Next week starts the second year of weekly publishing for Eat The State!. We'll be busy next week with candidate information and endorsements for the Sept. 16 primary election, so we thought we'd take a (merciful) break from the races this week and reflect on where ETS! has been and is going.

Our first issue--published on Sept. 10, 1996--was a four-pager, dealing with our bombing of Iraq (remember that?), relevations of CIA funding of inner city crack, and the Clinton/Dole race (remember that?). We printed 500 copies and sent out an e-mail version. Within weeks, two people had volunteered to set up ETS! web sites. The editor, Geov Parrish, began appearing the same week on a Saturday morning slot on KCMU's Mind Over Matters program, which interviewed him about news of the week.

The response was immediate and phenomenal, and has continued to grow. Our stories on last year's judicial races, on the HUD loan to Nordstrom's, our early warning on sports stadium scams, the Urban Reststop, privatization of Westlake Park, police abuses, and countless others were way ahead of other media and had a real impact on local politics. A major donation early this year enabled us to go to eight pages; we've survived the whole year solely on volunteer help, individual donations and mail subscriptions--no ads, no grants, no visible means of support. Six months ago, Geov added a weekly column in The Stranger on the basis of the strength and popularity of ETS!.

We started with three core people--Geov doing the writing, Lance Scott the layout, and John Reese the production--and a few folks who helped with production and distribution. Now we're up to two editors, several regular writers, talented artists who donate their work (including regulars Tom Tomorrow, John Jonik, Roberta Gregory, and Donna Barr), and a couple dozen other people who help out in different ways. We're up to 1,000-1,200 print copies around town (see distribution list), plus hundreds of weekly Net readers.

Why has it worked? Well, we like to think that the writing is good, it's fun and quick to read, we publish regularly and often, and we deal with relevant issues in plain language and with attitude. But it's also worked because it helps fill an obvious need. It's hard to find out what's actually going on politically in our own city. The shortcomings of our local corporate media are obvious and many, as we regularly point out; but other grass roots publications generally don't do what we do, either. They don't come out often enough, or they run longer, more in-depth pieces, or they're written for an "in" audience, or they're written in such dense, impenetrable, and/or jargon and cliche-laced language that nobody would want to read on.

We'd love to do more. We get way more cool letters than we have space to print. Several possible ongoing features (short takes, updates, a Local Heroes profiles column, a labor column, even a return of the infamous Puzzle Page) are on hold for lack of room. Display ads would give us more of a budget (and help us support local progressive businesses) but would also take editorial space. And, of course, the buffooneries of our local and global "leaders" provide far more material on far too many issues for us to ever exhaust. It all comes down to funding.

If you'd like to see more, send us some money. Better yet, tithe yourself, or your organization or business, so that we can count on regular sources of ongoing income. We get an amazing amount of our operating costs donated- -all the editing, writing, and artwork, part of the layout and copying, all the around-town distribution costs, the administrative time. But it still requires the kind of money (presently about $1,200 a month) that our local media giants would never notice, but those of us putting out ETS! in our spare time from poorly paying jobs just don't have lying around.

The general consensus of our friends last year--when we explained that we were going to start a free weekly publication with no money and relying on donations to survive--was that we were out of our minds. Admittedly, it's an unusual format. We're extremely ambitious (and organized) for a zine; we're not exactly a newsletter, as most of our distribution is free and public; we're too small and anti-corporate and multi-media to fit the usual categories.

But it's not that hard to do what we do. All it takes is a handful of folks willing to commit to do this each week or two. We'd be really, really happy to see ETS!-type projects popping up in other cities, giving a voice to people shut out by their local media, giving fits to officialdom, creating a political culture where new perspectives can be heard. ETS! has a national, even global readership. If you're interested in doing something like this where you live, contact us--we'll do our best to help!