Founding of The Occupied Wall Street Journal

The protest movement staging the campout in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park has given birth to a new kind of newspaper: The Occupied Wall Street Journal.

The thin newspaper is published in English and Spanish, and handed out for free where protesters are camped out. The first issue was published Oct. 1.

The second issue was published Oct. 11. Fifty thousand copies were brought to Zuccotti Park by taxi.

Asked where they were coming from, the paper's managing editor Mike Levitin, a freelance journalist, said, "We don't like to give out an exact address."

Production costs for the newspaper are being covered by donations.

 

Levitin told USA LOCAL NEWS a group of journalists sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street cause has solicited donations on kickstarter.com. They now have $75,000 pledged and plan to publish at least four issues.

The two-page paper, printed on both sides, provide readers with accounts of the movement's activities and reprints of some speeches, graphics and photos. Preaching to the choir? Not according to Patrick Inglis of Crown Heights, who said he has seen people reading it on the train.

"It's being read farther away from the park than you think," he said.

For a movement built largely on social media, the concept of a newspaper that someone can fold and carry with them might seem a little anachronistic. Not so, according to Levitin. "It's complementary to what we're doing."

And that would also be as long as they have money to keep doing it.

Full Coverage of Occupy Wall Street