It's our 400th issue!!

It's hard to believe, really. For 400 straight weeks, an almost all-volunteer staff has somehow managed to reliably publish the newspaper you're currently holding, without missing a single issue. The Asheville Global Report was born on Jan. 18, 1999, as a direct response to a corporate takeover of the public sphere which effectively decimated the traditional role of the press to hold governments, elected officials and businesses accountable. We saw issues of immediate interest to our public welfare, such as the environment, labor and human rights and war routinely downplayed or manipulated by the corporate media to serve the interests of the rich and powerful with devastating results. The advent of the internet and it's new, easy access to national and foreign news sources provided a shocking, more comprehensive view of the world and our government's role in global affairs. We discovered lots of important information to be increasingly, reliably absent. In short, we saw nothing less than a public information crisis which was shielding average awareness from any sense of scope or direct responsibility in what are often deadly matters. After a few years of publishing our little grassroots, nonprofit newspaper, we found our worst fears confirmed after being awarded national recognition for printing stories about US human rights abuses and invasion threats which no other newspaper had carried. Little did we suspect how quickly, pervasively and garishly the exploitation of the Sept. 11 attacks would further distort public discourse in a mire of disinformation, partisan punditry and infotainment. Nor could we predict the outright assaults to come on the press from the government itself. Journalists are now jailed for not revealing sources, some detained in prisons in Iraq and Guatánamo Bay, in addition to the staggering number killed on the fields of battle. Alongside these developments, we viewed a marked escalation in what had already been a troubling clampdown on rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Now, it would seem, such constitutionally dubious repressions as remotely located, designated "free speech zones," enforced by fencing and razor wire, are to be expected as the only locale for dissent at both Republican and Democratic conventions, for example. The confluence of these historic events has amounted to an almost virtual blockade on critical, non-partisan voices in the popular media and on the streets. With the arrival of our 400th issue, we feel a disturbing, yet incredible validation that the value of our reader-supported remedy to this problem has only increased. There have been some major close calls, when it didn't look like we were going to be able to continue to freely provide the unique service we do. Fortunately, our readers rose to the occasion and saw to it that the AGR survived. We just wanted to take a moment to say THANK YOU for continuing to believe in us and support what we do. We wouldn't have made it without you.