The Death and Life of Occupy: an interesting article, author, publication

Rachel Lears, “The Death and Life of Occupy: Occupy Wall Street redefines itself”, In These Times (http://inthesetimes.com), 10 September 2012

The article offers an interesting account of where Occupy Wall Street is, one year on. The author holds a PhD in cultural anthropology, and the publication is a nonprofit, reader-supported magazine and website. All of these things remind me of these notes I feverishly scribbled down while listening to Sudeep Chakravarti’s talk at ACJ a few weeks back:

• Writing for the public of “inland” about what’s going on in “outland,” in the Other India which the mainstream media only stereotypes…
• There is choice today: newspapers, magazines, many media spaces; ways of sustaining oneself as a writer, whether through grants or other means…
• It’s not “publish or perish,” it’s “if you don’t publish where people will read it, you’re not doing something that matters.” Sudeep said he pays to get columns or editorials: to get out the stories he wants to get out, to the audience he wants to reach.
• In the Indian context, this is why Economic and Political Weekly is such an important publication.
• Pick your stories, get your facts right, and carefully choose where to publish.
• For all their talk of “impact,” of “knowledge transfer,” academia says: “if you don’t publish in academic peer-reviewed journals you haven’t written.”