SchNEWS at Ten Tour

SchNEWS was born in a squatted Courthouse in Brighton in 1994 as part of Justice? - Brighton's campaign against the Criminal Justice Act. A few bright sparks decided to start reading out the news. Some of those bright sparks then decided to put some of it on paper - 10 years later and they're still printing! From the anti road protests at the M11 in London to the Newbury Bypass to the big Reclaim The Streets events of the nineties SchNEWS was there. From worker's struggles such as the Liverpool Dockers, fights against privatisation of public services to reporting on social centres and sustainable futures - week in week out SchNEWS reported the news from the direct action frontlines. Thier weekly round up of news has long been a essential part of the fabric of UK activism, and their continued humour has kept us laughing despite it all.

It's impossible to know how many people read SchNEWS every week, particularly now with the internet. Out of the 3,000 that get printed, 650 get posted out each week to everyone from subscribers to bookshops to around 50 prisoners around the world who get it each week for free. Add to that around 10,000 email subscribers, many of which get it as a PDF file (so it looks exactly like the real thing). While many photocopy and distribute their paper copy locally, PDF files allow people all over the world to print out SchNEWS, and distribute it, before it's even hit the streets in Brighton! They often hear from people who print out PDFs and distribute each week - at infoshops or wholefood shops, on campuses and out on the streets, all over the world. Added to that popular sites like Urban 75 mirror SchNEWS each week, while A-Infos news service email it out internationally to subscribers, and the odd issue gets translated into other languages. So as well as the many thousands who visit the SchNEWS site each week, it is hard to work out how many they reach altogether.

The Party and Protest section is the most popular feature on the website, updated every week with a mishmash of festival dates, meetings and demos as well as a section on where to go if you want to find out radical contact points around the country. The DIY section has useful tips on everything from setting up your own newsletter to making your own bio-diesel. They also try to continually update the contacts list - currently listing over 800 useful grassroots organisations.

So who funds all this?

SchNEWS is run on a voluntary basis - no one gets paid. Though they manage to blag free into gigs and festivals (to spread the word of course) and when the treasurer's not looking, raid the petty cash tin for biscuit money. Their stories originate anywhere from anarchist literature to the dodgy Financial Times (no, really), from conversations in the pub to the internet. While they always try to be as accurate as possible and chase people up to verify the stories, the idea behind SchNEWS is not to believe the printed word, but to get up off yer arse and go and see for yourself. So articles are often first hand accounts from trusted sources or by people of the collective as they storm all over the country causing trouble/saving the world/having a laugh.

As for who keeps Schnews going... Well, since office rent was introduced they are spending around £24,000 a year on rent, printing, stamps, telephone, computers, envelopes, stationary, e-mail accounts, (biscuits)... and rely entirely on subscriptions, benefit gigs and readers' generosity to keep it afloat.

Finally, SchNEWS is an open collective, and are always looking for new people to get involved. So if you like reading the news the mainstream tends to ignore get intouch.

See also

• UK SchNEWS feature
• Leeds Bradford feature