Introduction

On the very day in May 1935 that the first edition of New Times and Ethiopia News (NT&EN) went to press in Great Britain, the fascist Italian army entered Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital. NT&EN was designed as a weekly antifascist paper; the first edition's banner headline grimly set the tone for future editions, noting: “Remember: Everywhere, Always, Fascism Means War.” NT&EN's bias in favor of the Ethiopian cause far outweighed what was found in mainstream European and American newspapers of the era. More importantly, their sympathy was not simply based on the fact that the Italian invasion violated the League of Nations Covenant; it was based on an anti-imperialist and Pan-African worldview. Given that NT&EN was published in the heart of the British Empire, one might consider the tone and content of this newspaper as providing rather remarkable alternative constructions. As will be demonstrated, while mainstream Euro-American newspapers sometimes faced the problem of supporting Ethiopian independence during the height of the colonial era, the alternative NT&EN flouted conventions to become a significant contributor to the anti-imperialist, Pan-African discourse. However, more in tune with recent scholarship on alternative media, it is useful to explore how production values and cultural positioning more accurately frame NT&EN as an alternative outlet.

As many scholars have noted, defining what makes media “alternative” can be tricky business considering the differing perspectives that come into play. Nina Eliasoph has documented her participant-observation experiences in a politically oppositional newsroom. What is significant is her finding that news content was influenced by the relationship between the reporters’ and the owners’ ideological positions on the one hand, and the ideology of both the reporters and the station in relation to “their social positions and involvement with the audience and the social movements and institutions that are the subject of news” on the other hand. This suggests that while the content might be alternative, the mode of production—in terms of relationships to owners and their ideologies—is not necessarily so.

Robert McChesney says that independent (or alternative) content is generally considered too risky for mainstream media giants, although he notes ironically the current trend in which media conglomerates produce risky content that has proven marketable.