TAKING IT TO THE STREET:

LONGMONT’S MAIN STREET PRESS

TAKES ON THE MAINSTREAM

by Kate Tarasenko

[Originally published in the Rocky Mountain Bullhorn (Fort Collins, Colo.),

Feb. 26 – March 3, 2004, pg. 11]

With an unapologetically left-leaning editorial style that decries the Iraq War, crippling unemployment, and the thunderclouds hovering over the
upcoming elections, the Main Street Free Press has just distributed its third issue as Longmont’s only independent newspaper – unaffiliated with other
newspapers.

Subtitled Prensa Libre de la Calle Mayor (the Spanish translation of its name), the paper was launched about six months ago by founder/writer Jim
Kenworthy. His writers and staff consist of a small band of dedicated volunteers – or “Street Democrats,” as Kenworthy refers to them – who met
during peace demonstrations held every Saturday since 9/11 by the Longmont Citizens for Justice and Democracy. The weekly afternoon vigil is held
on the corner of Sixth and Main Streets, hence the paper’s name.

The average 12-page issue offers decidedly non-mainstream news and opinions, with a hard-news reporting style conspicuously absent despite the
professional look of the Independent Press Association member-publication.

“It’s a newspaper that reads like a magazine,” jokes Kenworthy.

He is serious, though, when it comes to exercising his First Amendment rights in the torrent of increasingly corporatized news clogging the
mainstream.

“None of the media that we see or read is objective,” says Kenworthy. “It’s full of hot air and hype. If nobody knows what’s going on, nobody can
do anything about the bad stuff that’s happening. We provide information that people don’t normally get to read to balance it out.”

A professed news junkie, Kenworthy is a 20-year Longmont resident originally from Indiana who works in Denver as an English as a Second
Language (ESL) instructor. Although he says he lacks a background in writing or journalism, two years ago he self-published The Other News for
eight months. During post-demonstration coffees with his current staffers, discussion always veered toward how the group could spread its message
and garner more support. A media component was proposed, and while a letter-writing campaign seemed more feasible, a larger newspaper was the
inevitable choice.

A sampling of the second issue (December-January) gives the reader a take on the local economy and displaced workers trying to make ends meet on
near-subsistence wages. Kenworthy authored the lead story, “Will Democracy Survive the 2004 Election?” A Spanish version is found just below it.

It is unusual to find quotes from Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine translated into Spanish on page one of a local paper. Kenworthy’s ESL
credentials aside, he says, “The aim of offering as many bilingual stories as is feasible within a given issue is to provide advocacy to the local
Hispanic community,” as well as the political minority.

Longmont’s notorious history dealing with its non-white population, 30 percent of which is Latino, includes a police-shooting episode that helped
launch El Comite of Longmont, one of several organizations listed in the directory section of the Free Press. Various calendar events for Democratic
presidential candidate forums, ongoing peace vigils, public salons and citizenship classes, locally and along the Front Range, are also listed here.

Bill Ellis, contributing writer and the paper’s business wrangler, is responsible for a regular feature called “Musgrave Watch,” where the infamous
Representative’s votes are tallied and briefly explained.

“A lot of us have questions about Congressional voting records and don’t know where to find the information,” Ellis says, citing the controversial
Federal Marriage Amendment proposal to ban same-sex marriages. “The Constitution was created to give us rights, not to take them away.”

Ellis is particularly proud of the paper’s local coverage, like the article and accompanying photo essay about a farm estate sale in adjacent Boulder
County, and Longmont’s decision to keep a street named after Col. John Chivington, the officer who led his Third Regiment in the Sand Creek
Massacre of 1864, killing 200 Native American men, women and children.

Currently, the Main Street Free Press can be found in various coffee shops and Mexican-food carry-outs in Longmont, as well as the Boulder Book
Store, and soon at the Tattered Cover in Denver. Distribution in Fort Collins in random; a bundle of papers is left on the doorstep of a friend who
then passes them around town.

Ellis says he expects a “natural evolution” toward a hard-news style of writing and reporting, including expanded local coverage.

Kenworthy says he’s grateful that the paper’s unpaid writers volunteer their time and content with passion and a point of view often missing in
Longmont’s mainstream press.

“We offer an independent paper for independent thinkers,” he says.

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