Corporations try to control information through trade secrets and patents. Militaries try to control information using the rationale of 'national security'. So-called freedom of information - namely public access to documents produced in bureaucracies - is a threat to top bureaucrats."
It is out of this knowledge of the structure of dominance inherent in any bureaucratic system that muckraking becomes a vital practice in the alternative press.
Muckraking, a type of exposé literature and journalism, was borne from the pre-World War I ethic of emotionally charged, morally indignant, unabashedly biased journalism that championed the causes and concerns of the powerless, common classes. Upton Sinclair's
The Jungle was a serialized account of the atrocious working conditions of the city's stockyards that was first published in the socialist paper
Appeal to Reason before it was eventually published as a novel.
Appeal to Reason was considered to be an alternative paper, concerned with issues of social justice.
Had it not been for this paper publishing Sinclair's work, health and food safety might have not appeared as an important issue, and the beginnings of the Food and Drug Administration might have been quite different, if it had ever come into being in the first place.
Unfortunately, in the case of mainstream media picking up some of the methods which alternative media have used in confronting the myriad ills of society, muckraking turned into a
negative term, and the investigative journalism that originally resulted from alternative media's emphasis on the common good eventually degenerated into nothing more than hyperbolic grandstanding and alarmist rhetoric. This also further led into an emptier form of "if it bleeds, it leads" sensationalistic journalism which one can see on any given night watching local (and sometimes national) news coverage on human interest stories.
Organizing the alternative press into a force with which to be reckoned may require more of a united front against the mainstream interests that corporations promote and manipulate. However, such an organization, especially if it becomes
big, might pose the same sorts of hazards of compromise that turned mainstream media into "mainstream" media.
Firstly, there is the problem of hierarchical structures being typically anaethemic to the journalistic integrity of those who participate in the hierarchy. Next comes the problem of money: access to just about
everything requires both monetary and social capital; if an alternative magazine cannot cover, say, a political event, because it isn't considered "big enough" to warrant a free press badge, it will be nigh-impossible for the alternative journalist in question to enter this elite space and cover the topics at hand from a radical/alternative viewpoint. Advertising might help assuage some of the costs of covering a story for a journal/magazine/etc. of alternative persuasion, but there are ethical concerns with the power exchange that inevitably is tied in with any exchange of monies.
So, in order to build and fund a system that not only would guarantee quality, but also avoid the pitfalls of the structure that came before it, one must address social dynamics as well as funding in order to keep the alternative press alive with its independent voice.
